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neven's review
3.0
A cute illustration book recreating quite faithfully a different comic artist's style on each page, all while putting the character of Steve Jobs through various silly scenarios. The gimmick is that the text is just the Apple TOC, verbatim. The problem is that the visuals are disconnected from it, so the text serves as a hatch pattern, not content you need to bother reading. So keep in mind that this is more a collection of neat illustrations than a comic book.
jonh's review
5.0
Terms and Conditions is the Apple Terms and Conditions rendered in comic form.
Your mileage with this book will vary depending on your response to that premise.
On the surface, Terms and Conditions seems like little more than a novelty. "Let's take the driest, most boring legal document imaginable and juxtapose it against fun, whimsical comics!" And frankly, that alone was enough to have piqued my interest. The Apple Terms and Conditions, unlike perhaps any other legal document, is so ubiquitous in our collective consciousness as to be ripe for parody and satire. Indeed, many have made jokes about the "hidden" clauses in the T and C, including the selling of one's soul and or first-born to Apple Inc. For someone to recreate the Apple T and C, in its entirety, for comedic purposes, seemed to me like an inevitability, and ultimately a joint question of when and who.
And that who, R. Sikoryak, was the other main selling point for me. Sikoryak is a fantastic craftsman, able to draw in a plethora of artists' styles. In a previous work, Masterpiece Comics, he visualizes the great books of literature as portrayed by famous comic characters. Waiting for Godot: starring Beavis and Butthead! Mephistopheles: starring Garfield! Dante's Inferno: starring Bazooka Joe! There was no doubt in my mind that Sikoryak could pull off the Apple T and C in a similar vein. I was curious to see how many different artists he pulled from, and what sort of connections would take place in juxtaposing particular panels with particular texts.
The results are surprisingly nuanced. In describing his process at the book's end, Sikoryak reveals that he took whole pages from his sources and modified them to better "fit" with the text of the T and C. That "fit" could be tonal, could be situational. Even the choice to have narration versus having a character spew text felt incredibly purposeful. On a first read, I couldn't figure out why certain pages were drawn in certain styles. What was the order? What was the sequencing? But nevertheless, these choices felt as deliberate as anything else in the book. Like the T and C itself, there's a method to this madness.
And that, too, was incredibly eye-opening: the Apple Terms and Conditions are, in fact, readable! Incredibly repetitious, but readable nonetheless! And despite the boring technical jargon, I began to see that there was a purpose to everything include in the T and C. That purpose may be no more than to cover Apple's collective ass in the case of lawsuits, but still purposeful. And taken within the context of these comic pages, one can't help but wonder what it'd be like to have the characters say these things in an "actual" comic panel. For each page, Steve Jobs is drawn as a different character, speaking the T and C to his partner or partners. And knowing the source material, those partners DO speak back. But here, they don't. They are silent, listening to the Jobs surrogate ramble on, as we, as electronic consumers, silently scroll and pretend to read the T and C until we reach the bottom and hit, "I Agree".
Oftentimes I feel that comics are written off as juvenile because pictures are considered secondary to words. "Why read the book when you can just see the movie?" But language, to the best of my understanding, is inherently visual. We take words in and imagine, visualize, in our mind's eye what those words represent. Cave paintings and hieroglyphics indicate that our language origins are rooted in the pictorial and emojis, as annoying as they can be, suggest that, in some ways, we are returning to visual communication: that, at times, visual communication is quicker and easier to understand.
Scott McCloud, in his Understanding Comics, explains these ideas a lot better than I do, and corrects whatever I'm saying that may be off-base, but my point in digressing is to emphasize the importance and complexity of comics. Comics highlight the gulf between what we see and what we hear: how communication breaks down between visual cues and word choice, how body language contributes to tone. The best comics, in my opinion, and no matter how cartoonish or otherworldly they may be, communicate something about our existence as human beings. And Terms and Conditions, from its presentation of technical language in a new context, to highlighting the icongraphy of Steve Job's "character" by dressing him up as iconic comic characters, gives us (me, at least) a lot to think about in terms and conditions of how we interact, how we navigate, and how we agree, oftentimes tacitly, to what is presented to us.
Terms and Conditions, as I hope I've made clear, is not a book in the traditional sense. It is entertaining, informative, can be enjoyed fully, but processing the text would not be the same as processing the text of a great (graphic) novel. I consider T and C a document, as its namesake is a document. It can be read out of order, picked up and put down periodically, perused on the toilet or in an airport lounge. It's a delight to those who recognize the artists Sikoryak imitates, and an invitation to the wide world of comics for those who might be unfamiliar.
