Article originally written by Ryan Closs
Welcome back to Digiversity. Last week was the official launch of the DC same-day digital, and this week they had 13 new issues come out. (You can check out some great reviews of all of them here on Multiversity.) It saw Comixology become the top-grossing book app in iTunes, which is a big feather in the cap for digital comics, Comixology and DC. We also saw the launch of a new platform for digital comics, which I’ll talk about a little later.
More after the jump.
First up, here are the non-DC same-day releases from Comixology: Spider-Island: Avengers #1, Atomic Robo: Ghost of Station X, Transformers #24, Kirby: Genesis #3 and Mystic #2. Just quickly, since we’ve got long reviews of them elsewhere on the site, here are my picks for what’s “must read” from the new DC: Action Comics, Animal Man, Swamp Thing and the big surprise, OMAC — you should definitely be reading all of those.
Now that the quick stuff is out of the way, let’s get into the spotlights, and looking at iBooks as a comic reading platform.
Atomic Robo: Ghost of Station X #1 ($2.99/Red5, Comixology): I love Robo, if you follow me on Twitter you’ll regularly see me screaming from the rooftops about Robo. It’s all-ages, it’s hysterical, it’s got huge action set-pieces and most importantly, it’s fun. It’s a TON of fun and this new mini is no exception. Robo is tasked with finding a way to save a space-station from burning up in the atmosphere and only has 7 hours to do it. Robo and crew come up with which I won’t spoil here and we’re left with Robo in one of his most precarious positions at the end. When I saw “all-ages” I don’t mean “kids book” I mean “all-ages” adults can read this and enjoy it as much as kids do. I can’t recommend this book enough, it’s fantastic.
Fracture #1 ($1.99/ActionLab, Graphicly): Full-disclosure, I was Kickstarter backer for this book. I don’t get any backend money or anything from it, I just got a Thank You and an early release digital copy, so there’s no real bonus in me spotlighting them. Fracture tells the story of a guy who suddenly wakes up in the guise of Malice, a super-villain in this world. He’s initially not sure if it was all a dream or not, but later on he finds some proof that he’s actually Malice and didn’t know it. Malice has an arch-enemy in Virtue and there’s an interesting twist towards the end that I really enjoyed. The art is solid and cartoony, really good chance to support some truly indie comics. Fracture #2 is also available on Graphicly.
Intrepids #6 ($1.99/Image, Comixology): Intrepids #6 wraps up the first (and currently only) mini-series of Intrepids. I really enjoyed this book as it was coming out, initially solicited as “Rat Bastards” it’s a story of a bunch of misfits brought together by a mad scientist to battle other mad scientists. There are cyber-bears and all sorts of other crazy things to battle. It’s a ton of fun (can you spot a trend? I like fun comics) and Scott Kowalchuk’s art is fantastic and perfectly suited to this kind of book. Kurtis Wiebe is the writer here, he’s also writing Green Wake and has some interesting stuff in the pipeline from Image. He’s definitely a writer you’ll want to keep an eye on in the future.
Infinite Kung-Fu ($12.99/Top Shelf w/ free Preview, Comixology): If you want to read a crazy Kung-Fu comic this’ll be your jam. In the 10 page preview they set up an interesting Kung-Fu situation where the two main characters have to fight zombies. That’s right, Kung-Fu Zombies. The preview really whet my appetite for more. I’d been hearing great things about this book and boy they weren’t lying. The art is fantastic, really dynamic stuff which is perfect at capturing the fight scenes. Top Shelf have been putting out some great stuff digitally and this is no exception.
The Rocketeer: The Complete Adventures ($5.99/IDW, iBooks): IDW recently released a few trades on iBooks, including the Rocketeer and Locke & Key, and as soon as I heard about it and saw I could get the entire Rocketeer for $6 I jumped on it. I haven’t read or bought anything else, the only other things I was interested in were Locke & Key and I already have those digitally in the IDW app. I’m a little torn about this platform. The great thing is you can now buy digital comics alongside ebooks in the iBooks store, no more ghettoizing them to some other apps they’re right there with everything else. The problems are two-fold. Firstly it’s only available on iOS, so unless you own an iPad or iPhone you’re out of luck. Secondly, there’s no way (at least with Rocketeer) to view just one page at a time, everything is spread out over two pages no matter how you hold the iPad. This honestly hasn’t been a huge issue with the Rocketeer since the balloons are totally legible in landscape mode, but still it could be an issue otherwise and I’m not sure if they increased the balloon size to make it work, thus obscuring art. That all said, for $6 you’re getting the complete Rocketeer adventures and that can’t really be beaten. I’m curious if anyone got any Locke & Key collections ($10 a piece) and how they turned out.
DC Kids (Comixology): This week Comixology released a boatload of new DC Kids books including Batman Adventures, Superman Adventures, Tiny Titans and some other DC Kids stories. There’s lots of free issues to look at so you can show them to the kids in your life and try and get them hooked on comics early. I know Tiny Titans is a blast to read even for adults so that’s probably the best place to start.
As always here’s the full lists of what’s came out so you can see everything that came out this week:
Comixology: http://www.comixology.com/digital
Dark Horse: http://digital.darkhorse.com/blog/2011/september-digital-releases/
iVerse: http://comicspl.us/new-releases-for-september-8-2011/
