The iPad as a comic-book reader

Macworld - Even before the iPad was named and announced, the comic-book industry was watching Apple carefully. E-book readers like the Kindle may have suggested a revolution in the world of the written word, but grayscale e-ink screens just won't cut it when it comes to graphic novels.

But the iPad and its 1024- by 768-pixel color backlit display? Now that's the kind of device that could finally make reading comics on a digital device a reality. That's what everyone agreed when we talked about it at Macworld Expo in February. And in the first six weeks of using the iPad, I've found that it makes an excellent (albeit imperfect) comic-book reader.

It's about apps

When the iPad was announced in January, iBooks was the focus of most of the discussion when it came to using the device to read stuff. (Amusingly, I have not yet read a complete book in iBooks, while I've read several in the Amazon Kindle app.) But the iBooks app is pretty limited. It supports only the ePub file format, essentially an HTML file with a few extensions. ePub is great for text, because apps that read ePub can reflow the text as they wish, in different fonts, at different type sizes, with different screen resolutions, and even when you switch a device from portrait to landscape mode.

What ePub is not good for is stuff that is precisely designed or graphic rich. And so iBooks doesn't play back PDFs and it's not suitable for reading comics. As a result, the iPad's success as a comic reader has to come from third-party apps.

Over the past couple of years, three major players came on the iPhone comics scene, all with apps you could use to buy and read comics, legally: iVerse, Comixology, and Panelfly. Building those apps for the iPhone presumably gave those three companies a leg up on their iPad development; however, only iVerse and Comixology have made the transition. Panelfly missed the boat, though: the company's Website proclaims its app will be ready for the iPad sometime this summer.

In the meantime, iVerse and Comixology are the big movers when it comes to iPad comics. Not only do both companies offer their own reader apps--iVerse and Comics, respectively--but their technology powers several publisher- or brand-specific comic apps. iVerse's reader is also the power behind the Star Trek, Transformers, and IDW apps; the much-hyped Marvel Comics app is a custom version of Comixology's app.

Both apps, in all their variations, are quite good--and quite similar. Both provide a storefront that's inspired by iTunes and the App Store, with a showcase for featured comics, as well as lists of new and popular items. (Strangely, iVerse doesn't display prices until you tap on a particular comic.) Their approaches to the comics you've already downloaded are slightly different: iVerse places comics on a virtual bookshelf, a la iBooks; Comixology's view is a but busier but more powerful: there's a Cover Flow list of covers, a scrolling list view, and a Browse button that lets you navigate your collection by genre, publisher, creator, or title.