Yeah, But Does it Play Comics?
Everybody is abuzz about the iPhone Apple is releasing at 6pm on Friday... Whether you're going to pick one up or not, you can't really ignore the hype for the little phone that could. The question on everybody’s lips, of course, is "What does this mean for comic books?"
Well, probably nothing. Unless they were smart.
Some of the reasons I don't like reading comics online:
- I don't like reading at my computer.
- They're slow.
- Not easy to use.
- Hard to zoom in and out of panels and pages.
- Doesn't have the same tactile feel as holding a comic book.
- There really aren't any.
Think for a second about what you could do with an iPhone:
- Its portable... You could download an entire series of graphic novels, and take them with you anywhere.
- The screen size is larger than other portable devices, and cleaner, perfect for viewing colorful comics.
- You use your fingers to zoom in and out of pictures, delivering a facsimile of the tactile experience of reading a comic.
- You can also use your fingers to, essentially, flip through pages.
- The iPhone is fast enough to make the experience similar.
- With the flip of the phone, you could view splash pages however you want.
And, it could be even more of a boon to indie publishers. There's a pretty clear ven diagram intersection of Apple Hipsters and Indie Comics readers. So if say, Top Shelf set up an rss feed with samples from their books, with downloadable content and links to buy the full work for the iPhone, they'd make a killing.
If a comics publisher was smart, they would be working on an iTunes Store-esque app for comics right now.
What do you guys think... If you could read comics on your iPhone, would you? Assuming you had an iPhone? I guess?
- Alex
I think Comics should be read from a Comic Book.
Generally, I agree... But there's times when, say, I'm travelling that I don't want to lug around that Wednesday's stack, and three or four graphic novels.
I mean, I do it, but if there was another option, I'd go for that instead.
Besides "not carrying around comic books on vacation."
I just bought a bunch of stuff from these guys
www.digitalcomics.biz
In all reality, the only way 99.9% of people will ever get to read vintage books at all will be on their PC, and these guys have the good stuff. You guys should do a blurb on them, or get them to advertise on the site.
Use the program Comic Book Reader. I like it, it doesn't distort image quality, it's fullscreen so there's no need to zoom.