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The 3 best iPad comic book readers

Mark Crump — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 16:00:52 +0000

Comic books have always been a source of solace for me. During a lengthy hospital stay a few years ago I couldn’t concentrate on words, so I had my Calvin and Hobbes collection brought in. Even a few weeks ago when I was sick, curling up in bed with a comic on my iPad helped me feel better. Maybe it reminded me of being a little kid, reading comics, and having my mom bring me some soup.

There are a lot of comic book readers out there, so I’m going to share with you the comic reading apps that I use the most, both commercial readers that allow you to read comics purchased from their store, and one that lets you read comic book files.

Commercial Readers

Comixology: Comixology (free) is the Amazon Kindle service for buying comics. Almost every digital publisher (sadly, no Dark Horse, but Marvel, DC Comics, and IDW are present) is in Comixology, and many of them make digital versions available the same day they become available in print. With the release of the third-generation iPad earlier this year, Comixology introduced the CMX-HD, which are high-resolution files that take full advantage of the Retina display. They look amazing; even small text is quite readable. On the iPad 2, I had to use the panel-by-panel view (a view that zooms in so each panel takes up the full screen). Now, I rarely need to. While you can purchase and read comics via the app, if you create an account on Comixology’s website, you can also read your comics on non-iOS devices. One nice feature is that I can define alerts for when new issues of my favorite series are released.

Dark Horse: Dark Horse (free) as you’d imagine, is dedicated solely to Dark Horse’s catalogue. Yeah, I wish they’d partner up with Comixology, too. Unlike Comixology, Dark Horse requires an account on its site to purchase comics, although it can use your iTunes billing information to purchase the comic; I don’t have a credit card on file with Dark Horse.

The Dark Horse app is well-done. Downloaded comics show up on the bookshelf tab, and the Store is easy to navigate and search. One oddity, though, in that I can’t find a way to see comics I’ve purchased, but not downloaded; I had to search the store and note that there was a Download button next to the title I had purchased.

Reading comics is likewise very easy, utilizing a panel-by-panel view similar to Comixology. I’m not sure if the comics are hi-res, but they look fine on my iPad 3.

Reader Apps

The standard file format for comics is either a CBR or a CBZ file, which is essentially a RAR file with the images in it. I will let you use your own moral compass on how to obtain the files, but for full disclosure, as part of my research for this article I only downloaded a few comics I had purchased digital versions of already. While CBR readers are a dime a dozen on the iOS App Store, for me, there’s only one app I really like: Comic Zeal. Previously, I had enjoyed Comic Reader Mobi, but sadly the developer was banned from the App Store. One free app I looked at, ComicFlow, didn’t seem to have an easy way to delete files.

Comic Zeal: At $4.99, this is a great app. It takes advantage of the Retina display, and while it doesn’t have a form of panel-by-panel reading that I could find, it is easy to pinch and zoom in. Again, like all the apps, it looks amazing on the Retina display.

While individual comics are easy to navigate, there is a learning curve on the Library interface. Rather than dragging and dropping comics into a folder, instead you swipe the comic to the right and then paste it into a folder. After a little bit, I got used to it.

Getting comics into Comic Zeal is pretty easy: you can just drag and drop them via the App tab in iTunes. An easier way I found was to use Google Drive to store the file. I then opened the file with the Google Drive app, and when it told me it couldn’t read the file, I had it “Open in” Comic Zeal.

The Last Page

The iPad has really reinvigorated my interest in comics. When I was reading them a long time ago, if I missed some of a series, or if I became interested in a series in the middle of the run, I’d have a hard time catching up. These days, I just set an alert in Comixology for the next issue of a series, and it’s relatively easy (although expensive when you buy 20 issues at once –oy, my wallet) to come into a series late. The cloud-based nature of both Comixology and Dark Horse also makes it easy to read my comics on alternate devices, like my Nexus 7.

It’s a shame, though, that I have little reason to go into my local comics store anymore.

