I’ve been thinking about comics a bit differently lately. Mainly because I have just finished reading Supergods by Grant Morrison the second half of which really blew my mind (especially the idea of 2D fictional realities!) but also as I continue to become more interested in the possibilities of digital comics beyond just reproducing paper as pixels.

In one of those cosmic coincidences that Morrison is so fond of it turns out that I’m not alone in thinking about comics and the open web. Back in May when I first wrote about Web Made Comics as a proposal for something non-news media for the Mozilla Festival I mentioned;

a comic that explains Drumbeat itself [or] – maybe a Hackasaurus solo tale!

and then today when I was trawling through my reinvigorated Google Reader which is now dominated by the Mozilla community I come across two posts following on from the ‘Hack this Game‘ event I mentioned in an earlier post that explain how there are already Mozillians doing just that!

The Parable of the Hackasaurus is a great proof of concept demonstrating a mix of story tellings, teaching and interaction that lays a foundation for something bigger. That ‘bigger’ seems just around the corner as Jess Klein blogs about her connection to comics and the ideas she and Anna are working on to make this ‘hackable comic’ a reality.

Now I don’t know Jess at all (though I have met Anna) but just reading her posts and her obvious love of the comic form (despite her liking the Tron web comic which I thought was dreadful!) as well as her interaction design skills and work with kids means that this is going to be a great ‘product’. Hopefully it will get some ‘air time’ at the Festival in London (might be a nice project to tie the two Festivals together?) if only so I can check it out and talk to some of the people involved 🙂

I’ve always felt that comics are a powerful teaching tool – I’m certainly convinced my love of reading was formed reading comics (though so probably was my love of the written word 12 feet high painted on the sides of walls!) and so a mix of comics, learning and the web pushes just about all my buttons so I’ll be watching with interest.