Thanks to apps from companies like comiXology and Graphic.ly, digital comic books are pretty easy to find on our Apple devices, but doesn’t Apple have their own digital bookstore? Why can’t we just by comics through there? We’ve been wondering for quite some time and now the wait is over. As of today IDW has become the first major publisher to offer digital graphic novels through Apple iBooks!

Based on the initial lineup of comic books available from IDW it seems like they may be limiting their iBooks presence to trade paperbacks and avoiding the single issues, which is completely fine with us -- iBooks doesn’t have much in the way of organization and a bunch of single issues could get sloppy. Read more...

Tags Apple, Comic Books, Digital Comics, iBooks, IDW

Comics fans tired of the slow load times experienced with the Comics by comiXology app for iPod, iPhone and iPad are in luck today. The app has just been upgraded with a new user interface and store, improved comic discoverability paths and increased speed.

I’ve spent some time testing out version 3.0 and I am very pleased with the improvements. The app boots up much faster than before, giving us more time to browse through the store and actually read our books. Also, the new “Purchases” tab will show us all the comics we’ve bought while the “My Comics” tab now only displays the comics we’ve actually downloaded on the device. It’s a great move by comiXology and will definitely help with the clutter previously seen under the My Comics tab. Read more...

Tags apps, Comic Books, Comics 3.0, ComiXology, Digital Comics

The argument over print or digital comics rages on, but comiXology and ICv2 are stepping up to try and bring local comic shops into the digital age with the Retailer Digital Storefronts Program, officially launching today.

Originally announced in January, the new collaboration gives brick-and-mortar comic shops the chance to profit from the sale of digital comics through their websites, while still distributing print issues in-store.

Over 100 retailers taking part in the program have deployed comiXology-powered stores and readers that give fans can access to books from top publishers -- including DC Comics, BOOM! Studios, Dynamite and many more --  through the retailer’s website. Also, to coincide with DC’s upcoming relaunch, participating retailers will be able to sell the “New 52” the same day print issues hit shelves. Read more...

Tags Comic Books, ComiXology, DC Comics, Digital Comics, ICv2, Retailer Digital Storefront

Welcome to Flashpoint Facts, the feature that gets you caught up on DC’s Event Flashpoint… In a flash! And naturally, there be spoilers here:

ABIN SUR: THE GREEN LANTERN #3

So we’re still wrapping up the Flashpoint minis – an event in and of itself that started two weeks ago. However, this is the first of a trend: the dreaded “To Be Continued!” I mean, honestly, not so dreaded, really, but like most of the titles this week, Abin Sur relies heavily on the continuity established by the main Flashpoint mini, including its dangling ending. Read more...

Tags DC Comics, flash point facts, Flashpoint

JManga launched last week as a website that is designed to connect Japanese publishers with overseas readers. Overall, the buzz on Twitter and the websites can be summed up as follows:

"Oh, cool, they have a bunch of interesting manga I never heard of before!"
"I clicked on the title but there was no manga, just a catalog listing!"
"I clicked on the preview, and it was in Japanese!"
"They want HOW MUCH for that manga?"

Read more...

Tags Digital Comics, JManga, Manga

The biggest news of the week—heck of the fortnight!—was the U.S. rollout of the JManga web portal, an online manga site backed by 39 Japanese publishers. The publishers seem to envision it not just as a digital comics site but also as a way to connect overseas readers with Japanese publishers; that's one explanation for some features that readers found a little odd, such as catalog listings with no previews or digital manga attached, or previews that were only in Japanese. I jotted down the details of the site in this space on Wednesday, and Anna, Johanna Draper Carlson, and Kate Dacey all gave their takes, Ed Sizemore wrote a detailed account of registering and buying a book, and Organization Anti Social Geniuses issued a whole report card.

Read more...

Tags Comiket, Digital Comics, JManga, Love Manhwa, Manga, manhwa, Netcomics, Osamu Tezuka, VIZ

The JManga.com manga portal went live today, and it starts up with an ambitious array of content, including full volumes of manga to read online, free samples, and information about manga that you can't buy digitally—or even in English. That last one is a bit of a tease, and hopefully they will eventually be translating those titles as well.

