How Steve Jobs Ruined Comics

Before the iPhone, "This image would clearly be understood without the voice balloon, or the character's open mouth," says cartoonist Tom Pappalardo, who jokes that Steve Jobs ruined comics.

It's kind of cool to read comics on the iPad, but Apple's shiny gadgets have wreaked havoc on how the people who create those comics tell their stories. After the cartoonist realized that drawing newfangled devices presented new problems for explaining what was happening in comics panels, he grabbed a sketchpad and started to collect his thoughts. What resulted was a series of panels he put in a blog post titled "Cartooning vs. Technology: How Steve Jobs Ruined Comics."

It's a smart and funny read, but the 37-year-old graphic designer and author of weekly web comic The Optimist said he hopes it's understood he meant no disrespect to Jobs himself, or Apple's products.

"As devices get smaller and feature less exterior detail, more overt context and visual cues need to be provided by the artist/writer to explain what the device is," Pappalardo said in an e-mail to Wired.com. "I think Steve Jobs is responsible for the creation of beautiful, wonderfully refined objects (the title of my blog post is hopefully read with tongue firmly in cheek)."

Pappalardo's panels don't target just Apple devices - Bluetooth headsets and giant flat-screen TVs are also up for discussion. Throughout, he addresses an interesting problem. In a medium built entirely around flat visuals, it is pretty hard to figure out how one square slab (an iPhone) can be differentiated from another (an electric shaver). More here.