John Bowman

iVerse Media officially announced their upcoming iPhone/iTouch comic book reader, available later this year. According to their press release; iPhone/iPod Touch owners will have the opportunity to download digital comics from established industry professionals and studios, as well as new and rising comic book stars through iVerse Media.

Now, digital comics are nothing new. You’ve been able to buy digital comics on disc for years. Online sites promoting them have been around almost as long. Marvel Entertainment even rolled out a digital comic book subscription service last year with a Flash based reader. Early this year they introduced a Facebook application to promote the service.

And why not, with many comic books available via BitTorrent the comic book industry is facing a similar situation to what the music industry went through. It’s not just the $2.99 price tag, more and more people prefer the online experience.

So what makes iVerse Media’s announcement interesting? First that they plan to have comic books available directly on iTunes. Second, they plan to have comics tailor made specifically for iPhone and/or iTouch distribution. The only competition that I’m aware of is the Clickwheel Comic Reader, which is for iPods and not the new touch devices.

If this catches on it certainly could change the comic book industry. Print comics would be designed to immediately be transferred to the iPhone and/or iTouch. Gone would be the panoramic panels covering multiple pages. Each comic would be a more about the intimacy of the touch device screen and the resulting transitions.

More likely what will happen is an explosion of independent comic book creations, along the lines of the various podcasts that exist. Ranging in quality from mind blowing visual stories to utter crap. Hopefully a side effect of this will be more interest and development of digital comics as a whole.

Wired has a great article highlighting Leland Chee, the Start Wars Franchise Continuity Cop. I’ve always admired the Star Wars franchise for creating a far more consistent universe than others. Most other franchises are riddled with contradictions and/or non-canon material. With only a few minor missteps during the early years, Star Wars created a literal universe of characters all following a well documented timeline.

So, how does Chee keep track of the entire Star Wars universe? A FileMaker database containing over 30,000 records, called the Holocron.

One of the great features of FileMaker Advanced is the ability to generate a DDR (Database Design Report); providing information on all your database files, fields, scripts, layouts, relationships, and tables in HTML or XML format. Great information, but not always the easiest read. Enter Inspector 2.0 and BaseElements 2.0.

Both Inspector and BaseElements have been around for a while; Inspector was release in 2006 and BaseElements in 2007. I’ve been using Inspector for a couple years, but based on all the positive praise running through the FileMaker community regarding BaseElements I decided to check it out in more detail. I have to say that I’m impressed.

I found the interface of BaseElements very intuitive, more so than Inspector. BaseElements also highlighted errors that Inspector missed. The best part of BaseElements is it’s a FileMaker solution. Beyond the emotional satisfaction I get from utilizing FileMaker to analysis other FileMaker solutions, you can easily create new layouts to customize your view and reports.

Both Inspector and BaseElements are excellent programs, but BaseElements is now my top choice. BaseElements is a little more expensive than Inspector; BaseElements starting at $499 and Inspector at $399. Is BaseElements worth the extra $100? Definitely.

FMWebschool recently introduced FMTouch, enabling you to deploy FileMaker on your iPhone or iPod Touch devices. FMTouch fills the whole left when FileMaker stopped developing FileMaker Mobile (the last version was 8). Now you can easily have instant access to your database solutions.

You’ll need FileMaker Advanced to generate a DDR (Database Design Report) file, though FMWebshool is planning on providing a service to create a DDR for those who don’t have Advanced. The DDR file will need to be under 10MB, so you might need to clone and make adjustments to larger databases. Unlike FileMaker Mobel, FMTouch is a relational application. FMTouch also supports multiple layouts, portals and value lists.

Though still early, FMTouch is getting great reviews. The initial price tag of $99.99 was even reduced to $69.99 after feedback from the FileMaker community. Having used FileMaker Mobile in the past, I am looking forward to getting my hands on this new program. FMTouch is available through the business application section of iTunes.

If you’re looking for an animated version of Watchmen, don’t bother with iTunes Watchmen Motion Comic. If you’re interested in an audio comic book, you might find it interesting. The artwork is directly from the comic book with some interesting depth enhancements & very minor animation. The animation, because of utilizing the original artwork, is very stiff.

Even taking it purely as an audio comic book, I found the one voice for all characters — since after all a comic is mostly dialog — a little disorienting. At times the transitions might leave you a little confused too. With a comic book you get to pause and take in the artist’s work, with the motion comic you have to pause the movie. If you’ve enjoyed digital comics this takes an interesting new twist. Personally I think a motion comic can be great idle entertainment on your iPod or iPhone, but would prefer a straightforward digital comic book on my desktop machine.

New Watchmen movie posters were revealed last week at Comic-Con. The posters clearly mimic the original comic book covers from the 1986-1987 series. Like the comics, the movie takes place in an “alternate 1985 America in which costumed superheroes are part of the fabric of everyday society.”
Comic Book Resources has an article on it.