Tag Archives: dc

Apple iPad App Review – Page 1 Line 4

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After a little hiatus, back with the reviews:

  • Marvel – The Marvel App for the iPad is a wonderful taste of how good digital comics can be presented. The interface is slick, the payment structure is in place and the storage and actual use of the comic book really takes advantage of the power of the iPad as a comic book shaped device. Everything about this app screams awesome, you zoom along thinking you’ve found the perfect app and then you literally run right off the cliff. The problems? Where is DC’s content? It’s all fine that this is a Marvel app, but the structure of this app should be a standardized reader for all comics. Another problem is that Marvel is currently schizophrenic when it comes to their product path, you get a taste of comics, some are free, some are $1.99 but the principal problem behind all of this is that Marvel behaves as if this platform is just a showcase. I’ve spoken to people and I respect their opinions regarding this app and they agree with me, that Marvel is treating this as a teaser to buy actual comic books. That defeats the nature of the App itself. I don’t want physical comic books, I want virtual comic books! That’s the Achilles heel of this App, you can get started and fall in love with the app, but the love affair is short because Marvel isn’t taking it seriously. Do they print? Do they keep going with their digital flash-based comic site, or do they pursue the iPad market? Kudos for coming to the iPad market with their stellar app, jeers for starving the app and their fans of actual use of the app as a primary interface to Marvel. Currently it’s nice to show off the technology and the apps ‘promise’ but beyond that, it’s barely worth free, because there is no content once you rip past the shiny paper.
  • Reader – Google Reader for the iPad isn’t so much an App as it is a website with an icon created from it, which is a feature of the iPhone OS. It gives me access to the Google Reader interface, while it’s an acceptable method for consuming Reader news stories, I would really prefer a true iPad App, possibly one with an offline caching feature so that when my iPad is on-network it can soak up news so that I can look at items when I’m off the network. The bugbear here is that there is an App that does that, NetNewsWire, but I stopped using it because it’s syncing with Google Reader is broken. NNW is also a poor fit because it’s first and foremost an RSS reader with extensions to Google Reader. What I’m truly looking for is a Google Reader App for the iPad with caching. Maybe Google will, maybe they won’t. I would like it, and I would pay for it, but the web app icon is currently minimally sufficient.
  • Pages – This is one part of the iWork App Suite available for the iPad, the word processor. I used it while I was on a business trip to put together a document and the performance of the app is very solid. There are some very slight shruggable oddities such as not being able to bring up layout and page adjustment controls when in landscape display mode, but once you work out the kinks and actually learn how the App works, it’s well worth the price on the App Store to buy this particular app. The only glaring failure is the inability to print, but I have faith that either there will be an App that bridges the gap or there will be a printing feature in iPhone OS 4. It’s not enough to be a walk-away problem, and there is enough polish elsewhere in the app to make up for the lack of printing features. One of the big things about the iPad is the strong message it sends, that classic printing is dead. In that light I can get along with the lack of printing and appreciate the future that the iPad represents.
  • ComicZeal4 – Quite possibly the best App for my iPad, hands down. This moderately priced app swallows CBR, CBZ, and PDF files for comic books stored digitally in those formats. ComicZeal4 is my go-to-app for how I read comic books on my iPad. The presence or absence of certain titles in this app will have to be left up to your imagination however this app does represent a very dangerous thing for ‘old-school’ comic book companies like Marvel and DC. I’ve stated this before in other blog entries, but if you don’t innovate and cater to your customers they will innovate all by themselves, without you. There is an enormous collection of up-to-press comic books presented in a digital format that is exactly compatible with ComicZeal4 and the iPad that have nothing at all to do with Marvel or DC. Because these companies are asleep at worst or sluggish at best at reaching the iPad market, their customers can get what they want without Marvel or DC’s input, without gracing Marvel or DC with money for their work. It’s a natural result of being absent in a market that is voracious for your products. The longer Marvel and DC stay asleep and continue to not-be-present in this marketplace the more their products will leak out and their profit bases erode. What can Marvel and DC do to combat this? It’s completely obvious – enter the marketplace and bring everything you sell! There is a window of opportunity here for both companies, if they don’t take it they will be losing out on not only a multi-million dollar market but also the inevitable future – paper is dead, devices are next. iPad is just the start. If either Marvel or DC is going to enter the space, come with your A-game, not some lame half-hearted toe-wiggling.

Comics and The Bleeding Edge

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After unboxing my Apple iPad and playing around with it pretty constantly I am reminded of an old argument I made a while back regarding the collision of technology and comic books. Specifically the two comic book companies (there are many more, but these two are the leaders) Marvel and DC are either totally asleep or schizophrenic when it comes to technology and “The Bleeding Edge”. It used to be in time long ago that content providers had a seamless lock on their entire business model, they hired creative staff, they created master-proofs, they printed them and distributed them to their customers. The delineation was delightfully cut and dried, producers would release on their schedule and consumers would loyally go and consume when the producer gave the wink and the nod. There was only one format, the locked-in format and there was no choice in the format. In comic books, everyone went to the comic book store, they had a pull list, they showed up loyally every wednesday and paid for their books and the world made sense.

Then technology came. Specifically in this case, the Apple iPad. This is the first device that has a display that is compatible with displaying comic-books (and manga for that matter) and is user-friendly enough and convenient enough for people to sit in their favorite chair or on their favorite couch and voraciously consume comic books. This new device enables the customer to see the content they want in the form they want it in. No more heavy longboxes, no more paper, no more dead-trees-and-ink. Now every comic book they own can either be in their device or on a USB Memory Stick dangling from their car keys. Whats more, it takes the printing and distribution middlemen out of the equation altogether, so now it’s just Comic Book Producer and Consumer, face to face.

Or at least that would be if people were concentrating on the bleeding edge, but they aren’t. DC has yet to even come up with an App, but Marvel has. This isn’t to crow at Marvel beating DC since Marvel is stuck in the corner being schizophrenic and quietly muttering to itself. “Do I print, I gotta print. I also gotta do flash, oh yes, the flash is pretty, but then the iPad, so nice…” and the customers are titillated but growing restive with the cliff-face of “Perfect… perfect… Uh, WTF?” The Marvel App is a glittering wonder, that leaves you like Wiley E. Coyote after he runs off the cliff, but before he notices the violation of the law of gravity.

The mantra for 21st Century business is “Adapt or Die” and in this sense, both Marvel and DC aren’t really showing signs that adaptation is foremost on their minds, from observable behavior. I’ve said this before and I will say it again, now that the customer is free *and* enabled with high technology they can and will actively compensate for the failures of their beloved comic book producers to provide a way for us to get what we want, when we want it. We don’t want it on paper, we want it in digital format. We want micropayments and we want subscriptions, and we want our comics pushed to us when they are published.

There are two worlds running concurrently:

In the first world you have everyone being upright and legal, this is a fantasyworld because so far the instrumentation doesn’t exist for us, the consumers to engage with this world yet. What do I imagine in this world? I see two apps on the Apple iPad. Marvel and DC. The trade images they put in their movies, it’s most recognizable. So lets tap once on the DC App (easier to imagine since it doesn’t exist yet). I see a system that closely resembles the Marvel storefront, a place to browse Comics, a Library of purchased content, and a Settings page. On the Settings Page is my preferred method of payment, my debit or credit card is on file, through the “Payment” button. Near that is “My Subscriptions” which is essentially my pull-list for DC. I want all GL, BG, WW, BM, and SM, also want Flash and I want to follow Brightest Day, for example. On Wednesday, around 2pm (throw a bone to the printed-comics people) I open the DC app and there is a list of all the issues on my pull list. I tap “Buy Issue” button and it downloads. I sync with my iTunes and it all gets backed up. DC could then turn around and sell me a backup application for $10 that allows me to back all my comics up on a storage medium of my choosing in some popular format, like PDF, CBR, or CBZ. Everyone is happy, I have my comics with me wherever I go, DC is happy because they are selling comics like hotcakes, it’s win-win all around.

In the second world, the world some of us inhabit, it’s a darker and less legal world. Our beloved companies have yet to publish any digital content in any reliable way and we’re patently impatient for progress so we strike out on our own to make things the way we want them. People go online and find, using BitTorrent each of their titles, scanned in beautiful color format, conveniently stored in CBR or CBZ files. People download this content without paying anyone anything, we click and drag these files to sync software and we place them on our devices. We get what we want, but it’s piracy, it’s unfair, and ultimately it’s harmful to the producers. On the other hand, even if it’s slightly annoying, the customers are happy. At least there is that.

What does it come down to? If you don’t make the effort to constantly expand and adapt your business model to suit technology your customers may innovate without you. The fact that we don’t have this kind of infrastructure in place yet is very stunning to me. For $1.99 an issue Marvel and DC would be able to skip PRINTING, be able to skip DISTRIBUTION, skip entire super-expensive channels altogether and engage in direct marketing with their consumers. No overhead means all that more profit to Marvel and DC. You would think that sheer greed would have driven both of these companies to have an Apple iPad app on the market the day the iPad was released. No. All we have is Marvel dipping their toes into the water, titillating us and leaving us stymied. DC isn’t even in sight, it’s mind-boggling.