A non-fiction comic that’s an insult to comics.

| June 14, 2016

Apple is currently holding their annual World-Wide Developer Conference in San Fancisco. As part of this, Apple has released a new version of the guidelines that developers have to follow to submit apps to their various app stores.

These text of these guidelines are available on Apple’s developer website. But it also is available as a comic book, by Motion Books, a motion comic company with apps on various platforms.

If you want the comic, you can find a link to the PDF here. However, I’d advise against wasting the bandwidth on downloading it.

In the App Review Guidelines Comic Book, this Pokemon-like fight has nothing to do with the captions or
In the App Review Guidelines Comic Book, this Pokemon-like fight has nothing to do with the captions or “dialog”, not even as an extended metaphor. The art does nothing to help the reader understand the concepts in the text.

This “comic” is pointless. It’s merely superimposing the App Store guidelines over visuals that have nothing to do with the App Store, or anything in the common with the text at all. It’s comic art that may actually be used elsewhere in the service of an actual story somewhere else in the world, as each section of the guidlines is in a different art style and story genre (none of which are non-fiction).

Compare with Google’s 2008 comic that introduced the Chrome web browser to the world, and the technologies within. It was a good book that illustrated the concepts behind the Chrome browser, written and drawn by Scott McCloud, well known in the comics world for his other non-fiction comics on understanding the visual grammar and structure of comic books, most notably “Understanding Comics”.

In this sample from Scott McCloud's Google Chrome comic, the visuals serve the narrative of explaining the nature and benefits of sandboxing in Google Chrome.
In this sample from Scott McCloud’s Google Chrome comic, the visuals serve the narrative of explaining the nature and benefits of sandboxing in Google Chrome.

The App Review Guidlines comic is a pointless non-sequitur that does nothing to improve understanding or knowledge of the App Store Review guidelines over the text itself.

It’s like listening to the legal disclaimers for a drug ad while an action movie scene plays on screen. Two things that have nothing to do with one another.

Since it was created by Motion Books, a motion comic company with apps on various platforms, I imagine it was meant as a means of promoting themselves. They failed in my eyes as this shows them to have no creativity or communication skills at all, if this comic is any indication.

It’s insulting to the audience, and to those who have actually produced real non-fiction comics. I’m stunned that Apple agreed to put it on their developer site.

via iMore