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Bite-size comic books and small-screen mobile publishing
By Mike on 20 October 2009
GLOBAL – We remain fascinated observers of writers and artists beginning to truly explore the medium of mobile publishing. And the recent addition of the first comic book to be exclusively released freely via the Ovi Store (Atomic Dreams issue one – pictured) has served to punctuate interest in this area of lesser-trodden ground. It’s fair to say that some people are exploring the medium head-first, as is the case with Carnival Comics, the publishers of the new Atomic Dreams series, alongside arguably one of the boldest and most innovative attempts so far to capture the multimedia possibilities of mobile publishing as realized by the Manga Man mobile universe, as created by the charming and acclaimed sci-fi writer Alex Besher (read the full story).
Read on to find more and to share your thoughts on the new mobile digital comic and publishing scene.
The first digital issue of Atomic Dreams is fantastic looking little comic featuring some stunning artwork that has been tailored for the N97’s widescreen display. It’s been designed to work super intuitively on Symbian OS touchscreen devices. Dead easy to use, with no obvious clunky controls cluttering the screen, you simply swipe your finger across the screen to flick to the next panel in the comic. And the fact that it’s exclusive to the Ovi Store is yet another demonstration of publishers seeing pocket small-screens as a valid and exciting dedicated platform for distributing comics, graphic novels, books and beyond.
More of this particular flavour of content is fast becoming available in this fledgling space, and there certainly appears to be an appetite for the stuff – have you ever read an ebook or a comic on your phone? If not, does it appeal?
However, it remains somewhat of an indie scene. What will it take for this form of small-screen publishing to capture more people’s attention and interest? Is it big-name powerhouse authors and publishers?
Let us know what you think.
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Tags | alex besher, Atomic Dreams, Carnival Comics, Comics, ebooks, Graphic novels, manga man, Ovi Store
October 20th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
I remember that on the N800 there was an app ported to allow easy reading of webcomics (RSS feed reader worked too, but was a bit clunky). It was convenient, do you know if the N900 will ship with an integrated comic reading/syndicating program, or will we have to resort to 3rd party apps? Or will we need to go through the Ovi Store?
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