A somewhat less controversial bit of Flashpoint news: All Flashpoint-related titles will be available digitally 4 weeks after the in-store arrival of the print version, released on Fridays to keep the “Flashpoint Friday” theme going.
Personally I think this would be a great opportunity to do day-and-date releases, but DC and Marvel seem desperately afraid that digital comics will destroy the retail market, so they keep hobbling the digital market so that it can’t reach its potential.
I visited DC’s Digital store at Comixology the other day and there were a couple of free comicbooks.
I took a look and I didn’t like the format.
Most of the books seem to be digitalized at 1000px width, so the page looks relatively small on screen (my screen is 1364 px wide). One doesn’t get the option to zoom in on the page. Splash pages don’t look great because there is a mark on the center of the page that imitates the staples that the comic books have, there’s no reason to do that, but they do it anyways. What I really didn’t like was the “guided view” mode, because it crops the panels to the important part of the action, leaving parts of the drawing out.
I seriously think that these books should be cheaper, there’s no way I’m paying 1.99 for them.
I think the “guided view” is intended more for small screens like cell phones and tablets. A shame about the resolution limit, though. I’ve read a few PDF previews that needed to be zoomed in just to read them (Yes, Velocity, I’m talking about your yellow-on-green narration boxes.)
As for the simulated staples…why is it that so many e-readers feel the need to imitate parts of the paper reading experience that aren’t critical, and end up making the digital reading experience worse? Why won’t they play to the strengths of the medium? *grumble*