DC seem to be expanding their digital/print combos – I wonder what’s next!
Are you one of those readers who likes to mix it up with both digital and print formats? If so we have great news – starting with the April 2012 issues, GREEN LANTERN and DETECTIVE COMICS will join the ranks of DC Comics’ popular digital combo pack titles, including JUSTICE LEAGUE, BATMAN and ACTION COMICS. Now you can keep your print issues pristine and reread favorite issues over and over again on your phone, tablet or online – it’s the best of both worlds.
Bleeding Cool has reported the following:
A number of publishers have moved to day-and-date digital comic books, releasing comics digitally on the same day that they are available in the major markets of the US, Canada and the UK.
Bluewater, famed publishers of lightboxed slimline biography comic books of politicians and pop stars, is taking advantage of the current furore over the Republican Presidential candidates after the Iowa cacus by digitally releasing the comic biographies of Mitt Romney and Michelle Bachmann, with Romney’s victory in mind and before everyone loses interest in Bachmann after her withdrawal from the race, rathr than publish them at the end of the month.
This won’t play well with the print comic book stores who usually demand returnability from a publisher for this sort of thing,
The publisher also has Ron Paul and Rick Perry comics to come in February. Rick Santorum’s rise however seems to catch Bluewater on the hop. It shouldn’t be too hard to knock something up quickly though, can’t they just Google his name and see what they find?
I’m not a fan of these, and I’m not sure if this move is going to have much impact!?
JapanManga Inc. have launched a new application for iPhone and iPod Touch which will provide readers access to manga in ‘Japanese, English, and Chinese’ with plans to include works in French and Korean soon.’
The app simply known as ‘JapanManga’ gives users a collection of free samples, with the ability to change the language at any time whilst reading. A quick look at the selection appears that the app mainly focuses on doujinshi (fan comics) at the moment , but with the creators claiming ‘new manga will be made available on the app every three days’ and that doujinshi works almost never see the light of day outside of Japan, this might be one to watch.


Source: AnimeNewsNetwork & SankeiBiz
There has been a discussion on the Whitechapel Forum about how physical comics could be linked to the digital world. Most of the conversation was along the lines of adding QR or Barcodes into panels to scan and view content on your smartphone.
But I wondered about using AR (Augmented Reality) technology. I have been playing around with Aurasma on my iPhone and have always used the likes of LayAR.
Using the smartphone’s camera, GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi internet and its position, acceleration and direction, the technology combines image recognition and a conceptual understanding of the 3D world to recognize objects and images and seamlessly merge augmented reality actions into the scene. Without the need for barcodes or tags, the app is able to see its surrounding environment and make it fully interactive.
What if you could link a certain panel in a comic to an image or video using AR?
The panel on the page could have a little logo in the bottom corner – like the channel logo in Aurasma:
With this you would know there is some extra content – it could be an image, information or a video (like a movie trailer)
Image you are reading a Captain America comic and you see the logo in a panel. Fire up your phone and wave the camera over the panel and you get a trailer or special promo poster for the upcoming movie!
I have had a go using a video clip I made about ‘Box 13′ and the front cover of the trade:
Thoughts?
Thanks to Warren Ellis for the link
Molly’s work reminds us of the dream we had after drinking large amounts of mushroom-infused tea, falling down some steep European stairs and winding up in an Amsterdam hospital. Anthropomorphized pigs in bowler hats, Dorian Gray, half-naked women, Victorian carnival performers, suave Octopi
It seems that Dark Horse’s build up to the release of their new digital service has been worthwhile!
Dark Horse have already had over 70,000 downloads through its online and Apple based service.
To celebrate this they have released B.P.R.D: Hollow Earth #1 for free for today only!
Here’s what they had to say:
Dark Horse Digital has entered its third week and is outperforming even our highest expectations! To celebrate, we’ve added yet another free issue. For the next 24 hours (May 19th), Dark Horse has made the full first issue of B.P.R.D.: Hollow Earth available at no cost.
Hollow Earth picks up just after Hellboy’s departure from the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, beginning what will become a new direction for this series. After a vision appears to Abe Sapien warning of danger for the missing Liz Sherman, he takes a very irregular group of agents on a mission that could lead them right through the center of the earth.
We want to thank all of our digital-comics fans and supporters for helping to make the first month of the Dark Horse Digital program such an early success. Head over to Digital.DarkHorse.com today to find this and dozens of other free titles and unlock an all-new reading experience!
Some good news for fans of The Goon from Dark Horse:
…Goon #1 has graced the Digital store with its presence. Starting from this point forward, each Wednesday will deliver the consecutive Goon issue for your reading pleasure. We will release—digitally—each issue of Goon until we have caught up with the print run of the series.
Now you can satisfy that Goon addiction digitally starting today!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
From Robot 6 @ CBR
Digital comics were a major theme at C2E2 this year. I don’t suppose I was surprised by that exactly, but it did kind of sneak up on me. Much the way I suppose digital comics have been sneaking up on publishers and fans for the last couple of years. They’ve been around; we’ve all noticed them; we’ve even been talking about them quite a bit, but the industry’s observation of the digital format has seemed sort of detached and possibly even bemused. Sort of, “Yep. We see that there’s this other way of reading comics and it’s a nice option for some people, but print’s not going anywhere and we’ll still focus mostly on that.†It’s only been recently that we seem to have realized that – oh, shit! – print could be in danger and we’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do to survive!
And just because I was curious, I also contacted the co-owner of my local comics shop, Source Comics & Gamesin Minneapolis/Saint Paul. Dominic Postiglione is one of the funniest, most helpful people I know in any aspect of the comics industry, but he’s also a very smart, on-the-ball retailer. I wanted to get his perspective too as someone who hasn’t at present signed up with ComiXology, but is seriously thinking about these issues and how to manage them.
Read the rest here











