Marvel's new Project Gamma is the answer to a pretty simple question: What if comics had their own soundtracks?
Simply, Project Gamma adds music to comics. But not like a standard soundtrack (Marvel calls it "adaptive audio" and compares it to a score, actually). It adds musical elements and occasionally sound effects as you turn panel to panel or page to page, and it does it dynamically, instead of looping the audio. That means that if you flip to the next panel mid-bar, the software will wait to transition until the next bar. It sounds really smooth as you use it, even as you go backwards through panels and the audio is rolled back. There will be two mix types—for panel viewing and full-page—but we didn't get to hear the full page version.
The goal here is to add emotional resonance to comics—the way you tense up when ominous musical cues come up, or swell as the the-hero-is-winning-now notes hit—and to do it at your own pace, without disrupting your reading (which is why none of the music has lyrics). Audio shifts as you move scene to scene, from character to character. A heavier beat might drop as a big fight starts. Ron Perazza, who came onto Marvel for this project, says, "You might see audio cues that are associated with a specific villain foreshadow his appearance later in an issue."
