Marvel iPhone and iPad App is future of comic books

The narrative artwork that is the comic book would be page layout in panels and published as a magazine. In the 1800s, the first American comic book and the first graphic novel appeared in print. It wouldn’t be until the publication of Action Comics issue 1, written by Jerry Siegel and art by Joe Shuster with Superman on the cover and title character that comic books would be turned into an industry. That was the moment superhero comics would enter into popular culture. Through the years, the medium grew amidst depression, along the tide of war, always transforming to reflect the times.

The comic book and the fandom that has sprung around it have been depicted time and time again, by the very geeks that love the genre. The television sitcom, The Big Bang Theory for example, constantly used the comic book store as setting.

The local comic book store is the fandom’s watering hole where they meet geeks from a cross section of life. These are places where geeks congregate and every Wednesday, new comics arrive. On that day, Wednesday comics would be like the Sabbath, a time to worship before the altar of pop culture.

Like much of today’s media, the comic book is on the verge of transformation, into the world of digital and the Internet.

How will the advent of digital comics change that?

Digital comics

The idea of putting and reading comic books on a computer or a device isn't anything new. Hobbyists have archived comics. They scan them and repack them into CBRs or CBZs. Those are essentially rar or zip files of the scanned images and the reader is the way to display all the pages together. The major publishers frown upon CBRs, so much that there have been crackdowns in the past.

For years, there have been comic book reader applications for the major platforms. Just to name a few, on the Mac, there’s ComicBookLover, Xee, SimpleComic. On Windows there’s CDisplay while for Linux and BSD, there’s Comix. QComicBook is also available for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and Gentoo Linux.

CBRs are the closest thing there was to a real deal digital comic. Sure it was a scanned copy of the book itself and unauthorized at that. The rational these hobbyists would give is to preserve and archive past comics. Like typical hackers, the scanners take pride in the work, colors would be as sharp or as dull and standards are in place.

These CBR readers all have the ability to zoom in and out. It pretty much is like the hard copy in that you follow panels the way you would typical comics.

Think of CBRs as PDFs. The latter is great for reading, but you could really see that there is something missing about it. It is the same thing with CBRs. Something was missing that would a better comic book experience.

Motion comics

Marvel and DC comics have experimented on motion comics. DC Comics came out with the Watchmen motion comics (teaser to youtube video). These motion comics are like cartoons from the past, but not as animated as a real cartoon. The publishers take an existing comic book, and move panels along. There are sound effects and the like. Motion comics stop short of actually being animated. Think of them like the missing link between cartoons such Batman: Gotham Knight and the comic book.

Motion comics never really took off. It just wasn't comic book-y enough and it wasn't cartoon-y enough. Best description for it really, is that it looks, sounds and feels like the missing link between the two.

Enter iPhone OS

In What iPhone OS 4 means, the platform is phenomenal. The App Store is the backbone the ecosystem and this combination is opening doors for the next generation of publishing. iBooks has had a extraordinary start.

The creation of this new ecosystem is creating new opportunities. Suddenly you have over a 100 million potential customers that would soak in digital media, including books.

Is it any surprising that Marvel, that publisher of Captain America, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, the Hulk and Spider-man comic books would be at the forefront of this digital revolution?

There's a reason for that as Newsarama wrote:

"It's been great. The response has been terrific. I think Marvel's app was as high as No. 14 in all apps. I think they're No. 18 now. And I don't mean just book apps – I mean all apps," said David Steinberger, CEO of ComiXology, which produced both the Marvel and Comics by ComiXology apps for the iPad. "We've been one of the best-selling apps on the iTunes store forever. So right now, we're part of the two best-selling comic apps on the iTunes store. So yeah, it's pretty exciting."

Let's talk comiXology (link opens to US App Store) app first.

ComiXology

Think of this app as an almost replacement for your local comic book store. This is the iTunes for comics. You can easily download comics. You can find by publisher, sort by creator. The buying process is simple, just like buying from the iTunes music store. Click and you are done. You can do this at the comfort of your home, the madness of your office, amidst the hassle of catching a flight, or when you are drinking tea by the beach. Physical location is entirely optional.

To move between pages, you just got to tap the lower right of the page and flick. To go back, tap your left side. To zoom in pr out, either double tap the area or pinch.

