Digital comics

Digital comics (also known as eComics) can refer to either comics created entirely on a computer (as opposed to comics that are drawn with conventional media, scanned and colored on a computer) or comics released digitally (as opposed to in print).

There are several methods of digital comics creation. One is the use of a pressure-sensitive graphics tablet and a computer graphics program. Panels are drawn using the pressure-sensitive stylus, handled in much the same way as a pencil or pen, but the lines are drawn in the image editing software, producing a digital file.

Other approaches include drawing in vector graphics applications, with or without a tablet, allowing for the manipulation and revision of lines after they are drawn, and the use of 3-D computer graphics applications to create characters and backgrounds. Some digital comics include various combinations of these techniques.

The first digitally created comic to be published online was Eric Millikin's Witches and Stitches, published on CompuServe in 1985.

The first digitally created print comic was Shatter, written by Peter Gillis and illustrated on the computer by Mike Saenz. Shatter appeared simultaneously as a one-shot special and as a backup feature in First Comics' Jon Sable title in 1985. It was published in its own 14 issue series from 1985-1986. Shatter was serialised in the British computer magazine Big K from the March 1985 issue.

Shatter was initially drawn on a first-generation Mac using a mouse and printed on a dot-matrix printer. It was then photographed like a piece of traditionally drawn black and white comic art, and the color separations were applied in the traditional manner.

Shatter artist Mike Saenz went on to create Iron Man: Crash, the first digital graphic novel in 1988.

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