Digital comics are an ever-changing medium and probably the most exciting part of comics to me. There are creators constantly pushing just what a comic can be with digital comics. Announced 2 years ago at San Diego Comic Con 2013, “Motorcycle Samurai” by Chris Sheridan and published by Top Shelf was a digital comic that utilized Comixology’s Guided View format in exciting ways. It used to the format to bring cinematic touches to an often static medium, making “Motorcycle Samurai” one of the best examples of digital comics done right.
Now, that digital comic is coming to print. No longer is the story of White Bolt and the prisoner she’s escorting across the desert limited just to readers on Comixology. With a 176 page print trade out today, “Motorcycle Samurai” becomes one of just a few true digital native comics to make the transition to print. Going from the computer screen to the print page wasn’t without it challenges, as we found when talking with Sheridan. Still, it makes for two different, but hopefully equally enjoyable, experiences.
Read on as we chat with Chris Sheridan about “Motorcycle Samurai”, transitioning from digital to print, the flexible nature of digital, keeping a narrative interesting, and much more. If you’re interested in “Motorcycle Samurai”, there are a couple issues available digitally for free.
“Motorcycle Samurai” has been serializing digitally for 2 years now, since SDCC 2013. Now Top Shelf is collecting all that in a print trade. How does it feel now to go from all these digital issues to having something physical you can hold in your hands?
Chris Sheridan: I think it’s something that I was always really interested in. As much as I love the digital format, my interest originally was getting something that was complete and printable and I could say, “Well, that was a good run.” If anything else comes out of it, that’s fine, but I was really doing it as something for myself. I was always into comics when I was younger and I wasn’t stylistically in any marketable way prepared for going into that as a job or regular gig. I think it took a long time for me to find a good outlet and part of that came from stepping away a long time. I went through film school and did a bunch of work on my own and got back into drawing regularly through that. I realized that I was still interested in the format of comics. Although, my style had changed, the stories I was interested in were still the same. To go through that experiment and see what that would look like as a full comic, part of it was just getting back into design school, but in the process realizing there were a lot of things I still wanted to do. It’s awesome to come back and see something in print – as a full run, as a nice chunk of time, as a keepsake. Plus I think it’s just a fun story and it’s a lot of elements that I would be interested in picking up and reading. A mix of comedy and action and weird backstory elements and a lot of things left unsaid. To me, those are the most interesting elements of stories and I just wanted to capture that.
I think MS was Top Shelf’s first digital first title. Is that right?
CS: I would have to go back and confirm, but I think so. It definitely was as an in-app structured comic. It rolled out originally at SDCC 2013 and that was “guided view native”, which is through Comixology. It was a unique way to go about viewing and for me it was an interesting way to tell a story and carry on those elements of film, but in a comic form.
How has that transition been – from guided view to print? There’s limitations in the digital form, but there’s also limitations in print.
CS: I think you hit it on the head there. I think you’d said previously that you were interested to see the exploration of one of the stories you knew digitally and how it carries over. I think that’s an interesting way to view it. They’re both unique experiences telling the same story.
Continued belowI go back to as a kid when I’d watch the edited movie on network tv. You knew what it was in the theater, but it’s not shot for the theater anymore and edited for content. While the story is mostly the same, you’re going to have unique beats to each one. I think that’s sort of how I’m looking at the execution in terms of print vs digital.
We’d talked a little about what you can get in six panels digitally, you can get in one panel in print. Hopefully those experiences, while they might be different, are both satisfying and give a different pace or cadence to the story. I think if you’re open to them not being the same, which is a really interesting thing, you have these unique experiences in whatever arena you’re in. If you’re not trying to replicate it entirely, I think that’s totally fine.
It’ll be interesting how much of the digital audience follows you to print and how much is print first. Do you have any expectations on that?
CS: That sounded really ominous…
I don’t know. As part of my background as a designer, I think of things as an asset. These are just executions of the story – this is the way you can tell it a certain way in this regard in terms print and this is how you can tell it in terms of digital. There’s other formats we haven’t even gone into or come up with yet that are going to be out there. I don’t have a real expectation. I guess I would think if the content is good in one format, it’ll be good in another one. But I guess we’ll see.
What are your thoughts about it?
I’ve read the FCBD issue and I’ve read all the digital issues. It’ll be interesting. I saw people on my Twitter feed who’d read the FCBD issue but never read the digital issue who were saying, “This is a cool comic! I love the idea.” and they didn’t know anything about the digital. It’ll be interesting to see if people discover the digital from the print and who follows the print from the digital.
