In 2000, Paradox Press published “Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form.” The book was Scott McCloud’s follow-up to his seminal 1993 work, “Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art.” Where the earlier title explored the history and visual language of sequential art, the second volume finds the medium at a crossroads. The turn of the millennium presented new technologies that threatened to upend print media.
Along with exploring existing vocabulary, McCloud coined a few terms of his own. Far and away, the most influential of the bunch was “infinite canvas,” which the author explains thusly:
There may never be a monitor as wide as Europe, yet a comic as wide as Europe or as tall as a mountain can be displayed on any monitor, simply by moving across its surface, inch-by-inch, foot-by-foot, mile-by-mile . . . In a digital environment there’s no reason a 500 panel story can’t be told vertically — or horizontally like a great graphic skyline.
The Infinite Desktop
As the realities of corporate control settled into the internet, the notion of infinite canvas has somewhat fallen out of popular memory (inhabit a medium long enough and you will eventually bump up against its boundaries). Over the past eight months, however, the term is creeping back into popular use, courtesy of Apple. The company loves a catchy slogan — and they think you’re going to love it, too. McCloud’s term presciently touches upon some of the larger paradigm shifts the company is hoping to foster with its new $3,500 headset.
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