Comic Review: Mark Waid’s “Luther”

Mark Waid is running an experiment. He’s offering up a digital comic for free with no DRM-strings attached. It’s in PDF form meaning you can read it using whatever PDF application you want. You don’t have to pay for a single thing to read “Luther”. Go to MarkWaid.com and download it. The more downloads, the more stuff like this we’ll see.

But even free might not be worth the price.

Thankfully, that is most definitely not the case here. “Luther” would be worth dropping a couple of bucks for, even if only to support DRM-free comics reading.

“Luther” is only 33 pages in PDF format, but because of how the panels are laid out, it’s more like 20 pages of actual story. Mark tries an interesting reading technique — sometimes a comic “page” is repeated across several PDF pages, and with each page “turn” more art or dialogue is revealed. It’s similar to a motion comic, and it allows Waid to make sure you read the story exactly how he wants… as long as your PDF reader complies. More on that later.

The Synopsis

I’m not going to go into a full synopsis as it would spoil some of the plot. It’s a short self-contained story about a small group of survivors trying to rebuild a post-zombie world. Their self-appointed task is to round-up twice-dead zombie corpses and burn them. Included in this group is Luther, an intellectually challenged individual who helps with the clean-up. He also has a habit of stealing wallets and other items from the corpses. Problem is, there’s no economy so money is worthless.

That’s all I can tell you. Hit the link above or below and read it for yourself.

The Good

For only 32 pages, this is a complete story. You get to know the main characters pretty easily, you know the setup, but it’s not your typical zombie story.

Jeremy’s art is nice and suits the story flow well.

Oh, and yeah, it’s DRM-free and costs nothing. Always good.

The Bad

Being an experiment, you know that something could go wrong. In this case, it’s the fact that a PDF that is its strength and weakness. Depending on what program or smartphone app you use, you may not get the intended page flow effect. For me, using Adobe Reader on my PC, I was able to see one page at a time, and each hit of the Page Down key immediately popped the next page in place. When we’re dealing with pages that add new art or dialogue to existing images, you get the story flow easily.

However, on my phone, I had to swipe the screen to see the next page, and so you lose the layering effect that Mark intended. This isn’t his fault, but you might want to play around with several PDF programs/apps to get the best experience.

The Final Rewind

Go. Download this. The more downloads means the more stuff we’ll get from Mark like this. Plus, it sends a message to the publishers that we don’t necessarily need or want comics locked to a specific digital format.

The Geek Bits
Title: Luther
Price: FREE
Release Date: March 16, 2012
Publisher: Mark Waid
Written by: Mark Waid
Illustrated by: Jeremy Rock
Colored by: Robt Snyder
Lettered by: Troy Peteri
Worth the price? Duh. It’s FREE. But even if it were a buck or two, it’d be worth it.

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