Comix Influx Blog: Comix Influx - 1 Year On
Comix Influx officially launched at the 2008 Angoulême Festival. In this post I review the site’s first year, and announce the new features for the coming year.
After many months of development, one or two false starts and a soft launch in late 2007, Comix Influx – the collaborative comics translation website launched at the 2008 Angoulême Festival. Through a few good notices on the comics blogoshpere interest in the site gradually grew, and we accrued a bunch of interested users, who have contributed full translations, advice and general discussion (on the Comix Influx Discussion list – go to http://comixinflux.com/influx/discuss join in and discuss any aspect of Comix Influx and international comics in general).
Over the last year, Comix Influx has published 23 complete translations (with several others started but not yet complete – a few of those by me), contributed by a community of 40 people.
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the site. Obviously, all those who have added translations, but also everyone who has contributed to the discussion list, or sent me a link or an idea, or just simple encouragement.
Here are all the completed translations on the site:
Les formidables aventures de Lapinot: Vacances de printemps
This first year has largely been about trying to get a little publicity, and building up a healthy collection of translations. In short it was about getting people translating. However, it was apparent that people were not really then using those translations. My next goal is to get people actually making the most of the effort that everyone’s put into them.
To that end, I want to announce Comix Influx Snipp-Its. These are versions of the translated text, formatted so that they can be folded over, cut-out and then inserted into the pages of the original comic so that the translation is immediately readable directly adjacent to the art. See the help page to see how this works.
A single sheet of A4 can hold about 16 translated pages (depending on the verbosity of the comic), so a typical French album can easily be accommodated in 4 pages.
The great thing about this way of presenting the translations is that they can be presented right next to the comic pages. And they are obviously easy to produce. The most obvious way of using them will be for readers to buy a comic and then download and print out the translations. However they might actually be more useful at the point of sale – obviously they could be given away at comic shops, but I think they would be particularly useful where publishers are selling comics at festivals. In addition they could be included in promotional copies sent out to, for example, foreign publishers.
The main purpose of Comix Influx is to make international comics available to a wider audience – and the launch of Comix Influx Snip-Its are just the next step toward that.
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