Cellphone Comics: Mobile Manga

by Jordan Yerman | August 28, 2008 at 07:47 am

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Comic books are coming to your mobile phone (Well, they've been doing so already, but not as part of a concerted studio effort, so there we are). Paramount Studios is orchestrating a series of graphic-novel for the tiny screen as tie-ins for existing and upcoming movie projects. This is a great idea, and finds that middle ground for mobile entertainment as mobile TV continues to underperform.

Comics will be available as single panel; comics, four screens per comic strips and short stories with more than 20 screens in each episode. Currently, these comics are available in MMS and J2ME formats in the U.S., Australia, Europe and India. The mobile comics will be made available by download through key carriers and major content distributors worldwide.

Par says that comics are primarily viewed as marketing support for movies at or before time of int'l theatrical release, though carriers will treat them as premium content and charge phone users for downloads.

"Omnitoons is a specialized mobile comic developer with talented artists based in Singapore and we are thrilled to partner with them to translate these movies into mobile comics," Pradeep Mittur, PDE's VP, mobile entertainment in Asia Pacific, said.

Of course, mobile comics must contend with the slings and arrows of the mobile carrier's terms of service, and sometimes even with that of the target operating system:

"This is due to the part of the SDK that suggests content must not offend anyone in 'Apple's reasonable' opinion," a post on the Infurious blog read. "Here at Infurious, we would love to work with Apple to ensure a content-rating system can be put in place to allow material that is no more offensive than many of the R-rated films available to download on iTunes."

The first installment of Murderdrome is an eight-panel comic that shows one character slicing another's head with a machete, and cleaving another's with a sword, as part of a sport called "murderdrome." The violence is comic, but still bloody.