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.