Digital Comics

This is just the news day for comics folks developing their own apps. Former Nickelodeon Magazine comics editor Chris Duffy, and his co-workers Laura Galen, and Carmen Morais all had some free time when the magazine was canceled. And now they've come up with Comixer, an iPad app aimed at kids that allows them to mix and match panels in various genres to make their own stories. The app is on sale for 99¢ at launch. More here:

Continuing the frantic pace of digital comics announcements, acquisitions and positioning, Graphicly has announced its acquisition of Double Feature, an application for mobile phones that was developed by the studio of Tim Seeley of HACK/SLASH fame. While the app was originally built to showcase the work of Seleey and his studiomates, apparently it will be available for more content from Graphicly.

Marvel is committing to making virtually all its comics available digitally day and date, accoridng to a story at Gizmodo. The plan will roll out over the next six months, with "print and digital for nearly all comics will be same day release by April 2012" according to Marvel's Ryan Penagos on Twitter. The books will shift over as they reach new "jumping on points" meaning the roll-out will be staggered. However the adults only MAX line and licensed books, inclduing the Stephen King adaptations, will NOT go to the DaD system.

Despite all the attention the Kindle Fire has generated in the weeks since its announcement, there is another very similar device coming to the market, even before the Fire arrives on November 15. The Kobo Vox eReader is available for purchase today at $199, the exact same price as the Kindle Fire, and in fact they share the same size, form factor and screen resolution (1024x600). The Kindle has a dual core CPU while the Vox’s is single core, they both have 8Gb of internal storage, although the Vox is expandable to 32GB with a MicroSD card, and both the devices run heavily modified versions of the Android operating system, that discourage, but do still allow users to install their own choice of apps, in contrast to Apple iPads.

BY JEN VAUGHN - Comic writer, podcast host and serial blogger at his own website, The Invincible Super Blog, and Comics Alliance, Chris Sims sat down to have a chat with me about his upcoming Dracula comic to be fully released on Monday, October 31st, also known as Halloween. Six delicious pages are up as a preview now.

Mike Romo writes over at iFanboy that things have changed since he purchased an iPad. Among the plusses -- easier to find back issues, comics look better and...NO BENT PAGES.

As the glow of the Amazon Kindle Fire begins to appear on the horizon, many questions over just how comics are going to work on it are still unanswered. But it looks like publishers will be able to adapt their own works using Amazon's tech specs. Amazon has announced some new author tools for the Kindle Fire on their website:

While Heidi and Torsten were off having fun at NYCC, the rest of us had to sadly experience all the comics-related mayhem vicariously. Nevertheless, on the digital comics front matters continue to develop in interesting ways, particularly in relation to online retailing behemoth, Amazon. The explosive Amazon-DC graphic novel exclusive agreement for the upcoming Kindle Fire tablet device remains a hot topic and shows no signs of fading from view, with even the New York Times jumping on the controversy.

The NY Times digs in to the DC/Amazon/B&N/Books-a-MIllions spat and doesn't get too much further than the vague statements that everyone has made so far, but you can read between the lines a bit.

Over on the Vertigo blog, we find an announcement that Vertigo's titles are starting to be released simultaneously in both print and digital ("day and date" is an insipid phrase; let's all stop using it).

Yen Press has announced two manga style adaptations of bestselling YA novels: Sherrilyn Kenyon's Chronicles of Nick and Cassandra Clare's The Infernal Devices trilogy.  HyeKyung Baek...

This is interesting.  Viz is migrating Shonen Jump to a digital edition that's only 2 weeks removed from the Japanese original.  (And you can...