CS: I think in that way, I am definitely interested to see how it goes. I do think they’re designed in separate ways, so one might feed into the other. They don’t need to be exclusive. I don’t feel like they’re exclusive. I don’t know how much readership follows that belief, and that’s what we’ll really find out.
The story of “Motorcycle Samurai”, for those of who might not have read it, is kind of a spaghetti Western following this titular motorcycle samurai, this character named White Bolt, as she escorts a prisoner through the desert. I like how some of the digital episodes veered off into their own little stories. You had your Christmas issue and your Variable issue. Are those side stories going to be incorporated into the trade?
CS: I think you can see the spine of the main narrative, and that’s what the trade will encompass. Those other elements were sort of a timely thing that came about based on being digital and being able to be outside the mainstream. It also lent itself to a different avenue to show that it is a big world and there’s a lot going on. The print will be that main story arc, and we’ll see how it plays out with those other ones. Those were elements that were offshoots if you’d already read some of it. They just played into building the mythology and narrative in a different way. I don’t feel like the story goes A to B to C and I feel like the story bounces around a lot, moving in time and space, referencing different elements in history or backstories. For me, that’s how I see a narrative playing out, kind of like a ping pong ball, and the way it was expressed digitall was a complementary way to how I like to tell a story. The print version will be more straightforward. But you know from reading it that it doesn’t deliver a totally straightforward or clear picture of what’s going on for good or bad. Character wise, that’s accurate, as well as narrative wise.
Continued belowCharacter wise it’s definitely accurate. White Bolt is our hero, really, but at various times you could construe what she’s doing as wrong. She’s freeing prisoners and revolting in a town and things like that.
CS: You can tune into a bad movie halfway through, but it’s still interesting because you have to figure out what’s going on and don’t know who characters are. When you figure that out, it might lose some momentum. I’m always more interested in maintaining a little more mystery or obscuring why people are doing what they’re doing.
A lot of times with a narrative, you have to know what someone’s motive is or why they’re doing what they’re doing, but that’s usually the most boring part for me. I’m either shifting it or making the focus more about action. I”m into thinking action as part of a character. I think it’s interesting when you don’t know why someone is doing what they’re doing. It makes it a little more wily to follow what’s going on. You don’t know if you like the person, but you’re interested and keep going along. Hopefully that’s the result.
I think the same could be said for the world of “Motorcycle Samurai”. At various times you drop place names, like they talk about Cleveland at one point or another. They’re American cities, but where they’re at is nowhere that we know. It’s hard to place the real setting of it, but it has familiar elements too. What sort of world were you trying to build?
CS: I look at it the same way. There’s places that you know the name of, but have never been to. You have an impression of it that calls something it. We were talking earlier and you mentioned New Orleans. I’ve been there a little bit, but don’t it that well. There’s a number of references I have to it in my mind and I think you build that up, and when you can reference things like that, it helps the world a little more and you don’t have to do all the work. You let the reader come up with some of those connections. Coming up with backstory or finding ways to open the story up in that way is always a challenge and always interesting. Part of it is that American cities, American history, and the American West are definitely part of the framework and the landscape that the story takes place in. There’s a lot of history there. If you look at a Western, it’s coming out of post-Civil War America. There’s friction there and lot’s of interesting elements. Narratively things you’re talking about are brother vs brother and all those great literary traditions that you can call on. Part of the interest is that there’s so much history and layers there, and maybe people respond to referencing those known places. I don’t know if I have a full answer, but I think the impression of that world is interesting to me. I don’t have a full picture of what it is! That’s part of why the world is interesting and the world is really vibrant. Even those little side stories help to craft the world and make it bigger. It’s still, in my mind, a really active place. I have a framework for what it is, but it’s not like “Lord of the Rings” where everything is charted out and I’ve made a language. It’s an evolving myth.
With a digital issue, I want to say that Comixology tells you the page count of a book. Each issue of “Motorcycle Samurai” was upwards of 200 panels/pages. Then you transition that to a print comic, which is 5 or 6 panels per page generally speaking. That’s a pretty big difference. How do you condense those ten smaller moments into a shorter one? How do you decide how to get something just as strong, but in fewer moments?
