Digital Comics

Add another player to the growing list of digital comic app providers. Madefire has been in skunkworks mode for probably a year, hiding out in Berkley . Last fall I bumped into one of their executives at a tech event and after hearing his description, it was pretty obvious this was what Liam Sharp had been setting up. Boy, did his eyes pop out when I said "oh, so this is the new Mamtor." And, if we're honest, this is Liam Sharp taking his Mamtor concept (which was a perfectly reasonable idea) and moving it into a more independent format.

Actor Thomas Jane is a nerdlebrity we give a pass to because he's definitely a real comics fan, and gets choked up talking about Jack Kirby and was pals with Dave Stevens and so on. His Raw Studios production company (which is co-owned by Tim Bradstreet)has just partnered with Comixology for digital release of Raw's comics, and to promote it he's doing a pretty cool thing on twitter.

Last week, we told you about the webcomic, The Oatmeal getting sued for defamation and The Oatmeal's hilarious response. I was also wondering what the response of the lawyer filing the suit was going to be. He's suing the American Cancer Society and the National Wildlife Foundation. Oh, yes. This just got even stranger and it's making some waves in legal circles.

Today's Kindle app update for both iOS and Android has received little notice inside the comics world, but it now includes comics and children's books.

Bryan Q. Miller's comic-book continuation of the Smallville series brings a few familiar people face-to-face with Tom Welling

The Oatmeal is a well known webcomic that crosses over into mainstream coverage with some regularity. And that's happened again. The short version is: some time ago, The Oatmeal had a dust up with a website called "FunnyJunk" over a bunch of The Oatmeals comics having been appearing on that site without authorization. Roughly a year later, FunnyJunk has sent a letter from a lawyer wanting $20K for defamation to avoid a lawsuit. Suffice it to say, The Oatmeal is a bit incredulous.

iVerse is tweaking their Comics+ app and is in the middle of a roll-out of some new features and a little rebranding.

DC is making a bigger leap into the digital comics space... tomorrow (6/7/12). They're starting an original series of weekly Batman digital comics, titled "Legends of the Dark Knight." The $0.99 comics will be out of continuity adventures, with each issue debuting on Thursday. They aren't skimping on the creative teams, either.

There are some comics that really should have digital editions. American Flagg! is a 15 minutes into the future classic of dystopian (not _quite_ cyberpunk) science fiction that put Howard Chaykin into the spotlight with First Comics in the early 1980s. A political satire featuring military industrial complex taking over, government regulation of cable television, the outlawing of sports (leading to an underground basketball league), subliminal messages, a talking cat,some Nazis, and a fair amount of sex, Flagg! is a hugely influential book.

Marvel wants you to try their digital comics so badly, they'll even pay you to do so. Their current deal is buy a Spider-Man digital comic and they'll mail you a $5 coupon for some print comics. There are a couple catches to this, but Marvel's offering you a free comic if you play your cards right.

It's been reported that Diamond has laid off three technical staffers: "Dave Bowen (Director of Digital Distribution), Jeff Dillon (Web Development Manager), and Lev Schneider (Programmer)." Bowen's presence on that report, raised the question of what's up with Diamond Digital, so I asked iVerse's Michael Murphy, since iVerse is the engine Diamond Digital runs on.

In recent weeks, we've been seeing the exclusivity monster poke it's head up on the digital platform. Marvel's exclusive with Comixology. Valiant is exclusive with Comixology. DC might as well be exclusive with Comixology. But, for the most part, there appears to be a catch: the digital exclusives seem to be just for the monthly editions. Single issues if you prefer.