The Scott Pilgrim App gives users all-inclusive digital access to the adventures of Scott Pilgrim, where they can witness Scott’s battles against the league of evil exes to win the heart of Ramona Flowers, the girl of his dreams, through the app powered by comiXology’s popular digital comic platform. Scott Pilgrim launches with two free chapters and all six volumes of the critically-acclaimed graphic novel series by creator Bryan Lee O’Malley. The first five volumes are available for $6.99 each, and the final 200 page volume is $11.99. Once readers purchase volumes through the Scott Pilgrim App, they will also have access to their titles through Comics by comiXology web and mobile apps.

Each digital volume, featuring comiXology’s patent-pending Guided View™ Technology, will also include the bonus content included in each of the print volumes, allowing for a seamless print-to-digital experience. For diehard fans, the Scott Pilgrim App will also include Bryan Lee O’Malley’s full color Free Comic Book Day issue, FREE SCOTT PILGRIM.

“Bryan has done something amazing with Scott Pilgrim. The series has gone from an indie comic sensation to a New York Times Bestseller.” said Joe Nozemack, Oni Press founder and Publisher. “This is truly a story for everyone and because comiXology has done such amazing work with exposing the ‘non-comic reading world’ to classic characters, we knew they would be the best at bringing Scott Pilgrim to the digital mainstream.”

According to comiXology CEO, David Steinberger, “With Scott Pilgrim, Oni has created a comic book that fits perfectly into mainstream media. It’s a series that genuinely unites pop culture with comic book and gaming culture. For comiXology, creating a Scott Pilgrim app enforces our goal to bring comics to everyone, everywhere—new and seasoned fans alike.”

With the launch of the Scott Pilgrim App, fans can now catch up on Scott Pilgrim’s battle to defeat Ramona Flower’s seven evil ex-boyfriends just before heading to theaters for the release of Universal Studios’ major motion picture adaptation, SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD directed by Edgar Wright. All volumes of the Scott Pilgrim saga will be available through the app, starting with SCOTT PILGRIM’S PRECIOUS LITTLE LIFE, SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD, SCOTT PILGRIM & THE INFINITE SADNESS, SCOTT PILGRIM GETS IT TOGETHER, SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE UNIVERSE and the recently released series finale, SCOTT PILGRIM’S FINEST HOUR.

The Scott Pilgrim App is available for free from iTunes App Store on the iPad, iPhone and iPod now.

The developer Ty Landercasper told me about his new comic reader app made for iPhone and iPod Touch (there’s also a version for Windows Mobile, and coming soon to Blackberry) . Ty told me,  “It has everything you’d expect from a full featured comic book reader, native support for rar, zip and pdf files. Automatic bookmarking, and fast load times. But what really makes it unique is the lens feature!
The lens allows you to only zoom in on a small section, preventing the need for scrolling around.”

It’s hard to describe, but easy to demonstrate. Check out this YouTube video to see what it’s all about:

Here’s the info from his website:

• Autosizing lens. Just tap on any text, and the lens will zoom in on just that part. Finally you can see the whole comic as the artist intended without sacrificing readablity!
• Native support for zip,rar,cbz, cbr and pdf files.
• Use the comic sync tool (Windows only), for ultra fast USB uploads to the iphone. No need to wait for slow file conversions or sync over your wireless connection!
• Autobookmarking. Comic Reader Mobi remembers your last position in every file, and even in every series. Switch between them without ever having to worry about losing your place.
• Next page is prebuffered so there is no lag between pages
• High quality Image resizing ensures that images look their very best
• Bring up the transparent onscreen controls by douple clicking on the page, or pressing the lower corners
• use the stand pinch gesture to zoom in on comics

I’m super buried in work right now, so I haven’t yet had a chance to try out the application. But if any of you readers have tried it, please leave a comment and let us know!

Comic Reader Mobi

There is finally an easy and enjoyable way to read (and convert) all your digital comic books on the iPhone and iPod Touch…and its name is ComicZeal.

I have been using ComicZeal since the first day it was released (thanks again to reader Maddux for the tip), and I have been thrilled with its performance. ComicZeal is fast and smooth and the most flexible solution yet for reading ANY comic book on the iPhone or iPod Touch. By the way, I have no affiliation with the developers, and I get no commissions or freebies for writing this review!

The most important features of ComicZeal are:

Comics are downloaded to your iPhone so you can read them offline anytime.The comic images are big enough to see all the text and details, and they smoothly scroll –almost glide– across your iPhone screen.Comics can be resized quickly and easily using the standard pinch technique.

Comics can be read portrait or landscape mode…but landscape mode only works when the iPhone is tilted to the left (the top of the iPhone facing left). Not sure why, but it’s good to know.

You can turn pages easily by tapping a button on the bottom of the screen.

ComicZeal remembers your place! If your in the middle of reading a comic, and you turn the iPhone off, when you come back to the app it will resume where you left off.

For me, the most critical point is that ComicZeal has made a converter that will let me take ALL my old comic files and quickly convert them to ComicZeal’s format.

Why doesn’t ComicZeal just read .cbr and .cbz files? Well, they answer this one on their website:

“A [.cbr file] is way too large for the iPhone. Each page is roughly three times the size of the maximum image that the iPhone can easily display (1024×1024 pixels). If the large images are used on the iPhone, they must be broken into smaller pieces and shown to the user as they scroll through the page. This takes up a lot of processor time. Processor=battery so the battery life suffers.”

I have converted a couple of comics from my collection, and they look fantastic! The converter software is a separate (free) application that runs on your desktop. I will go into the details of using the ComicZeal Creator software in a future post, but there’s not much to it. Nice and simple!