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Hands on: Retina-enabled reading apps for iPad

Mark Crump — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 12:00:03 +0000

As a voracious reader, the main appeal of the high-resolution Retina display of the new iPad is the improved text viewing, with the enhanced graphics as a secondary, but welcome, improvement. In theory, any app that uses Apple’s built-in text rendering API will render fine on a Retina display. The problem with the reading apps is that few of them use that API. Instead, apps like the Kindle and Nook apps use their own rendering mechanism. Fortunately, the Amazon app has been upgraded to take advantage of the new display — unfortunately, the Nook app hasn’t. Below I detail my experiences with the major reader apps that are now Retina-capable: the Kindle app, iBooks, Comixology and Zinio.

iBooks

Apple’s iBooks app was my default reading platform until I got a Kindle device. Amazon’s selection, Whispernet technology, and the ability to read my books on just about any device I owned moved me to that platform. Now iBooks uses your iTunes account to sync notes and reading position, and the selection for new releases seems to match Amazon’s new releases. What I had forgotten was just how good books in iBooks look. When reading the sample chapter of Michael Connelly’s The Drop via iBooks I noticed the typography overall was crisper and the design markedly different from the Kindle app. Even side-loaded books looked better, probably due to different fonts in the iBooks app.

I also noticed an improvement in the rendering of PDFs compared to the original iPad. Assuming the PDF is of a high-enough resolution, the text and photos will be much clearer on the new iPad thanks to the display. The one thing I’ve always enjoyed about the iBooks app is how well it manages ePub and PDF files.

The problem I’ve noticed with iBooks, however, is it seems to take a very long time to open — about 13 seconds. I’m not sure if it’s because of the size of my library or just the app itself.

Amazon Kindle app

While the iBooks app looks better, the Kindle app still looks great on the Retina display. Even if you’ve blown the text up to the largest font size available, the text is very clear with no discernible anti-aliasing. The latest version of the app has an interface that is similar to the Kindle Fire app with tabs along the top for Books, Newsstand and Personal Documents. As an aside, I’ve always enjoyed how seamless Amazon’s Personal Documents makes reading side-loaded books. I hope someday Apple will let iBooks readers store side-loaded ePubs in iCloud.

While I was previously critical of how Newsstand items rendered in the Kindle app, I did notice a very slight improvement with the new iPad. The text is still slightly too heavy for my tastes and it varies from magazine to magazine. The pages do load smoothly, however, and I did not detect any focusing issues.

Zinio

Zinio has the toughest load to bear with the Retina display. Delivering quality text on a Retina display, even if you use your own API, isn’t that taxing — displaying 50-plus pages that are graphics is, however. Therefore, it didn’t surprise me that Zinio had the worst growing pains. The version of the app available when the new iPad launched had issues where the pages would slowly load as tiles. The first release of the updated app showed a marginal improvement. The app that is now available (version 2.2.2 — check your updates, it launched almost immediately after 2.2.1) is a big improvement. The only time I notice the tiling effect is if the magazine is still being downloaded. While the focusing still isn’t instantaneous, it’s not any worse than usual.

I’m a guitar player, so the litmus test for me is how easily I can read the tablature in a magazine. On the iPad 2, I still had to zoom in to make out the small numbers. On the new iPad, it’s much clearer minimizing the need to zoom in. I have also noticed an improved sharpness in my photography magazines, especially with National Geographic.

Comixology

The iPad really got me back into reading comics, and Comixology quickly became my go-to source for digital comics. The new iPad really makes this a fantastic reading experience. With older iPads, the text would be fuzzy enough to force me to use the pane-by-pane view. With the new iPad, I don’t need to. While the issues look great as they are, Comixology is stepping up their game by updating (for free) most of their library to what they call CMX HD. At the time of publishing, roughly 1,000 titles have been upgraded. When you are shopping for comics it will say CMX HD in the lower right hand corner of the page if it is available in HD. This was the app I was most looking forward to on the new iPad, and it has not disappointed me at all.

