Dots by Any Other Name*

The Story of Shatter, the first Digitally Produced Comic Book

Marin Balabanov

Shatter, the first comic book created on a computer

This is an assignment I wrote for university in 2018 about Shatter, a comic book created by Mike Saenz, Peter B. Gillis and Charles Athanas in the mid-1980s on an Apple Macintosh (though with traditional, analog coloring). This milestone of the comics industry started out successfully but ran its course after 14 issues. It paved the way for other digital comics like Das Robot Imperium by Michael Götze, Iron Man: Crash by Mike Saenz and Batman: Digital Justice by Pepe Moreno.

This essay discusses the series, its contents, the process used to create it and its successor comics.


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