If I haven’t been posting much this weekend, it’s because I’ve been feeding a new addiction: reading digital comics on my new iPad, which I told myself I’d be purchasing primarily for gaming purposes. Ha!
Then I remembered from a news item a while back that there was a new TMNT Comics iPad app from IDW, powered by Comixology, which comes with three free issues of IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series and includes all the original Eastman & Laird books available for purchase.
Comic books are something I’ve just recently been getting back into, and as far as digital comics go, I’m completely new to the experience. This is what I’m used to:
I have physical copies of the first three IDW TMNT books plus the Raphael micro-series, but I’ve been wanting to catch up on the rest and thought this would be the perfect opportunity to test the waters to see if I’d enjoy reading comics this way. It started innocently enough…
I proceeded to spend about $30 in one sitting and wasted the rest of my Saturday night furiously swiping my way through the story, completely absorbed.
As it turns out, I really enjoyed myself and was thoroughly impressed by the experience. So much so that I also downloaded the main Comixology app, signed up for an account, and started getting into even more trouble catching up on The Walking Dead and Morning Glories.
The “Guided View” technology that Comixology seems to have perfected is what really makes the reading experience so enjoyable. I love the way it zooms in and pans around to each panel, enlarging the text and artwork and framing the action in an exciting way. It makes the story feel up close and personal.
Comixology’s “buy once, read anywhere” model works like Steam in that once you’ve downloaded a comic, it is available to your account to read from the Comixology website or any of the iOS, Android, and Kindle devices Comixology supports. The prices for digital versions of comic books seem to be about half of what their physical counterparts cost.
It’s easy to get addicted when you can push that tempting little “Keep Reading!” button and instantly hold the next chapter of the story in your hands for a few bucks a pop.
