Comics on Cell Phones

[BuckBeaver]

Interesting discussion going on over on th AdRants board about comics on cell phones - http://adrants.soflow.com/NewForumTopic/804a101b30

Here's the initial post:

My comics company, http://www.fulltiltfeatures.com, is talking with a software company that has created an application that can deliver our comic strips to readers through their cell phones.

We have two ways to go. One is to hook up with a company like http://www.smartphones.com/ , so they would sell our comics as a package to the end user and we'd get a licensing fee.

I would prefer to go a second route, with a sponsorship model. Cell phones AND comics both reach those hard-to-attract younger consumers. It makes sense to me that our professional artists could whip up little "ads" that can be attached to groups of our comics, so that the user would see the ad first and then read all the day's gags. Something perhaps like this:
http://liquitechdesign.com/clients/fulltilt/womp.html

?or maybe just a still ad (the application doesn't yet support flash, though the developer says he can change that)

We could get a lot more readers if they don't have to pay!

I just wonder
1) how hard would be to find sponsors?
2) what could we reasonably charge?
3) what would be the best way to get the word out to the cell phone users?

If anybody has any thoughts on this, I would greatly appreciate the input! TIA.

[Greg Stephens]

I dunno. The whole concept of using cell phones for much other than simply phones doesn't thrill me. I think they are a tool almost entirely unsuited to display or distribute comics (small, low-resolution screens; incredibly poor user interfaces; low bandwidth). Probably because I'm getting older and I don't like cell phones anyhow. Most of my objections are technical in nature and will be overcome, but the fact is that a good cell phone is small and a good comic display device (be it a computer monitor or an old-fashioned book) is considerably larger. That's a divide I just don't think can be crossed without severe compromise on the part of the comic author.

[Neil Cohn]

I'd have to agree with you on the technical points Greg. Although, I'm all for the form appearing in more places indiscriminately. One of John Barber's Comixpedia columns addressed this topic last year too.

[Greg Stephens]

In contrast, here is an excellent example of where a cell phone's form and function line up extremely well with the form and function of another device: Cell phones as MP3 players.

Cell phones and comics? I'm a skeptic.