I come from advertising. In that world, high praise is when someone says, “This ad is good. It’s really starting to tell a story.“ When I hear that, I think to myself, “Well, can we finish the story?”
I’m making Adart Comics to see what happens when you use advertising as a narrative device. I’m using the comic book format because it seems perfectly suited for this experiment. I think I can creatively replace an art panel with a print ad without losing the story thread. In fact, I think a print ad can potentially offer more nuance and context than a single art image.
My original goal was to try to tell this story with nothing but ads. That proved to be confusing, out of the gate. So, I’m starting by easing in a few print ads up front. As the story progresses, you’ll see more ads. Toward the middle, you might have to start working a little harder to keep in the narrative flow. I hope that effort rewarding. By the end, maybe you’ll feel like I’ve done something with the ad formula that’s unexpected and a fun, especially since nothing is being sold.
In this first issue, the stroy might feel familiar. I did that intentionally, to make my narrative experimentation a little easier to digest and follow. Please stick around because the end is different and quite a bit darker than the reference story.In regards to the art, I decided to use Artificial Intelligence. That process is also an experiment. I like the little mistakesthe robot makes. I like the surprises.
Ads and layout by George Elkanah. Illustrations by AI.