CS: I think everything is there, from digital to print, it just might be paced differently or displayed differently. I think the total page count for the print version is 176. I think it comes back to each execution being its own thing. While the elements are all there, the pacing might be a little different. I think you still get to the same conclusions, it just might be more on the reader in the print version. Hopefully those beats are there and they have the same impact. Process wise, there’s not a clear path of how I got there, as I think we’re starting to figure out.
Continued belowNot that there are extraneous panels or pages in the digital version, but there are scenes like White Bolt throwing a sword and it connecting and a panel falling down, where you can draw it out, but you don’t need those extra images necessarily. I feel like digitally it adds something and printwise you get to the same spot with fewer panels. As we’ve said a lot in this conversation, we’ll see how it works out. That’s a fun part as well.
In just the last two years, the digital realm has changed a lot. There’s a lot more out there and each company has there own way they’re going about creating a framework and translating to print. That was one of the great parts of this and working with Top Shelf – they were really open to exploration and their support and feedback, but it was an open area to play in, I felt like it was really exciting and fun to make it happen and then try to figure out how it works in print later. Just finding the most interesting way to tell the story. There are elements in the print version that are completely redrawn because those panels didn’t work from the digital to the print. Part of it is physically different drawings. I should have a percentage off hand on the amount that was redrawn, but I don’t. Basically the whole first part was recolored because I felt like the palette changed a lot. Some of the elements that are in the digital version are that “aged paper” tone and those are not in the print version. Just some executional elements that are physically different in print. It is its own unique thing and playing in that realm and finding out you might have to do two versions of this page/panel/sequence is kind of par for the course, I guess.
I think beyond the art, there’s some spots where the dialogue had to be changed. Even the dialogue in the digital version is different than in the print version.
CS: You’re going to get to the same place, but maybe the cadence of the conversation isn’t the same. I felt like that was okay. Maybe it wasn’t! Maybe it’s not!
I do think it would be interesting to go track the story and see where the differences are. Whether it’s successful or not, that is out there now and you can evaluate it. Anybody creating or taking notes can see how successful the execution was. Maybe it matters when somebody says something or maybe it doesn’t. I always look at comics as a visual medium first, not to hack on the writing, but I feel like if you are carrying that weight visually you can make it work and still get to the same spot. If someone else was doing it, I might feel differently, but I made those choices and edits to make it work in that way and I feel it still has that same impact. Maybe it’s like making Yoda walk and it’s a bad idea, but it happened.
Going back to how you’re talking about the digital landscape changing in the last two years, I think the only other guided view native comics that have came to print have been Thrillbent titles. Even those don’t use the medium quite as well as you do in a lot of places. Are you looking at that to gauge how things are going?
CS: No, I don’t care. I guess I just don’t think of it as that precious. We already talked about who’s going to follow and maybe it’ll be the same readers and maybe not, but I didn’t take a lot of notes on why I was doing what I was doing. It was the solution at hand and seemed like the right one. Maybe in the future I’ll make a different choice, but in this regard it seemed like the best execution. I think it also was good to figure out how much work went into this and what that format looked like.
Let’s look at Blade Runner. Blade Runner has like 40 different versions out there. There’s Master Cuts and Final Director’s Cuts and all these things. Which one is the ultimate? Digitally, all these things are changing. I guess I look at it that way. There’s no final format or final execution, but I guess that print version is what sits on the shelf.
Continued belowThe digital is freeing in that you can make changes up to the end, probably to the consternation of people I’ve been involved with. It is a more fluid and freeing format in that regard. Then you when get into print it has more of a formula to it. I look at the digital format as a great avenue to play and experiment. The idea that you don’t have to make the digital like the print, or vice versa, is a freeing opportunity creatively.
I never laid it out in terms of trying to make it match a print comic. For good or bad, it might use the format or become confined or defined by that format a little more. It was just trying to figure out the most interesting ways to tell a story. You don’t have a double page spread, you have maybe the full iPad or device, but you have to figure out how to effectively use those tools. Whatever format you’re in, you’re always trying to break that down. Just another execution, is how I look at it.
Now that “Motorcycle Samurai” is in print and the first volume is wrapped up, what’s next for it? What’s next for you?
CS: There’s a couple things on the horizon, which should be good. The “Motorcycle Samurai” world is pretty diverse and could go in a lot of different areas and I have some ideas where it could go, but it’s not entirely formed. There’s a lot of loose threads in that last story, and they’ll get dealt with over time, but it’s about building a bigger world and going to those places mentioned and evolving that myth a little more. There’s also a couple more projects on the horizon through Thrillbent, which will be coming out… soon.
