What happened to the Digital Picks this week? Wednesday Big Shiny Robot blacked out to raise awareness of the SOPA and PIPA bills currently making their way through the Senate and House. You can learn more about it HERE.
While I agree these bills need to be defeated, piracy on the internet needs to be dealt with as well. One thing you can do as a comic book fan is to purchase digital comics from a legitimate source. This helps the industry and directly combats file sharing and illegal downloads.
This week I’d like to recommend Graphicly. It seems this outstanding service plays second fiddle to Comixology in books available from major publishers but the difference ends there. Graphicly has a great web viewer which is how I usually use their service. The ios and Android apps feel a little clunky on my devices while searching for books but they seem to be improving with updates.
The online experience is much smoother with a user friendly feel that compliments the comic book reading experience. With tons of publishers and thousands of individual comics Graphicly is still a little behind on day and date content. Don’t let any of these minor negative points dissuade you from checking it out though, because the good far outweighs the bad.
The strong point of Graphicly is the wide variety of different books available. While the bigger publisher’s content varies, the underground and indie publishing worlds are strongly represented. At first glance it seemed like a handful of fly by night offerings from unknown creative teams but a closer look reveals many quality books.
If strolling through a digital comic book shop that specializes in strange off beat books sounds appealing to you drop in and hit the publishers tab. You will find bizarre names like Angry Lama Press and Brass Wake Productions. In exploring what’s available I find there are so many appealing titles it’s overwhelming. Two or three pages from each book are normally available to preview the books and the prices seem extremely reasonable starting at $.99.
Graphicly also offers an interesting social media aspect that can enhance your enjoyment by making friends while discussing the books you just read. I don’t think the integration of Graphicly and iFanboy is complete yet but they are definitely on the right path. I’m sure the future holds more ways to share comics with friends and with any luck gain more readers through social media.
Hopefully you will try this great service and it will enhance your comic reading experience. I will be back next week with my usual digital comic picks. If you’ve got any tips about sales or anything else feel free to drop me a line: ken at bigshinyrobot dot com