How to "Read" Manga ... ON AN INTERNET!

In 1999, Microsoft researcher and typography theorist Bill Hill predicted that e-books would be "commonplace within the next half decade."

He was wrong.

But I'm not here to rub it in his face or try to explain why electronic literature has failed to take off (flawed hardware, poor distribution, whatevar). Other people are good at that. What I want to talk about is his seminal 1999 paper, "The Magic of Reading," which details Hill's OSPREY (Optimized Serial Pattern Recognition) theory of reading and how to translate the reading experience from printed page to screen. (Link via Slate.)

Although the implementation of Hill's ideas has been middling at best, the theory behind it is sound -- his paper is practically the Understanding Comics of prose-reading, a dazzling multidisciplinary study that basically boils down to How To Make An Electronic Book That Lives Up To Its Analog Original. Along the way, Hill covers the mechanics, physiology and psychology of how people read for pleasure, provides an analysis of The Book as a supremely optimized vehicle for data transfer and fictional entertainment, and looks at the shortcomings of computer technology (as of 1999) in trying to replicate the awesomeness of The Book. Sadly, very few of those shortcomings have been addressed in the years since, save for the advent of ClearType software (if you have Windows XP and an LCD monitor, try this, it's amazing!) and the development of eInk for portable e-book readers. (Reader tested, Rivkah approved.)

And -- I swear, I'm getting to the point now -- Hill's research is highly applicable to how we read comics, too.

Over the past several days, various comickers and critics of note have been discussing the possibilities of anthologies in the North American market as a channel for underdog genres that need more love. (Boy's or otherwise.) One word that keeps resurfacing and slapping me in the back of the head is "e-anthology," which apparently is the fancy new maaaahnga-kaaaah way of saying WEBCOMIC. I mean, what is an e-anthology but a glorified, specialized form of webcomic with its priorities reversed? The way I see it:

Webcomic (based on my understanding from years of reading them): a comic whose key purpose is to reach audiences on the web and if it makes it into print, that's nice.
E-anthology (based on the way everyone's been talking about it the past few days): a comic whose key purpose is to reach audiences in print but initially attracts them via a bundled periodical on the web.

Queenie Chan has already done a fantastic job of analyzing the business of digital distribution and how we could all be reading e-comics if they were modeled after, say, iTunes. Hardware is certainly an issue here, but one that's addressed in only two paragraphs in Chan's entry. After Hill's analysis of reading theory, however, I realized that the hurdle of bringing the comic page to the screen could be a lot bigger than any of us have imagined. To wit:

The mechanics of comic reading are much like the mechanics of prose reading, except with pictures, which messes everything up.

And if we've barely made a dent into the electronic replication of prose reading, what hope do we have for comic reading?

It begins with human physiology and psychology. There was this research paper that Isaac Alexander linked me to (and I can't remember where the hell I put it, now) that showed exactly how people read manga. The key thing is that the reading direction in manga is basically a reverse "Z" -- we start in the upper right quadrant, move to the upper left, then hop down to the lower right and across to the lower left. The best layout artists in manga are the ones who can capitalize on this pattern for maximum effect. When they are able to guide us through the visuals smoothly and we don't have to hunt for the next panel in the sequence, that's when the interface drops away and we become "lost in the story."

So far, so good. A well-drawn manga or comic is much like a well-written book in that respect. The best ones put the reader in a page-turning trance, locking into a "harmonic gait" (Hill's term) that keeps us in the story. And like the prose novel, when we read a comic we like to hold something in our hands (an argument often used against electronic literature) and have it about two spans away from our eyes and all that warm fluffy goodness. Mug of hot cocoa optional.

The problems begin when we look into how comics are conveyed, the mode of delivery -- that is, the printed page. While physically identical to the mode of delivery for prose, the extensive use of images makes everything a whole new ballgame. After all, text can be arranged and re-spaced depending on the shape of your page without inherently altering the story. Try to re-arrange sequential images for digital vs. print delivery and, well, things get even hairier than left-to-right flipping.

The freeflowing visual nature of comics makes it a much wilder animal to tame than text. In Hill's magical world of prose, the letter is the basic unit, and the elements of text -- letters, words, lines, paragraphs, pages -- have all been fine-tuned and optimized over centuries to create the ideal mode of delivery. The Book. On the other hand, we could say that the panel is the basic unit of comics language -- and that could be any size, any shape, any orientation, from a teensy little strip in a corner to a full two-page spread. As you can see, words can be easily herded like sheep, and much of Hill's OSPREY theory basically tells us how to arrange those sheep so that they look good anywhere -- in print, on screen, in eInk. On the other hand, herding comic panels is like trying to bullwhip a freakin' shape-shifting CHIMAERAMELEON or something. The rules of comic layout are in the hands of artists, not publishers. Artists decide the size, the spacing, the style. That's where typographical theory falls apart -- it just doesn't apply when working in units of image rather than text. And that's where publishers trying to bridge the gap between print and online are currently screwed.

