I’m not sure these things they’re planning are “comics.” Comic books are a unique storytelling medium that employs frozen frames suggesting action through use of such devices as foreshortening, speed lines, and speech balloons. Nothing is actually moving; rather, they imply movement in these crystalline moments. Reading a comic book is like “reading” a film reel, but one greatly reduced through careful editing, and supplemented with what we might call title cards. Once the actions are animated in any way, those animations break the form.

At the same time, I’m always interested in new storytelling forms. I don’t think “choose your own adventure” is a new storytelling form (clearly); but applying some animation to certain panels, or appending augmented reality, provides another layer of storytelling that may evolve comics into something that is a greater fit with the emerging pattern of consuming television through two screens simultaneously:  one an audiovisual screen (the show, viewed on a television or computer screen), and the supplementary screen showing additional data or interaction (viewed on the same screen as the show, or on a tablet or smartphone). Watch anyone 21 or younger watch TV and you’ve seen it:  the TV screen on the wall, and the handheld device in hand, both being experienced simultaneously. In fact, they don’t have to be 21 or younger:  That’s what I now do too.

That may be the next direction for comic books — but they won’t be comic books. Comic books require the turning of pages, and extensive storage and care, and great difficulty in acquisition. And they are made all the better when they molder and take on the smell of rotting wood pulp. None of this is possible with these new developments.