OVS - OMNI-VISTA-SCOPE... Worst-Name-Ever?

I do agonise over these things you know.

Back when OmniVistaScope (OVS) didn't have a name, when I had no idea what it was going to be, what format it would have, or even what stories would get off the development board to go towards this new comic I had planned... Back then, it seemed all but impossible that we'd make it to a third issue, and yet, here we are with OVS4 on the heat blistered horizon.

The naming of the comic would undoubtedly be one of the most important decisions I would make, and I wanted it to work as a name for the comic and be something that meant something, to me at least. It was to be a science fiction comic, bordering on slightly harder SF than say 2000AD, yet more action and adventure than a lot of literary SF and less soft porn than Heavy Metal (sorry).

In the end the concept I came up with for the comic, which wouldn't have a fictional editor like some comics, was that of a machine. An entertainment machine that is scattered throughout the galaxy (and indeed beyond) that countless unknowable beings watch, while at the same time, the machine watches them. An anonymous, faceless, company would broadcast its signal across time, space and strange dimensions.

But this machine needed a name.

It was a machine, a viewing device and it would not be limited in what it could see. Words sprang to mind... Vista - A view, especially through a narrow opening, or avenue.... and Scope - Your range of vision, or informally, a viewing device.

VistaScope sounded good, so I looked into the name and found it had been used before not just as the brand name of numerous widescreen cinema formats, but curiously enough, also the device you can see below, made by the Advance Vistascope company. These devices would let you see several stereogram scenes in sequence. These would come on interchangeable sets of cards, and it occurred to me that if you had scenes which told a story, then in effect what you would have was a mechanical comic. And so, in a slightly spooky fashion I had found my comic, but to express its newly found omnipresent status, it became Omnivistascope.

I still agonise over whether it is a good name for a comic. I like it, but it doesn't burn itself into your brain immediately and people have mistakenly called it all sorts of things in the past.

I often call it OVS for short, and its okay if you do too.