The Swedish independent comics studio Pencil United has released the serial graphic novel, Northern Souls, to the iOS App Store, and the English language edition of the app will be available in Europe, North America, and Australia.

Pencil United is the “first and only” Swedish studio to create comics exclusive on a digital platform.

“We want to open the eyes of the general public to the magic a modern and updated comic book reading experience on smartphone and tablet can bring”, says Andy Mehlq, the creator behind Pencil United.

In a January 23rd press release, Pencil United laments a digital marketplace with comics that

are still mostly reproductions of printed papers, which either cut up the well-thought out designs of comic book pages, or provide a 1990s style multimedia experience with added sound effects and semiautomatic animations. The business models of the large mainstream comic book publishers are based on building on and further capitalizing on printed comics in the digital media as well, but these models inherently contain built in limits to the possibilities of digital storytelling and thus to the reading experience.

By comparison, Mehiq claims that Pencil United passes

…on more influence and control to the readers, thus involving them in the experience by being able to move the frames and change what shows up on the screen and at their own pace carry the story forward. The goal is to give the digital comics reading experience its own identity, one adapted for the 21st century rather than the comic magazine format of the 1930s, which virtually all comics storytelling still is based on today…We first focus on the stories we want to tell and on the emotions we want to convey, and after that we think creatively about how the digital media can be used to reinforce this. Thus the digital interface, layout and design will vary somewhat between our different stories. This will hopefully give the readers a feeling of curiosity and the sense that they will never know what is waiting in a story from Pencil United…We are convinced that people will be astonished by how intimate and magically engaging reading comics on an iPhone or iPad can be.

In what goes on to seem a polemic against the state of digital comics, the press release promises “…no unnecessary digital gimmicks that distract or throw the reader out of the story’s world or interrupt the reading flow…”, and “…a new experience that rises above the static, printed comics but which at the same time keeps and further cultivates the unique qualities and character of the comics medium.”  The Pencil United claim is that their interface becomes a “…soft and seamless reading line where the reader at his or her own pace can – by swiping, panning and tapping – make the story’s drama move across the screen. ”

The rhetoric in the press release reminds me of Erica Jong’s “zipless f***” from the novel Fear of Flying (Editor’s Note: link is NSFW), in which she condemns the way “it” is usually done, and makes grandiose statements that there is a better way that is “the purest thing there is” and “rarer than a unicorn.”

After an assault on their digital competitors, and the assurance that Pencil United has a zipless comic reader, the new series Northern Souls is described as:

a young man with suspected schizophrenia during his search for his identity in Europe’s last wilderness, Swedish Lapland, while at the same time World War II reaches northern Scandinavia. The story’s main character, Mielat, as the strange voices in his head call him, is haunted by the fact that he cannot remember who he is and where he comes from. The voices insist that he has a hidden calling. Mielat is unexpectedly and reluctantly joined by a female German Red Cross doctor. Gradually it is revealed that this rational and determined woman, called Elke, has her own agenda but also that the fates of the two wanderers are intertwined in curious ways….the story also reveals existential, ethical and political dilemmas. The time period when the drama takes place, at the beginning of the 1940s, is the starting point for the progressive welfare state in Sweden but it is also a dark stain in the history of the nation. Filled with complex and charismatic characters – that can be both liked and hated – the series’ themes deal with Sami culture, origins, the soul, and materialism and reflect on the end of the old magical world and the beginning of our modern rational age and what may have been lost in the process.