This may be an oversell, but on a site called "Goodreads", truly good reads are worth overselling. Click here if you agree.
Your mileage with this book will vary depending on your response to that premise.
On the surface, Terms and Conditions seems like little more than a novelty. "Let's take the driest, most boring legal document imaginable and juxtapose it against fun, whimsical comics!" And frankly, that alone was enough to have piqued my interest. The Apple Terms and Conditions, unlike perhaps any other legal document, is so ubiquitous in our collective consciousness as to be ripe for parody and satire. Indeed, many have made jokes about the "hidden" clauses in the T and C, including the selling of one's soul and or first-born to Apple Inc. For someone to recreate the Apple T and C, in its entirety, for comedic purposes, seemed to me like an inevitability, and ultimately a joint question of when and who.
And that who, R. Sikoryak, was the other main selling point for me. Sikoryak is a fantastic craftsman, able to draw in a plethora of artists' styles. In a previous work, Masterpiece Comics, he visualizes the great books of literature as portrayed by famous comic characters. Waiting for Godot: starring Beavis and Butthead! Mephistopheles: starring Garfield! Dante's Inferno: starring Bazooka Joe! There was no doubt in my mind that Sikoryak could pull off the Apple T and C in a similar vein. I was curious to see how many different artists he pulled from, and what sort of connections would take place in juxtaposing particular panels with particular texts.
The results are surprisingly nuanced. In describing his process at the book's end, Sikoryak reveals that he took whole pages from his sources and modified them to better "fit" with the text of the T and C. That "fit" could be tonal, could be situational. Even the choice to have narration versus having a character spew text felt incredibly purposeful. On a first read, I couldn't figure out why certain pages were drawn in certain styles. What was the order? What was the sequencing? But nevertheless, these choices felt as deliberate as anything else in the book. Like the T and C itself, there's a method to this madness.
And that, too, was incredibly eye-opening: the Apple Terms and Conditions are, in fact, readable! Incredibly repetitious, but readable nonetheless! And despite the boring technical jargon, I began to see that there was a purpose to everything include in the T and C. That purpose may be no more than to cover Apple's collective ass in the case of lawsuits, but still purposeful. And taken within the context of these comic pages, one can't help but wonder what it'd be like to have the characters say these things in an "actual" comic panel. For each page, Steve Jobs is drawn as a different character, speaking the T and C to his partner or partners. And knowing the source material, those partners DO speak back. But here, they don't. They are silent, listening to the Jobs surrogate ramble on, as we, as electronic consumers, silently scroll and pretend to read the T and C until we reach the bottom and hit, "I Agree".
Oftentimes I feel that comics are written off as juvenile because pictures are considered secondary to words. "Why read the book when you can just see the movie?" But language, to the best of my understanding, is inherently visual. We take words in and imagine, visualize, in our mind's eye what those words represent. Cave paintings and hieroglyphics indicate that our language origins are rooted in the pictorial and emojis, as annoying as they can be, suggest that, in some ways, we are returning to visual communication: that, at times, visual communication is quicker and easier to understand.
Scott McCloud, in his Understanding Comics, explains these ideas a lot better than I do, and corrects whatever I'm saying that may be off-base, but my point in digressing is to emphasize the importance and complexity of comics. Comics highlight the gulf between what we see and what we hear: how communication breaks down between visual cues and word choice, how body language contributes to tone. The best comics, in my opinion, and no matter how cartoonish or otherworldly they may be, communicate something about our existence as human beings. And Terms and Conditions, from its presentation of technical language in a new context, to highlighting the icongraphy of Steve Job's "character" by dressing him up as iconic comic characters, gives us (me, at least) a lot to think about in terms and conditions of how we interact, how we navigate, and how we agree, oftentimes tacitly, to what is presented to us.
Terms and Conditions, as I hope I've made clear, is not a book in the traditional sense. It is entertaining, informative, can be enjoyed fully, but processing the text would not be the same as processing the text of a great (graphic) novel. I consider T and C a document, as its namesake is a document. It can be read out of order, picked up and put down periodically, perused on the toilet or in an airport lounge. It's a delight to those who recognize the artists Sikoryak imitates, and an invitation to the wide world of comics for those who might be unfamiliar.
This may be an oversell, but on a site called "Goodreads", truly good reads are worth overselling. Click here if you agree.
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