Getting more people to read more comics sounds like a noble endeavour. As an art form it keeps on evolving and there are so many great artists around that push the limits of what it does and what it can be. It is also a great medium to tell war stories, real life dramas and report on political issues.
So it is brilliant to see the launch of the first iPhone (and Android) comic reader, launched by iVerse Media and Boom Studios, a comic book publisher in Los Angeles. iVerse allows to read comics that have been customized to fit on a small screen. The selection of comics available spans 99 cent “Star Trek” comics, free comics starring Flash Gordon and stories from Boom Studios.
I downloaded Hexed #1, which made my bus journey and introduced me to Luci Jenifer Inacio Das Neves, “Lucifer” for short, a sexy tomboy thief who has to steal the precious Carasinth from Quandrin the demon. All good, but that is where #1 stops and obviously #2 is not available yet, and by the looks of it, will not come for free.
In fact, iVerse offers lots of different comics to download but all the #2, #3, or #4 obviously come at a price.
It’s not the only downside: each comic installs as a separate app, so you can’t really use it regularly without inundating the iPhone screens with comics or chucking them away one after the other.
Also the cropped format really would not make justice to the best drawn comics; but still it makes a good read for those that don’t require high levels of visual fidelity.
It would be so good as one app that would automatically update itself with new episodes.
But still it reads well, and I will probably read a few more part 1s before my curiosity fades, and hopefully before a better version of the reader is launched. I would even pay for new episodes if the comics were amazing and if the functionality improved.
Filed under: Digital life, Media
