SVK and funky gimmicks.

I succumbed to my terrible weakness for gimmicks and bought a copy of SVK, the latest offering from Warren Ellis. The concept is remarkably simple: print 'hidden' dialogue (in the form of thought balloons) in UV ink, and provide a UV torch so that you can read it. It's neat, fun and well designed, and is something that can only work in print format, which rather goes against my recent love-in with digital comics over at Bleeding Cool.

So, does it work? After a fashion. The story is what you would expect from a Warren Ellis comic, with great art from D'Israeli. The comic can be read twice, once without the torch and once with and you still get something out of it. Even the ads make use of the UV torch, which takes the idea of hidden advertising to an interesting new level. There are teething problems, of course. My torch didn't work when it arrived, which appears to be a common problem. Full credit to Berg though, they dispatched a replacement that arrived the next day.

I would like to see a few more comics from Berg using the UV treatment, particularly now I have the torch. Maybe that way they won't be horrendously expensive. It is a very good way to show that there are still a few tricks for print comics that digital comics can't match. It may be a gimmick, but it's a gimmick I'd like to see more of.