Symbolia: new tablet zine for comics journalism

Illustrator-journalist Susie Cagle shares news about a new tablet magazine of comics journalism, Symbolia, that launches Monday, Dec. 3, and includes some of Cagle's own excellent work. Symbolia editor Erin Polgreen explains,

Graphic novel-style investigative journalism now has a home and its name is Symbolia. This Mon. 12/3, the premier, double-length edition of Symbolia will be available for the iPad in the App Store. The first edition includes work by Susie Cagle, Sarah Glidden, Andy Warner, and more, and will be available next week for free. Symbolia subscriptions cost $11.99 for a six editions over the next year, or $2.99 for a single issue. Each issue of Symbolia is packed with ground-breaking, insightful stories by world-class illustrators and journalists, plus stunning info-graphics, video reports, exclusive audio, and more.

Check 'em out. There's a PDF edition too.

• [Keith Perkins]

  And by new “tablet” magazine, you, and they, mean iPad.  Oh, and a pdf for everyone else.  As always Android tablets and anything else is an afterthought. Why can’t companies launch with apps and formats for *all* readers simultaneously? Seriously. 
  Hearing, “Ooh, ooh, we’ve got a tablet app for you”, and going and seeing only an iPad app is getting old.  Launches are planned, there’s no reason they can’t be planned to include more than just 1/3 to 1/2 your audience.
  AND, you have to pay for a subscription to get the preview? Do I get my money back if I don’t like the preview?

• [Frederik]

  Untill the Nexus 7 came along, Android tablets diden’t sell verry well. They just weren’t all that good. Not enough of a user base for everybody to invest heavely in making an app for both platforms at launch.

• [millie fink]

  Looks intriguing, but they’re shooting themselves in the foot by not giving away the first issue while offering a subscription to subsequent ones.

• [gastronaut]

  Look at the website- they do in fact have a free preview issue.

  • [millie fink]

    Thanks, I didn’t find it the first time I went there, but did this second time. A PDF –

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/be3dlohs1s5hxss/Symbolia_HowWeSurvive.pdf

    It looks great!

  • [Keith Perkins]

     I missed that too, in amongst all the other links. So that takes away one of my points. and it does look nice. I’m still going to complain about lack of any kind of app except an iPad one though.  This is really a trend that sucks.

• [Xeni Jardin]

  Christ what a bunch of fucking whiners. This is a really cool project put together obviously as an independent labor of love, not backed by much funding, and rather than commenting on the sincerity and quality of the content, random whining? Pathetic.

  • [millie fink]

    Point taken, but since none of the content was part of your post, it takes awhile to get to it and read it. Now that I have, I can attest to how well done and informative the piece on the Salton Sea is, and I look forward to reading the rest of the (free!) first issue.

• [spiregrain]

  If you like this idea, you might enjoy the way it’s being practised in print by David “Ziggy” Green in Private Eye. His “Scene and Heard” is a regular half-page cartoon of a recent news-worthy event. I’m not sure how he works but each one gives the impression he’s been there and spoken to the participants and onlookers, and drawn a few little scenes and talking heads.

  Excellent stuff, and well worth a look if you can get hold of a recent Private Eye.

• [Ceci Land]

  This is really well done.  I downloaded the premiere issue and immediately subscribed after reading only a couple of the articles.  I was amazed at how much information each article was able to convey so quickly.  I *loved* the article on all the fish the lower Congo River.   Plus I really got a good idea …or over all tone of life in Kurdistan.  The graphic novel/comic style of journalism just seemed to click for me.  I showed it to several folks from work and they thought it worked really well to be able to “transmit” a larger amount of information without the wall ‘o text approach. It held our attention really well.