Our special guest Ken wrote this kick-ass post:

With DC Comics recent move to digital platforms, the tech spotlight is shining on smart phone apps for digital comic books. I spent a few days browsing iPhone readers, and while each app offers different products from multiple publishers I found a few enjoyable reading experiences along the way.

The first app I tried was Madcap studios digital comic book reader. This app runs smoothly with unique assisted and automated reading features. There is a strange interactive rumble feature that I hope is removed from future editions but is easily turned off. The big drawback is the lack of contributing publishers with a handful of available titles from Top cow and Antarctic press. I’d like to see the titles expand, as the presentation is the beauty of this app providing a nice reading experience perfectly framed for your iPhone.

Comixology is the only company I could find to offer apps for both Marvel and DC Comics along with 40 other publishers. Many of the books have been laboriously cropped to single panels making the zooming and resizing minimum. The un-cropped books have an easy to use zoom feature. The amount of free previews available are worth the download, and I’m sure you’ll be drawn to a few of the 99 cent issues.

If the iVerse app feels a lot like the iTunes rotating bookshelf, it’s because it is. The reader itself functions well but seems redundant offering many books already offered by comixology. There is a huge world of digital comics that cannot be accessed via smart phones and the iPad is no exception. Until Adobe produces a flash player for Apple products, or the online comic providers start displaying content using HTML, you won’t be able to access your web based digital subscriptions from Marvel or Archie comics, and as long as iTunes offers apps to download individual issues I don’t think the apple operating system flash player will be available anytime soon.