Digital take-off

I know there was some other big news this week... wasn't there? ;) but didn't want to miss out on telling everybody about us launching on Graphic.ly. Got an iPhone? Or an iPad? Or an Android mobile? Want to sample the cool streamlined viewing of Adobe AIR for PC/Mac? Or even just plain ol' web? There's an app to fit your device of choice, and Mirabilis #1 and #2 are hanging ripe 'n' luscious on those digital branches just waiting to be picked right now for free, with six more issues coming up on Graphic.ly and Comics+ too over the next six weeks.

What I really like about digital comics is that it's like coming down off the stage and mingling with the audience. Traditional publishing is thud, there's your comic, and unless you really want to plunge in to a life of fandom, the stream of community tends to pass you by. But digital platforms like Graphic.ly and Comics+ are really making comics collecting and reading into an easy participatory experience. Nothing very new in this (it's what Stan Lee did with Marvel, ably imitated in this country by Alf & Cos and later, of course, the Mighty Tharg) but digital comics make it so sweet. More on this here.

E-comics

Not content with just our iPad comics app, we've just released Mirabilis #1 in EPUB format. I wasn't sure about this at first because having to conform to lots of different screen sizes meant that we couldn't show the entire page layouts as we can on iPad. But when we started chopping the art down to a one-panel-per-page layout, I started to really appreciate the incredible work that Leo, Martin and Nikos put into it. Take this panel, which for me has a touch of Steve Dillon about it. Hard to think of greater praise that that!