Family Learning Center

Ihnatko says Apple tablet could play hero to comic books

Filed under: Rumors, Apple

Speculation based on rumor can be frustrating. But when the rumor is of Apple’s fabled tablet, and the speculation is of a new golden age for comics, the 13-year-old kid in me comes alive.

Writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, Andy Ihnatko says there are hints that Apple is getting into the digital comic book market, a statement he likens to saying “Apple is helping to create the digital comic book market.” Digital comics today, he argues, are where digital music was in 2002. Legitimate businesses are so fractured, clumsy, and behind the times that pirated comics (online illegally one day after hitting store shelves) provide the best user experience.

Enter LongBox, a company that has made the rounds at comic book conventions this year pitching an iTunes-like store for buying and selling digital comic books. Ihnatko talked with LongBox CEO Rantz Hoseley, peppering him with questions and looking for reasons that LongBox was doomed to failure. What he found instead was a company that respects the comic book as a medium, that has made publishing to the LongBox format (.LBX) as simple as adding a plug-in to the software publishers already use, and that has plans for outfits as big as Marvel or DC all the way down to the lone artists publishing on their own.

Continue reading Ihnatko says Apple tablet could play hero to comic books

TUAWIhnatko says Apple tablet could play hero to comic books originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments
Read the whole story…