Newsstand

This is somewhat of a mess. Updating apps for the Retina displays really drives home for me how discombobulated the entire Newsstand experience is. At the time of publishing, few Newsstand apps from my library have been updated. Non-updated Newsstand apps have a noticeable focusing issue where the page takes several seconds to load, and it focuses in annoying tiles.

Overall, I’m very pleased with most of these apps, especially iBooks and Comixology, and how they’ve adapted to the new display on the iPad. I’m hopeful that having to deal with delivering large files will change how Zinio and Newsstand issues are delivered, ideally by using the text APIs to make the text even clearer and the files smaller.

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Success of Comics on the iPad good for comics elsewhere, too

Darrell Etherington — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 19:10:25 +0000

Digital comics are entering a bit of a boom era, according to recent data. Comics, the aptly named app by comiXology that acts as a one-stop digital storefront for many publishers, including DC and Marvel, has been the top grossing iPad app for six Wednesdays in a row.

The cannibal that wasn’t

Why only Wednesdays? Because that’s the day new comics are released. When digital comics were just getting started, that meant relatively little; publishers often held back digital releases, and in fact many only released titles from deep in their back catalogs at first. The reason for their reticence was that they felt digital editions would significantly cut into print book sales.

That hasn’t happened, according to comiXology. Instead, in September both print and digital comic sales reached record heights. September is also when DC decided to relaunch 52 of its titles at issue #1 (a move it dubbed the “New 52″), and make each of them available on the same day in print and digitally, via both the Comics app and its own branded comiXology-powered DC app.

Are digital and print comic buyers the same?

The reason digital comics haven’t negatively affected print comic sales could be that the two types of media appeal to entirely different consumer groups. Using the iPad as a delivery method opens up comics to new audiences, including basically anyone who owns an iPad and has even a basic familiarity with or interest in the costumed heroes whose mugs are now everywhere thanks to Hollywood, video games and TV shows.

Traditional comic book shops, on the other hand, cater to a much more narrowly focused audience. Comic books stores are destination establishments, for the most part, not places that people with only a vague sense of what they sell happen to stumble into. Row upon row of poly-bagged issues in filing boxes can also be an intimidating site for people new to the medium. Collectors and fans who enjoy the community element of the comic book shop will keep their pull lists, even in the face of the rise of digital, and fans introduced via the iPad and other devices could even make the leap to the shop once they embrace the culture.

Same day is the real superhero

I asked comiXology CEO David Steinberger about the app’s success, and how tied it was to DC’s New 52. Steinberger replied that in fact, the 3.0 release of Comics started the avalanche, but “the New 52 and other same day as print releases from other publishers, like Marvel and Image Comics, do great as well.” Marvel hasn’t been nearly as quick to embrace same day digital releases, but Steinberger points out that that could change, since the publishers who embrace that model are doing especially well on the Comics platform.

Another driver of sales could be Hollywood’s love affair with comic book properties. Captain America and Thor both charmed audiences this past summer, and The Avengers is coming next spring, with a stellar ensemble cast and a powerful hype machine behind it. It makes sense that comics, digital and otherwise, would enjoy some halo benefits from that attention.

What about subscriptions?

I’ve also argued that subscriptions are the next frontier for digital comics. Steinberger says that he thinks “subscriptions will be a very interesting model” for digital comics, but that currently, the available options aren’t really a natural fit for comics. “What is out there right now on different devices (Apple’s Newsstand, for instance) don’t work for comics, because they charge you monthly,” Steinberger said. “So you put the consumer in danger of being charged without product, or you make the consumer lag behind true same-day-as-print and they don’t get the newest material.”

Steinberger isn’t promising anything in terms of digital comics subscriptions, but it will be interesting to see if publishers and storefronts like Comics can come up with a solution that provides them some of the benefits like those magazine companies such as Condé Nast are seeing from Newsstand.

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