Today we’ve got 10 Questions with Danny McLaughlin of Uproar Comics – the team behind the excellent Zombie Hi
1. Who are you and what are you working on right now? (2 questions in 1, I know!)
I’m Danny, Creative Director/Editor/Writer for Uproar Comics! Not sure where to start on what I’m working on, but here’s the tip of the Iceberg; Writing/Editing/Lettering on Uproar Comics Award Winning flagship comic “Zombies Hi”, working on the Uproar DEC (Digital Experience Comic) Exclusive to iPad, writing a story called “The Ballad of Half-Hung MacNaghten” which will be drawn by the awesome Adam Pescott, and also a few more things in the works besides social networking and marketing etc etc TL;DR Loads of comic stuff haha
2. What drew you to digital comics?
I was really an advocate of the printed comic until I read Y: The Last Man on the iPad then me and Kevin from Uproar starting chatting about the possibilities of a kind of hyperlinked comic etc from there the DEC was initially born. We wanted to create a reader that would make it possible to not only read a comic but to experience the world with extra content, unlockable bios and games inside etc Page count doesn’t matter on the digital frontier so we could make it as big or as small as possible! Actually the possibilities are unexplored as of yet. Digital Comics aren’t just digital versions of the comic, they should be interactive, atmospheric, multimedia etc, we are at an exciting transition of visual literature.
3. Webcomics or digital comics?
Webcomics, this may sound counter intuitive, are already defunct because a lot of them are free. I can get loads of free comics on the web, which hinders my decision, so I just go buy the ones I can get somewhere else. Somewhere deep down I think, like downloading an album illegally: I ignore it, I buy it, I’ll listen to it over and over. Which is really bad because there are loads of great talent out there producing loads of great work. My bad for not reading the free stuff. But I gotta say Digital Comics.
4. What do you think works with digital comics?
Simple answer: we are yet to find out what actually works, but the obvious is accessibility and value for money! Can’t shy away from those realities!
5. Can digital comics replace print comics?
Can they? They will! No doubt about it. Who uses a Gutenberg Printing Press this day and age??
6. How can print comics work with digital comics?
As I have said- We at Uproar are applying a new innovative thinking towards comics. Not just comics but story telling with art and sound and games and video and animation and interactivity! At the minute we are smashing together the elements to see what happens! But alongside the digital we still have the printed version which will at some point be used with a tablet and use augmented reality for the comic to come to life in a way nobody have ever seen! Watch this space is what I’m saying…
7. What don’t you like about digital comics?
Weirdly enough- the smell! They don’t have any! The smell of a printed book takes me back to my childhood days. But that’s nostaligia on my part, the next generation of kids and adults wont ever have held a print comic in their hands and will never have that feeling! I’ll still be taking in years to come about the smell of the old print comics… *sniff*…. Ahhhhhhhhhh the good old days lol
8. What digital comics/webcomics do you read?
As I said I don’t read webcomics, but recently I had been reading all the old Alan Moore series of Swampthing. Y: The Last Man (which is awesome by the way) Walking Dead and loads other random Marvel and DC issues.
9. Where do you see digital comics going from here?
Very hard to tell- but the DEC is the what will be the Future…
10. Who do you think we should look out for in digital comics?
Uproar… 😉
