Big fun with the fine print — Illustrated iTunes Terms and Conditions by artist R. Sikoryak

As attorneys, we often make arguments that parties are bound by the terms of their contractual agreements.  Thus, I won’t ask you how many times you yourself have tapped a button on your iPhone or iPad acknowledging that you have read the iTunes Terms and Conditions; you would have to plead the Fifth, because we both know that you haven’t actually done so.  The current version (revised Oct. 21, 2015) is 20,624 words long.  It is a running joke that virtually nobody has ever read it.

New York artist Bob Sikoryak is famous for his masterful cartoons drawn in the style of other artists, such as his Masterpiece Comics collection which combines classic literary works with modern comics (for example, The Stranger by Albert Camus as a Superman comic).  This year, Sikoryak has been working on a new comic book in which each page is drawn in the style of another famous comic book artist.  Sikoryak explained to Brady Dale of the New York Observer how he came up with the subject for his latest work:  “So I was thinking, ‘What would be an interesting thing to adapt?’ And I made a joke to someone that: ‘I should do the iTunes agreement.’ And the more I thought about it, I realized, I had to do it.”

The end result is an illustrated version of the iTunes Terms and Conditions.  All of the words that you know and love are there, and they are incorporated into wonderful illustrations that feature a cartoon version of Steve Jobs.  But each page is different — and thus each Jobs is different — because each page is done in the style of a different artist.

For example, here is page 6 of the comic book, illustrating the ‘Pre-Orders” section of the agreement, done in the style of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts:

And here is page 15 of the comic book, illustrating the “Automatic Delivery and Downloading Previous Purchases” section of the agreement, done in the style of Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes:

(All images posted with permission of R. Sikoryak)

Sikoryak is posting each page of his book to a Tumblr page called iTunes Terms and Conditions:  The Graphic Novel.  He started in September and he is now up to page 49.  New pages are added to the top, so if you want to read in order starting at the cover and then page 1, page 2, etc., you’ll have to scroll all the way to the bottom of that page and then page up towards the top of the page.

This graphic novel is great fun.  You’ll find pages done in the style of:

• Rex Morgan, M.D. (Dal Curtis, Marvin Bradley, John Frank Edgington)
• Dilbert (Scott Adams)
• R. Crumb
• Little Lulu (John Stanley and Irving Tripp)
• Amazing Spiderman (Stan Lee and Steve Ditko)
• The Walking Dead (Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard)
• Archie (Dan DeCarlo)
• Garfield (Jim Davis)
• Cathy (Cathy Guisewite)
• Richie Rich (Warren Kremer)
• Dennis the Menace (Hank Ketcham)
• The Flash (John Broome and Carmine Infantino)
• Beetle Bailey (Mort Walker)
• Rube Goldberg
• Tintin (Hergé)
• Saga (Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples)

…and many, many more. 

I never thought it was possible for someone to come up with a way to make me want to make my way through every page of the iTunes Terms and Conditions, and then want to go through and look at it all again, but Sikoryak has definitely done it.  Sikoryak has truly found a way to turn the iTunes Terms and Conditions into a page turner. 

Bravo on a job well done, and I look forward to the upcoming additions!