tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4778276361957351199.post6770273711433379141..comments2024-02-29T14:12:01.955-05:00Comments on Flashback Universe Blog: Paper Comic DeathWatch: Format Wars?Jim Shelleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05006833955333061262noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4778276361957351199.post-12653922958723289972009-03-21T09:17:00.000-04:002009-03-21T09:17:00.000-04:00Sean, man, that comment was so interesting and ind...Sean, man, that comment was so interesting and indepth that it almost should have been a PCDW Guest Column! :)<BR/>-----------<BR/>Yeah, I think you've hit on the landmine that no one has discovered yet (or if they have, they don't seem to be talking about it) and that's that the 1 panel per screen iPhone format has serious drawbacks as a entertainment experience. I have read quite a number of comics on my iPod touch (Atomic Robo and Chance of a Lifetime being my favorites so far) and as you say, you spend so much of your time having to interact with the pages/comic that it removes you from the reading experience. <BR/>-----<BR/>I'm really sort of hoping Apple will announce an iTable with full comic page reading ability in the 4th quarter and save us all a lot of trouble. <BR/>----<BR/>As to your comment about price for such a gadget - I think when you figure that the average comic fan buys anywhere from 4 to 5 comics a week, and that runs $16 to $20 then it doesn't take long to see how even a $500 device could pay for itself in a year if comics on such a device remained $1 a pop. :)Jim Shelleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05006833955333061262noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4778276361957351199.post-46685937534052137642009-03-20T18:55:00.000-04:002009-03-20T18:55:00.000-04:00Well, I don't know that comics will be the next bi...Well, I don't know that comics will be the next big format duel, but it's definitely an issue that's already out there. Personally, I think one of the keys will actually be on the combination of color/clarity, price, portability and screen size.<BR/><BR/>Currently, I can, and regularly do, read comics on my PDA. (And, yes, I've even pulled read them in the bathroom.) It requires some work-arounds currently -- PDFs don't always load well, and I need to decompress CBRs and read them as individual JPGs -- but it's certainly functional and gives me a greater degree of flexibility than pamphlet books. However, those work-arounds are beyond what most folks would consider tolerable. <BR/><BR/>I can easily see people reading comics on a tablet-type device, but it A) needs color -- the Kindle won't cut it here, B) needs to be cheap enough to offset the price of buying a decent number of pamphlet comics -- I figure $100-$150 max, C) must be as conveniently portable as a pamphlet comic, and D) needs a large enough screen that you can read more than one panel at a time. They're all important points, but the last one is largely under-recognized. I think any option where a user can only read one panel at a time is inherently too frustrating from a time-spent-between-scrolling-actions point of view. Even the most copy-heavy panels take a moment or two to read before a user would need to scroll/click/slide on to the next panel, meaning they'd have to spend as much time navigating the document as they do reading it. That's the killer for anything done on the PSP or iPhone or whatever. Movies are okay because you hit "play" and let it run. But unless you're running a literally constant interaction with the display unit (as in a video game) the navigate/read/navigate/read is going to prevent current system from being really effective. Users won't latch on until you can navigate/read/read/read/read/navigate/read/read/read/read.Sean Kleefeldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10492399469370737192noreply@blogger.com