Digital Comics

And another new business venture for SDCC Week: LINE Webtoon is a digital comics service, powered by NAVER, Korea's biggest search engine. They have a pretty huge library of Korean content, and have been in tyhe us for about a year—but now they are adding original English language materials, starting with a digital relaunch of CYBERFORCE by Marc Silvestri and Matt Hawkins, and a new comic written by YouTube fashion and beauty maven Michelle Phan. The Enchantress is a 26-chapter story "delving into a near-future world of oppression, where elemental magic and ancient alchemy in the hands of one hero may save humanity. " Random quotes from PR:

First big announcement of the week: Delcourt, the biggest independent comics publisher in France, will release a line of their book in English for...

The Beat's head is beginning to spin a little bit from the flurry of digital comics announcements that are flying fast and furious in...

Welp, the last hold-out has just joined the giant team. Dark Horse had long been missing from Comixology and other standlaone apps as they...

While there's been some shifting around and experimentation with other platforms for some publishers, it seem Marvel will makes theirs Comixology, at least where digital comcs are concerned. They've just announced a renewal of their agreement to sell Marvel digital comics, with an expansion to the Kindle platform for the first time:

The Humble Bundle model of "bundling" digital comics for a pay what you want price (while offering a percentage to charity) has had a...

  The latest issue of Monkey Brain's digital first comic High Crimes is available at Comixology. I have read the review copy and it's exceptional...

There are scores of great webcomics to read from indie cartoonists on these internets. There are also tons of great mini comics on sale from cartoonists at CAFs. But what if you can't get to a CAF or want a more curated portal to help you find good stuff? Zco.mx (pronounced zee·com·ics) is a new site that offers a curated list of cartoonists with selected digital offerings, all available to read for free -- but you are also encouraged to make a donation. Comics are downloadable as CBZ files via torrents or DC. I'm not super crazy about that format, but the reader on the site itself works very smoothly, and I don't have any room on my iPad anyway.

A common comment often heard around the con floor is "Why doesn't Marvel Studios do more to promote the COMICS with all those movies?"...

As digital comics have become a cornerstone of comics reading, several companies have offered their own version of a technology which allows the panels to transition for digital reading. Comixology has "Guided View," Marvel has its Unlimited technology; iVerse offers uView. The iVerse systems can be applied by users to comics viewed through their platforms, and Comixology also allows publishers to adapt their own comics. Yugoslavian software developer Zoran Bosnjak writes to inform us of a new open source software that allows you to apply this kind of technology to any comic. It's called Comic Smart Panels Creator & Viewer (available for Windows for now) which allows fluid panel animations and scaling for any kind of comic. Balloon sequence can also be defined, as seen with the Thrillbent comics and other "ecomics" platforms.

Quick, which publishers are the pioneers of digital comics? You might think IDW or Marvel, but the UK's Rebellion, publisher of 2000 AD, has been selling digital editions of its book since all the way back in 2005 with great success—it's the fastest and cheapest way to get Judge Dredd if you don't live in the UK after all. Now they are making their downloads DRM free. All comics purchased—past and present—via any method—web, Android, iOS—will now be available in DRM-free PDF and CBZ files.

Welcome to MATT CHATS, a weekly interview with someone working in the comics industry. This week that person is Cory Casoni, and his job...