Tuesday, July 21, 2009

BD and manga on the iPhone, phones and Mac/PC!

So this time, I was rather surprised to read an article in a local Genevan paper on a new site - www.ave-comics.com - which is launching now and will be providing a selection of comics and manga for reading on the phone or computer via a special viewing software they developed. The software will be downloadable for I-Phones, I-touch, Blackberry, Sony Ericsson and Nokia phones as well as PC and Mac. The originality of this digital reader is the zoom system and the reading feature that goes from panel to panel as well as the whole page by page reading (see example here: http://www.ave-comics.com/fr/avepreview/

Different comics (BD) and manga titles will be available in french, spanish and english languages and should cost less than their paper counterparts, according to the site (however, individual volumes of the first comic in the manga category - "Eat it fresh" (I say this, since it is another european/manga hybrid, created by a french team Paka) cost 1.59Euros for 19pages (roughly 2,23USD - which doesn't seem like such a great deal for the manga format to me); on the other hand, the different color BD available range from 46 to 92 pages for 4,99Euros (circa 7USD) - which is certainly much better than the paper version for around 18USD).

The categories available are Manga, Comics, Adventure, Humor and Kids, with interestingly a selection of old US comics in english in the Comics category (in french-speaking world, the term "comics" usually designates american comics, much as "manga" designates japanese comics and "BD" refers to european style/format). The current selection is pretty small, but since the site just launched we can assume that they will be expanding it gradually.

Also, Ave!Comics apparently intends to work with any publisher who would be interested and offers the adaptation of titles for their format and installation of the titles with their reader on their own website or the website of the publisher.

As I understand it, Ave!Comics is still in a very early stage of its launch and more time is needed to see how successfully they will develop and how interesting their offer will be for the readers, content and price-wise. But this is definitely an interesting enterprise to follow.

-tacto