I love the way that e-reading allows stories to be presented in whole new ways. Sometimes it’s bold experiments in multi-media like Device 6, sometimes it’s just drawing your gaze through a comic slightly differently like Comixology can do. The comic Moth City by Tim Gibson does something in between.
Moth City is a dark historical thriller, set on a fictional island during the civil war that racked China from 1927 through to 1950. There’s a speculative element to it, the dieselpunk-style device of a high tech industrial island producing weapons of unimaginable devastation. But I’m only one issue in, and I don’t know yet whether this story will see many wild, fictional technologies, as opposed to just one to drive the plot forward. Either way, the island’s an interesting idea.
What’s really interesting is the way that Gibson has used the potential in digital comics to change the way that the story is revealed. Rather than show you a whole page at once, or guide you through panel by panel without showing the whole page, he’s set his comic up so that panels are added to the page as you read. This allows you to enjoy the extra surprise of not seeing what’s coming up, while also getting to enjoy the dramatic art of a good page layout. Sometimes panels even replace other panels, creating an added sense of movement, of passing moments.
You can get the first issue of Moth City free from Tim’s website or through Comixology. If this has piqued your interest then give it a go and let me know what you think. I’ll certainly be going back to read more.
I found out about Moth City when Tim appeared on an episode of the Rocking Self-Publishing Podcast, so if you want to know more about Tim and his comic you can listen to that too.