Continuing the somewhat strange new trend of announcing comic news on sites not normally connected with anything comic-related, DC has announced a brand new digital initiative today entitled DC2 over at Cnet. And, if I’m correct, I believe it’s DC^2, as in DC Squared — but hey, who’s counting? (HA! Math jokes!)
The basic digital move is quite simple On the one hand, DC is catching up with Marvel/Thrillbent with the Infinite Comics style of storytelling, in that an otherwise static image in a comic panel will feature a form of motion as you swipe through the digital comic and certain aspects of it change; it’s not quite a motion comic, but what we’re referring to as the next best thing. At least, that’s what it seems like the announcement says, with its description of “dynamically changing artwork, so that as you tap or click your way through the story, the in-panel artwork will change.” DC’s adoption of this storytelling format will debut in Jeff Parker and Jonathan Case’s “Batman ’66”, the highly anticipated comic version of the class Batman television show (featuring digital covers by Mike Allred).
The second thing, and the arguably more interesting move, is that DC will be unveiling choose-your-own-adventure comics of sorts. While the announcement isn’t entirely clear, a new comic centered around Batman: Arkham Origins “will let readers choose different characters to follow through the story. Who you choose to follow, and which story paths you follow them down, will change your reading experience.” Sounds like choose-your-own-adventure to me, but it’s probably closer to the idea of one story told through several different eyes that you’ll read multiple times to see the full story of. The Batman comic will be published under a new digital imprint entitled DC2 Multiverse (hey, that word sounds familiar!), referring not to the multiverse as we fans know it but rather the multitude of options you will have when reading in regards to what paths you can take.
You’ll also be able to add a soundtrack, although the hows and whys of this is unclear. Marvel too has a soundtrack aspect to digital comics coming out called Project: Gamma, although again the details of that are unclear as well. It seems that
Either way, it’s nice to see DC fully jumping into the digital game finally. Marvel dominating any form of digital innovation was beginning to take the fun out of their classic rivalry.
