Comments on: Too Many Digital Options Too Confusing

By: Iron Man: Extremis Is Marvel’s Second Motion Comic DVD Release » DVDs Worth Watching

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 22:05:51 +0000

[...] Shout! Factory have announced the second in their line of motion comic collections on DVD, after Astonishing X-Men (out September 28). Iron Man: Extremis is due out November 30. As described by the press release, [...]

By: James Schee

James Schee — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 02:15:23 +0000

I think digital comics are still in a very infant age right now. Luckily when it comes to technology things grow up pretty fast. I think like with most technological items that soon the cream will rise to the top and that’ll eventually become the format.

I honestly hope it isn’t PDFs though, I’ve just never liked the format for reading comics.

By: Thad

Thad — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 20:39:50 +0000

Part of the problem is Apple’s aggressive stance against Flash and middleware. (Short version of my stance: I think Apple’s right for breaking compatibility with Flash, but wrong for telling programmers what languages they’re allowed to program in and API’s they’re allowed to use.)

That said, you’re right about PDF; it’s a pretty damn universal format — the “P” is, after all, for “portable”. The readers (not just Adobe’s but Apple’s as well) have their share of vulnerabilities, but that’s a separate issue.

You and I’ve both ranted against DRM at length; no need to rehash it — there’s no damn reason companies should be fiddling with proprietary nonsense in a futile attempt to prevent people from pirating their products; it doesn’t prevent those PDF’s and CBR’s from popping up on torrent sites, it just decreases the number of devices that are actually capable of accessing the legal versions.

And while Flash has been the de facto standard for embedded website content for the past decade, Apple’s changed that. And, while I’m not a huge fan of Apple’s walled-garden approach, I DO think it’s about time that somebody pointed out Flash is awful and we need an alternative.