Comics Coming to Kindle Fire

[replica145]

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?p...ticle&id=34637

Another (minor) blow to competitors?

[OtterBooks]

I kinda presumed comics would be available for it soon.

[replica145]

Right, these are Kindle editions though. Not digital comics. Digitalized version of TPBs. That's a pretty big deal for comic readers I think.

I've been waiting for this for a while; I'm not thrilled with Comixology and other digital comic stores.

It looks like DC is letting them set the price too as the two up for pre-order are $9.99. This is a pretty good deal as while TPB of comics are usually affordable, digital comics are $1.99-$2.99 for 24-32 pages of materials. Which, even if you pore over every page, you're done with in about 20 minutes.

[ilovejedd]

I'm more concerned that it's a Kindle Fire exclusive. How exactly will they accomplish that? A custom app for reading comics? If so, I'm not particularly happy.

[replica145]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

I'm more concerned that it's a Kindle Fire exclusive. How exactly will they accomplish that? A custom app for reading comics? If so, I'm not particularly happy.

Yes.

That's how all digital comics work unfortunately; they use a comics reader. There is no standard for digital comics yet, you're generally locked into wherever you buy them from. This is not a problem for most who would simply strip the DRM, but you can't access them since they are either read from a tablet (where the App won't allow file transfer) or from the web (where they are read from a cloud).

Marvel is the worst offender, they refuse to support Android, only iOS and Chrome, and they won't allow you to mix and match.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by replica145

That's how all digital comics work unfortunately; they use a comics reader. There is no standard for digital comics yet, you're generally locked into wherever you buy them from. This is not a problem for most who would simply strip the DRM, but you can't access them since they are either read from a tablet (where the App won't allow file transfer) or from the web (where they are read from a cloud).

The current state really is unfortunate. Manga (Japanese comics) is pretty much the only reason I bought an iPad. The Viz Manga app used to be available exclusively for the iPad (no iPhone or iPod Touch support, even). Mobi, ePub or PDF could be used for comics. It's not like they're making the comics interactive requiring a brand new format.

What really sucks is you have no way to make backups of comics/manga bought.

[replica145]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

The current state really is unfortunate. Manga (Japanese comics) is pretty much the only reason I bought an iPad. The Viz Manga app used to be available exclusively for the iPad (no iPhone or iPod Touch support, even). Mobi, ePub or PDF could be used for comics. It's not like they're making the comics interactive requiring a brand new format.

What really sucks is you have no way to make backups of comics/manga bought.

Aye, this is the reason I refuse to buy from Comixology, even though the selection is excellent.

Hopefully, even though they appear to be exclusive to the Fire, and not other Kindles you will still be able to access the books the same way as text-only books.

I've also got my fingers crossed that the $9.99 price point is for the whole selection. For example: All-Star Superman, one of the announced titles, is 12 issues at $1.99 a piece on Comixology.

[jhempel24]

I'm happy with Perfect Viewer and downloading comics from the web...the work perfectly well, and I don't have to deal with that.

[RainingLemur]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

What really sucks is you have no way to make backups of comics/manga bought.

Yeah, this point is troublesome. I like having comics on the go on multiple devices. I imagine that the purchases would eventually be "cracked" and backups to be enabled somehow.

[replica145]

Originally Posted by RainingLemur

Yeah, this point is troublesome. I like having comics on the go on multiple devices. I imagine that the purchases would eventually be "cracked" and backups to be enabled somehow.

This is why I'm excited about graphic novels for Kindle.

[toddos]

Originally Posted by replica145

That's how all digital comics work unfortunately; they use a comics reader. There is no standard for digital comics yet, you're generally locked into wherever you buy them from.

Technically there are three de facto standards -- CBR, CBZ, and CB7 (with popularity in that order). There are plenty of readers that support some or all of those formats. There are a ton of comics available in these formats, both legal (free, out of copyright, gold and silver age comics and some newer CC-licensed comics) and illegal (everything else). What's missing is DRM for these formats and support from major publishers.

If ebooks today are approximately where digital music was at in ~2005, comics today are approximately where digital music was in 1997-1998 -- mp3 had become the de facto standard because that's what people ripped CDs to and shared via Napster and other places, and the industry was just barely starting to recognize the phenomenon. Maybe by 2020 we'll be able to buy DRM-less CBR or CBZ comics from DC or Marvel. Assuming they're even still around by then.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by toddos

Technically there are three de facto standards -- CBR, CBZ, and CB7 (with popularity in that order). There are plenty of readers that support some or all of those formats. There are a ton of comics available in these formats, both legal (free, out of copyright, gold and silver age comics and some newer CC-licensed comics) and illegal (everything else). What's missing is DRM for these formats and support from major publishers.

CBR, CBZ and CB7 aren't really standards though. Basically, they're just image files (normally JPEG and PNG, with the occasional GIF) stored in RAR, ZIP and 7-zip archives respectively. There's no option for metadata (aside from, perhaps, a simple readme.txt). Page order is also an issue. Since there's no standard for page indexing, pages could be displayed willy-nilly.

For example, if I had the following page naming:

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20

While some readers are smart enough to use a natural sorting algorithm, some readers would display the pages in the following sequence:

1,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,2,20,3,4,5,6,7,8,9

There needs to be some form of standard to avoid those issues. However, these companies don't really need to create new standards when existing formats such as Mobi, ePub and PDF will work just fine. Heck, I just saw manga versions of some Harlequin romances in ePub format from our local library. Tried them out of curiosity and they actually worked pretty well in Overdrive.

It'll be quite interesting to see what format these digital comics on the Kindle will take. Didn't they just introduce a new format a while ago? Something like PDF with Amazon DRM? Can that be unDRM'ed yet?

[JD Gumby]

Originally Posted by replica145

It looks like DC is letting them set the price too as the two up for pre-order are $9.99. This is a pretty good deal as while TPB of comics are usually affordable, digital comics are $1.99-$2.99 for 24-32 pages of materials. Which, even if you pore over every page, you're done with in about 20 minutes.

...and real comics are now $2.99 on the lowest end. Most seem to be $3.99 per issue now, so you're definitely getting a deal with digital comics.

And, from above, it's easy enough to take 2 minutes out of your day and add a 0 to the offending filenames inside the archive so that they sort properly.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by JD Gumby

And, from above, it's easy enough to take 2 minutes out of your day and add a 0 to the offending filenames inside the archive so that they sort properly.

Yeah, it's easy enough. Plenty of programs that can automate the process. Just saying an actual standard needs to be followed for professional distribution - not just dumping a bunch of image files haphazardly inside a RAR or ZIP archive and changing the extension. With ePub/Mobi/PDF, there's even support for a TOC for chapters/issues within a compilation. Really, an ePub is almost like a CBZ file, except it has a bunch of extra files such as the manifest, OPF and NCX. If you've got a graphic novel in ePub format and you rename it to CBZ, it will actually work fine with comic reader programs.

[wyndslash]

yummy. might buy a fire for this alone and for pretty art books