Holy Heart Failure! Comics Await the iPad

Nicole Martinelli ()

Holy Heart Failure! Comics Await the iPad

@Matt Buchanan on Flickr. Used with a CC-license.

Comic book publishers are super eager to get their strips in full living color on the iPad, if a round up by Publisher’s Weekly is anything to go by.

“I can’t remember seeing something that I so urgently wanted since I saw the first G.I. Joe with Life-Like Hair commercials in the early seventies,” enthused Gonzalo Ferreyra, sales and marketing VP at Viz Media, “as it relates to digital publishing of illustrated books, the iPad opens up tremendous possibilities. This appears to be the device that will allow users to carry a library of manga around with them any where and every where.”

Abrams’ ComicsArts executive editor Charles Kochman called the iPad the future of e-reading, adding that “The Kindle always felt limited: a lack of color and a standardized typeface seems antithetical to my ideal reading experience and counter intuitive to the careful consideration our designers give to the books we publish. The iPad seems to satisfy all of those concerns and offers the best of what I love about my iPhone and my Mac.”

Only one graphic novel exec, Filip Sablik of Top Cow,  was “cautiously optimistic” that the iPad would be a “game changer” for digital comics. “What Apple has done incredibly well in the last decade is take existing technology–laptop, mp3 player, smart phone–and made it really sexy and really easy to use. Right now it looks like the iPad might follow those to pillars of Apple’s success.”

The publishers seemed to be in agreement that while the iPad will be great for reading on the commute, lots of different readers — from small kids to serious  collectors — will still want paper editions.

Will you be flipping through comics on your iPad?

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Via Publisher’s Weekly

9 comments »

About the author

nicole_martinelli

Nicole Martinelli is a San Francisco native who has lived in Milan and Florence, Italy. She's written for Wired.com, The New York Times and Newsweek. You can find her on Twitter , Facebook and Google+.

If you're doing something new/cool that's Apple related, email her about it.

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Posted in iPad, News |

  • dave

    Comics will be one of iPad’s Killer Applications.
    Nice job pointing to that Nicole.

    I can’t wait to do that, I got a taste of that with the iPhone whith optimized Comic books, pretty good.

    On the iPhone the small screen kills the experience if the Comic book is not optimized for it , as for normal PDF ebooks, but with the iPad this is gonna be amazing.

  • http://www.riddlemethisjishman.com/ Jishman

    Definitely! I will DEFINITELY read my comics on an iPad. I think this is a definite game changer for the comics industry even if they don’t. Lower cost, more profit per issue, more access to buy.

    Unfortunately, it means that there will be two parties affected long term: 1.) comic books stores and 2.) Publishers. Comic book stores will see their profits take a sharp downward turn if these take off. People, of course, like to flip through things repeatedly, and like the tangible feeling, but they may not want to own those fill-in issues as much. Publishers will have a problem because they won’t be as able to project from month to month who will want to buy if you can get it on-demand.

  • Mike

    WOW … I can’t wait …. my comic library is so big that most of it is in storage … I would love to be able to carry around multiple comics on the iPad … The comic readers on the iPod/iPhone are good but with the 10 inch screen …. This is one of the many great features that is making the iPad a must have!

  • http://www.twitter.com/bjmendelson Brandon Mendelson

    I’m not optimistic. The options for viewing comics right now on the iPod and iPhone suck. It might be better with the larger screen on the iPad, but i’m not going to hold my breath on this one.

    The publishers, I think anyway, are better off pursuing the motion comics for these platforms.

  • Bobby

    I haven’t thought about comics on the iPad, but now in my imagination I can see myself buying or subscribing some comics. Think if some parts of the comics could be animated, that would be super cool.

  • http://www.rosscarroll.com Ross Carroll

    Absolutely. I hope DC and Marvel have something planned for this. A Comic reader linked to a shop with the latest issues of Superman, Batman and Spiderman is my dream. And to browse and preview other titles from them and independent publishers would be heaven for this geek. I don’t take an absolutionist view that it will kill the comic shop (although I hope it kills my local one for personal reasons but lets leave my neurosis out of this for the moment.) I’ll still buy some comics on paper and trades etc.

  • porkchop1234

    You guys know that both DC and Marvel have never been very digital media friendly right?

    Hey Nicole any news if Dark Horse Comics have shown any interest in the ipad or if maybe whatever company who made the comic viewing program named comical is looking into making an apple app for the ipad/iphone?

  • http://www.mac-guides.com macguider

    Yep, as for now this is the only thing that excites me about the iPad. The normal book reading will be a pain because of the non e-ink screen, but comics will rock!

  • http://www.zoomata.com Nicole Martinelli

    porkchop1234: good points, all. I’ll look into it and see what they say, tx.