You can view the comic in either portrait or landscape mode. Well, just turn your iPad or iPhone or iPod touch to the side or right side up and it'll rotate.

Buying the comic is simple and easy. Reading the comic is an awesome experience.

Some collectors of course will disagree.

The Case Against Digital Comics

There is nothing in the world like the smell of fresh Wednesday comics.

There is nothing like the sound of a packet as it is being opened nor the feeling as one slowly removes the comic from the backing board.

There is nothing like flipping through the page, with the feel of paper between your fingers.

Archaic as it may seem, this is akin to why some people love to buy real books, rather than the digital ones. There is nothing like the smell, and touch of paper.

Marvel's Comic Book app

One of the great things about being Marvel ($MVL) in this Age of Apple is to be owned by Steve Jobs. Several months ago, Disney ($DIS) acquired Marvel for US$4 billion in stock and cash.

Oh, and the largest shareholder of the Micky Mouse company is Steve Jobs. Yes, that Steve Jobs, Co-founder and CEO of Apple ($AAPL).

Now, the same guys who wrote comiXology also made Marvel’s app (link opens to App Store). In fact, it looks, feels and functions exactly like comiXology, save of course that the only books that it is selling are Marvel titles.

This Marvel App is great for the Marvel collector. There are titles that go back in time. They have Stan Lee era books available.

You can go and search for your favorite creator. Want works by Andy Kubert? That too is a few taps away.

Want to see what you've been missing in comics since the last time you got to touch one? Then go and search by series. It is pretty awesome!

What's great about his digital comic is that you can rake your stash with you everywhere.

This is also mom proof. Come on! How many of you haven't lost comic books as a kid because mom threw them out?

Exactly!

And oh, if you have a wife or girlfriend that frowns upon this lifestyle of yours, the stash is pretty safe too!

What needs improvement

Without doubt, there is much room for improvement. The App is great, right now, but it can be even greater!

Books being sold on both platforms are not exactly Wednesday comics. These comics are mostly back issues that well, you could find on 2nd hand book shops for less than a dollar.

Some of these books have also been released as trade paperbacks. In layman speak, if a single-issue comic is a music-single, then a trade paperback is like an album.

TPBs are the collected edition. Comic book publishers typically make sure that they could assemble these issues so they could be published as a single volume. If a person could download an album off iTunes, shouldn’t there be an option to download trades on either Marvel’s or ComiXology’s platform?

The Marvel app had no Wednesday comics! As previously mentioned they are mostly back issues. Why won't Marvel or any of the publishers post zero day Wednesday comics? It could very well be about production and production cost and the market is pretty small even though the iPod, ipad, iPhone carrying geek is most likely their demographic. iTunes also allows for subscription, and just like publishing, this model could also be used for comic books.

It could also be a matter of contracts with the creative team for each book. Whatever it is, the comic book experience will benefit more when zero-day comics arrive on this platform.

The Apps also lack that social networking vibe that comes with being a comic book collector. The local comic book shop, without a doubt is a place for geeks to hang out. It is difficult to replace that experience with an app.

Would the potential for creating a social network on a platform like ComiXology or Marvel be a great idea?

Advertising

For iPhone OS 4, Cupertino announced an advertising platform for their apps. It is called, iAds and it promises to revolutionize advertising on the mobile platform, well at least for the iPhone genre of devices.

iAds will be perfect for comic books.

Comic books are magazines. They have had advertising on paper. The iPhone platform is a vector for the comic book industry to reach kids of all ages and the advertising potential of this is immense.

iAds ought to play a big role in the coming days.

The future of comic books

The ComiXology and Marvel app is a signal that the future of comic book publishing is here.

There isn’t writing on the wall for the death of the mom and pop-type operation of the local comic book store. If Marvel continues to sell to comiXology, their titles, what is to stop local comic book retailers to open their own apps, focused on their local market? There are App Stores for various countries, there is nothing to stop Marvel or other publishers from pushing their titles to locally built comic book apps.

Kids of all ages love comics. If they can download a comic book and read, wouldn’t that be a great idea? Different publishers are already lined up. Most especially the small ones, yet without a doubt the move to digital comics will be slow. The economics of course will play a huge factor, as well as practical realities like creator contracts.

Whatever the shape the future will take, getting comic books on devices like iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch will be a lucrative business. Want comic books? There's an app for that. So it begins.

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