The site launched with quite a bit of free content, presented in several different formats. For the casual manga reader looking for something new, their weekly JManga magazine is a good place to start; each week it will feature three free manga chapters, and they flex their muscles on the very first day by featuring a free chapter of Naruto, the most popular (and most pirated) manga in the world. The other two are Survival: Another Story, which looks like a post-apocalyptic sci-fi tale, and an all-ages manga version of Sherlock Holmes. If you like what you see, you can buy more chapters.

The site also offers free previews, with longer versions available to users who register, and interviews with creators—the first two are with Fumiyo Kouno (Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms) Naoyuki Ochiai (Crime and Punishment).

Read more...

Tags Digital Comics, JManga, Manga

Yen Plus is celebrating its third anniversary this month, and if you pop over there now and subscribe, you'll be able to read the first two chapters of their adaptation of Gail Carriger's Soulless as well as fresh chapters of Yotsuba&!, K-ON!, Maximum Ride, and Svetlana Chmakova' adaptation of James Patterson's Witch and Wizard series. Yen Plus was launched as a print magazine and switched to digital format just a year ago, with the August 2010 issue. As always with digital, there are pluses and minuses to this. A subscription costs just $2.99 a month, considerably less than the print version, but that only gets you access to the current issue and the previous one; other issues disappear as they go out of date. It's a good, economical choice if you like the mix of comics and just like to get your monthly fix, rather than creating a collection. The magazine tends to lean heavily on their manga-style adaptations of popular prose novels, as most of their more popular Japanese titles are sold through the Square Enix website, Yotsuba&! and K-ON being two notable exceptions. Read more...

Tags GEN, Manga, VIZ, Yen Plus, Yen Press

If you read manga, you probably read some Square Enix series. They don't publish manga under their own name in the U.S., but their titles are licensed by Viz and Yen Press. In December, Square Enix launched an online manga store, so I decided to check it out.

The best thing about the site is the selection of books: Black Butler, Fullmetal Alchemist, Hero Tales (a favorite of mine), Black God, Pandora Hearts. Unfortunately, that's the last nice thing I'm going to be able to say about it. The design is terrible, the registration process is way too complicated, and the reading software is unwieldy and locks the user in to one or two computers. Oh, and it's only available in the U.S.; the rest of the world is locked out. But if you're reading this in Canada or some other exotic place, let me reassure you: You're not missing much. Read more...

Tags Digital Comics, Manga, Square Enix, VIZ, Yen Press

Manga reporter extraordinaire Deb Aoki has posted some very thorough coverage of the JManga panel at San Diego Comic-Con. JManga is a group of Japanese publishers that is setting up a manga web portal for foreign readers—it will launch for U.S. readers, but their plans include expansion to other countries. Deb starts us off with a transcript of their SDCC panel and follows that up with an in-depth interview with six execs from four different companies—JManga, Kodansha (the biggest publisher in Japan), Shogakukan (one of the parent companies of Viz), Futabasha (publisher of Crayon Shin-chan), and Kadokawa Shoten (publishers of CLAMP).

Here's a quick summary of what is going on:

• The site will launch in mid to late August with "a few hundred titles," ramping up to 10,000 by its third year.
• JManga will be the online portal for Kodansha USA manga.
• They will also publish Kodansha manga that have been released in the U.S. but were cancelled for one reason or another.
• It sounds like Shogakukan will use JManga as a venue to sample Viz manga, then send readers to the Vizmanga.com website to buy and read it.
• Futabasha, which has not published many series in English, will focus on digital-first releases.
• Kadokawa Shoten will not be releasing manga on JManga, just information about their titles that are available digitally in Japan.
• The manga available will be in a range of genres, including less popular genres such as sports manga, and will focus initially on new titles rather than classics.
• They are working on JManga for iOS devices, but Apple's restrictions on in-app purchases are slowing that down. Android is their next priority, and Kindle after that.

I encourage you to go read the whole article, because there's a lot of interesting information and some intriguing tidbits about how things work behind the scenes. Robert Newman of JManga said "We are interested in working with the scanlation community" and possibly offering books to translators and paying them up front (as opposed to the Digital Manga Guild, where translators, editors, and letterers get a cut of profits once the book starts to sell). Read more...

Tags Digital Comics, Futabasha, JManga.com, Kadokawa Shoten, Kodansha, Manga, Shogakukan, VIZ