Spatial orientation is what ruins everything. Scott McCloud already said something before (I can't remember if it was in Reinventing Comics or on his website) about how computer screens are landscape and comic pages are (generally) portrait. Basically, the computer screen is un-optimized for reading comics unless you draw one in horizontal strip format -- which of course has become the webcomicker's layout of choice. The print standard of portrait orientation is inherently in conflict with the computer monitor's standard of landscape orientation.

I can hear the retorts already: "Derrrrr, I read scanlations all the time j00 freak." Yeah, but scanlations are inherently in conflict with the layout of computer monitors. It doesn't matter how many of them you can read in one sitting without eyestrain. (EYESTRAIN 21! YA-HA!~) The fact is, commercially produced manga pages are oriented up-and-down. Computer monitors are oriented side-to-side. THAT IS FACT. And just because you're totally used to reading scanlations, or raws, or whatever, doesn't change that fact. The best way to read Japanese comics from Japan is on the Japanese paper that they're printed on. The act of reading comics on the computer forces the comic page into a non-optimized interface.

So, if publishers are to ever bring an e-anthology to someone's computer terminal, it'd have to be even easier to get to than scanlations -- because we're trying to bring something to an audience that's far less hardcore than the fanscan crowd. Let's say you visit MangaPop's website, and for a one-time online payment you download a 1 MB program called Manga Reader to your desktop, and anytime you're online it automatically checks MangaPop's internets for new issues of the e-anthology, and automatically downloads these issues and flashes an icon in your status bar so you can go read it. Basically the computer has done almost all the work for you -- all you've had to do is click once for a download of the Reader program (like "buying a subscription"), and then click again ("check the mailbox") when the latest issue is delivered to the program (your "doorstep"). It's automatic. (cue Hikki ...)

But how about those e-book readers? They're oriented the right way round -- could they be the future of the e-anthology? Japan has already adapted to cell phone manga -- but that small screen size is FAR from an optimal reading situation, and it only succeeds because (1) Japan is a nation of commuters, (2) commuters need something to do while riding to and from work, and (3) cell phones fill that need and are more convenient than tankoubons. Cell phone manga was borne out of cultural necessity -- a necessity which is far less prevalent in America, because like I've said before, I do NOT want to be on any street where someone is reading the latest download of Fruits Basket and driving at the same time. The car is not a phone booth, and it is DEFINITELY not a bookstore!

Portable electronic readers would have to make huge leaps in technology, accessibility and ubiquity before we can even begin to see them as conveyors of prose and graphic fiction. eInk is a step forward, but it needs to be developed to the capability of rendering images. Basically, there needs to be a device that can do 600 dpi+ on its interface. In visual narrative, imagery is uppermost, and so an electronic device will have to be able to present imagery in a way that emulates its in-print peers. Until that happens, the bound 200-page volume of processed dead trees will still reign supreme. Sure, you can get things like Seven Seas excerpts on PSP, but that's more of a cross-promotional tool -- 7S's PSP-manga is like icing on cake, whereas an e-anthology and the subsequent collected volumes would be different layers of cake. And now I'm hungry.

So, in bite size:

• Bill Hill proposed an OSPREY (Optimized Serial Pattern Recognition) theory on the way that we read prose books.


• This theory is also applicable to the way that we read comics. Scott McCloud pretty much covered the artistic end a decade ago.


• There is also a physiological element of the way that we read comics, for example the "reverse Z" pattern that our eyes follow on a well-planned manga page.


• There is also a mechnical element of how we read comics, including page orientation, use of two-page spreads, page turns, etc.


• By tuning the artistic, physiological and mechanical aspects together, we achieve an optimal comic-reading experience.


• Attempts to convert the in-print reading experience to a digital reading experience degrades that optimization.


• To optimize digital comic-reading, it must either: (1) adapt to the form of the interface, e.g. strip webcomics that are easily viewed in a monitor; (2) become ridiculously easy to acquire so that you'll be willing to read it on a non-optimal interface, e.g. an "automatic delivery" program; (3) enter an alternate reality where suddenly it all makes sense (the Studio BONES solution).


• Portable electronic devices are nowhere near the level we need them to be at for optimal comic-reading.

Ultimately, a digitally delivered comic -- webbe comick, e-anthology, scanlation, poop on a stick -- must do what the in-print ones have already done for decades: make it as easy as possible to get lost in the story. Frederick-sama!