How do you get the converted files to your iPhone? You can either use your own wireless network to download them from your own computer, or you can do what I did and upload them to your own webspace, and then download them off your own website to your iPhone. Anybody can do this, and it allows everybody to share their own iPhone comic downloads! Take a look at the simple and dinky website I just put up today for this very purpose: http://iPhoneComicBox.com

August 13, 2009 UPDATE! ComicZeal has lowered their price!

The ComicZeal reader app is available on the iTunes App Store for only $4.99

The ComicZeal Creator software is available for Mac and Windows. It is still in beta, but all I had to do to get the software was email the developer and ask for it. If you have any question or comments about ComicZeal or any other iPhone comic book apps, please leave a comment!

The app on the phone is very stable and simple to use, plus the Mac desktop app it uses to get your comics onto the phone looks and behaves a lot like iTunes.

Its a full-blown digital comic book library which I can even use to read my comics on my MacBook!!

I tried out the windows app, and its functional but not as nice as the Mac app… but the developer said he’s working on getting the windows version up to par with the mac one, so I have high hopes for that too.

Seriously check this out! The developers blog is at http://www.pulllists.com

According to the Pull Lists website, you can import digital comic book files by simply dragging-and-dropping them onto the application. Pull Lists will accept any files in the following file formats: .cbz, .cbr, .zip, .rar and .pdf (PDF is currently only available on the Mac Client)

They also say it has the following features:

• Full Multitouch Support
• Auto-rotate for portrait or landscape
  
• Categorized Listing by Publisher/Title/Issue Name
• iTunes-like blue dot indicating unread books
• Page memory: will open archive at the last page you visited
• Smart wifi importing via Bonjour (more about this in Pull List’s Library)

I’m looking forward to giving this app a spin around the block. If any of you readers have tried it, please leave a comment and let us know!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Soul’s Winter, the collected TMNT comic book tales of legendary Sandman artist Michael Zulli and longtime TMNT writer and Umbra creator Murphy, is now available on iPhone and iPod Touch from digital entertainment provider Uclick. The collection is presented in three apps available for download on the iPhone App Store at $.99 (US) cents each.

Best known for the moody, realistic illustration style he brought to memorable tenures on The Sandman and Swamp Thing comic books, Zulli’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles work immediately resonated with fans and soon ranked among the most popular stories of the franchise’s 25-year history. The Soul’s Winter collection features an extended tale of the Turtles’ disastrous encounter with their arch nemesis, as well as three short stories.

Besides a host of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles titles, Uclick has created dozens of comic apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch in recent weeks, including Bone, Grounded, GODLAND, Halo & Sprocket, as well as webcomic collections Pibgorn, Basic Instructions and We the Robots and the manga hit Dramacon.

The iPhone Uclick apps feature tap-and-swipe, panel-by-panel controls. The large multi-touch screen on the Apple devices enables clear, high-resolution presentation, but users can also utilize the zoom feature to get an even closer look at any panel.

To get Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Soul’s Winter and other favorite comic books, manga and graphic novels for the iPhone and iPod Touch go to the new Uclick Web App by typing Uclick.com into the Safari browser or visit the App Store on the iPhone or on iTunes.

For more information on Uclick, visit www.uclick.com.

Take a look at: http://www.newsarama.com/comics/090128-sparks-itunes.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/business/media/28proto.html?_r=1

Soon, even the daily comic strips like Garfiels and Pearls Before Swine will be easy to read on your iPhone or iPod Touch. The more we demand it from publishers, the sooner we can have all of our favorite comics on our iPhones!

World-Famous cartoon cowboy Lucky Luke rides on to iPhones everywhere thanks to this new application.

Unfortunately, it is currently available only in French (the language in which it was created).

Lucky Luke is a Franco-Belgian comics series created by Morris, the original artist, and saw its best period written by René Goscinny. Set in the American Old West, it stars the title character, Lucky Luke, the cowboy known to shoot faster than his shadow.

The most common format for comic book scans in the .cbr archive. Right now there’s no iPhone app available that can directly read .cbr files, but with a few little tweaks, you can convert all your .cbr files and read them on the iPhone.

CBR files are simply archives…a batch of image files (usually jpegs) that are wrapped up into one file with everyday archiving software like WinRAR or 7zip. They can be UNarchived and converted into jpegs by renaming the “.cbr” extension at the end of the file name into .rar, and then using WinRAR or 7zip open up the archived file into a folder full of jpeg images.

To do this, right-click on any .cbr file and choose Properties from the menu that pops up. Within the Properties dialog box, change the name of the extension to .rar, and then close the dialog box. Now right-click on your renamed file and choose Extract Files from the context menu. The archiving software will create a folder full of the individual pages that comprised the .cbr file.

If you take that folder of unarchived images and put it in your Pictures folder, you can sync it up with your iPhone and view the image files anytime.

Here’s a good article explaining .cbr and .cbz files and the various solutions for reading them on different computer, gaming and tech platforms. http://www.geekrodeo.com/2008/05/what-is-cbr-and-cbz-file.html

The comics can be read in portrait and/or landscape mode, too!

I have emailed the developers at bitolithic.com to find out how comic book creators and publishers can create their own iPhone comics to work with their ComicZeal application. I’ll post a real review and more details as soon as I get a chance. Check out ComicZeal at: http://www.bitolithic.com/ComicZeal/comiczeal.htm and http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=288016881&mt=8

UPDATE: The ComicZeal developers replied to my email and told me that they’ll be releasing a beta version of their iPhone-comic generator software which will allow creators and publishers to post their own comics that work with the ComicZeal app. from Emiliano’s email to me: