Before I get into the article proper just wanted to say that I have had this one laying round for a few weeks, waiting to be finished off so if anything is out of date..... tuff.

This is the first in a set of articles I aim to write called 'Strictly Digital'. I will be taking a look into digital comics available for the iPhone. I'm interested in how conversions will be made for this specific medium and also to see how titles might develop when made purposely to be digital only releases. I think it could be a little while before that starts happening, as it must be cheaper to convert something over rather than starting a title from scratch but as the market matures and other portable devices become viable options I would hope that we will see more appear. Over at Comic Book Resources they have a great comparison using a page from the Proof book and how this now looks on the iPhone.

I'm going to start with a couple of titles that are available for free via the App Store in iTunes that all use the iVerse player. As far as I'm aware you will need to have either an iPod Touch or iPhone to view them.

Follow up:

The player loads quickly and is easy to use. It utilises the swipe gestures to navigate the pages in land scape mode for maximum image size. There are 3 page transitions of 'slide', 'fade' and 'page curl'. Since the day that home edit suits started including digital effects, page curl has sucked. I don't blame them for putting it in but I for one will never use it. Fade is OK but my favourite and one that I will be sticking too is slide. I think there is a lot more potential for using the slide as part of the story telling to give the feeling of movement over a double screen width cell. If you exit a title half way through, next time you open it up it will go to where you left off which is very handy. I wish I could consistently do this with very long podcasts (you know who I'm looking at :p).The one complaint I have about this player is that quite often the info button doesn't work on every page. This is very minor though and isn't something that you need to use often any way.

PROOF #1
IMAGE COMICS
story: ALEX GRECIAN
art & cover: RILEY ROSSMO
87 Screens | Full Colour | iVerse Player | Download (opens iTunes)

This is about a renegade robot female cop who intervenes in a robbery assisted, to her surprise, by a mystery 8 foot giant. Refusing to bow to pressure she files the report as she saw it and gains the attention of a agency dealing in the strange. She is immediately re-assigned and packed off to Washington to meet her new partner.

I enjoyed this one. The story gives you a pseudo cliff hanger but this issue wasn't really about story past the basic premise. It introduced the main characters quickly and gives you enough to say that things look like they will develop over the coming issues.

The art work has been well converted for the iPhone screen with the entire thing looking like it could have been made solely for this release. The artwork has what I might term a messy style but this would do it a dis-service as it is very effective for the material. I think I will definitely give issue #2 a go, which by the way is not free but at only 59p I think its definitely worth splashing out on.
4/5

RETURN OF SHADOW HAWK #1
IMAGE COMICS
written, art and cover by: JIM VALENTINO
colours by: JOEL VALENTINO
edits by: KRISTEN SIMON
105 screens | Full Colour | iVerse Player | Download (opens itunes)

The story starts with giving us some back ground of a wrong that was commited centurys ago. It doesn't take long to realise this will be the basic premiss of the story and we move quickly into the modern day. At first our hero does not really launch himself into his new role in life but after a little while of fumbling about and of course the sage like words of wisdom from the previous Shadow Hawk he gets the idea. He begins to understand who the voices are and what the whole story of the Shadow Hawk means and what his destiny is.

This story is OK but didn't really get me excited. I like the basic premise of many heroes rolled into one physical being and I think there is room to develop but sadly this issue is nothing to get a woody over. Issue 2 could be good but I'm not 100% I'll ever make it that far.

The artwork is very bright and colourful and along with the content made it feel like it was aimed at a younger audience although there is something there for every one. I don't think the conversion has gone so well here as the there are a couple of what were obviously splash pages in the original that in my opinion just haven't worked at the required screen size. Splitting up an image into 4 bits so the text is big enough to read just isn't my idea of a conversation. This is more akin to your Nan watching a 4:3 picture, in fully stretched wide screen to get her moneys worth out of the screen size...

I may go for part 2 of this but it will be once I have exhausted any other part 2 I like the look of.

I would like to see more innovation in terms of how the medium can enhance the comics as a whole. Possibly some parallax scrolling of the image layers between slides might be nice. On the whole I think this is a very positive sign for the future of not just comics but any image based entertainment application.