This won't be announced until later in the week but 2000AD has popped up on Apple's Newsstand app which is designed for newspapers and magazines. While you can buy digital progs, Megs and graphic novels through Clickwheel or the 2000AD shop, you do have to seek them out and this development makes the Galaxy's Greatest Comic available on one of the most popular apps for handling this type of content, putting it right under the noses of potential purchasers. This seems a smarter move than developing their own app or even getting on comiXology as it gives them a large audience, as it is built into the Apple operating system (it was part of iOS5, released in October 2011).
Buy individual issues or select one of our great value subscription options and have the latest issue delivered direct to your iPad every week. Plus, every subscriber gets a range of back issues FREE!
New to 2000AD? To whet your appetite, you can download a FREE 69-page sampler issue. Read the first episodes of top 2000AD stories including Judge Dredd: Day of Chaos, Zombo, and Ichabod Azrael!
2000AD Subscriptions available:
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1-month subscription for $10.99, automatically renewed until cancelled
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1-year subscription for $109.99, automatically renewed until cancelled
DC Thomson have announced The Dandy and The Beano have just gone digital through Apple's recently-launched Newsstand service, with The Beano currently in the Top Ten in the service's charts
First published in 1937 and 1938 respectively, the two national comic institutions join Commando in the App store, all delivering digital, enhanced versions of the comics, enabling fans to read their favourite strips and characters on iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.
Demonstrating the enduring popularity of the comic brands is the fact that Apple are promoting the free Beano app on the front page of iTunes and it is already sitting in the Top 10 downloads – only hours after the apps’ release.
DC Thomson says that even though comics are for children of all ages, the move into digital publishing underlines the company’s commitment to children’s literacy, "ensuring that our famous comics can be read by kids as widely as possible on all kinds of formats.
"Teachers, parents and educational experts all acknowledge the role comics have in providing the bridge between picture books and chapter books and with the increasing use of apps by children, we hope even more of them can now access our weekly, original and not-to-mention hilarious content."
“This is app-solutely fantastic! We’re all very app-y!" enthused Mike Stirling, Editor-in-chief of The Beano.
"Sorry, that’s app-alling!" he added. "The great thing about the new app on Newsstand is that it guarantees our fans can enjoy The Beano 24-7. I used to read it snuggled up under the covers with a torch at night – nowadays, I’ll just cuddle up to my iPhone!”
Editor-in-chief of The Dandy, Craig Graham added: “We’re incredibly excited about being available as a digital download. Now people can have the unique School of Mock that is The Dandy at their fingertips, wherever they are and whatever they’re doing.”
The Beano and Dandy apps are free to download via iTunes and, like the Commando app, also come with free issues of the comics (five issues of The Beano, but just two of The Dandy) so that users can sample the kind of content they’ll get in advance, along with simple instructions of how to subscribe or download.
Payment is via the user’s iTunes account and digital copies are enhanced with interactive advertising, video and links to the existing Beano and Dandy websites – www.beano.com and www.dandy.com
The downloaded issues - which did take a while to download - look great: navigation is very simple and you can zoom in on individua panels easily using the ipad or iphone's tap feature, then tap to zoom out. It seems a bit strange that there's a disparity between the number of free issues of The Beano and The Dandy but the former is definitely DC Thomson's flagship comic title, so it's understandable that it's getting the major promotion (and higher number of downloads, refelcting the popularity, perhaps, of the print titles).
DC Thomson have developed both apps in association with Yudu Media – www.yudu.com – and are planning to bring a range of existing titles to Apple’s Newsstand in the coming months.
DC Thomson tell us there are no plans for archive titles just yet as they’re concentrating on all our existing titles. However, after we suggested it, they're going to look at the possibility of releasing single issues of older comics, which I'd suggest would be a good way to test the market for a wider re-issue of some of the company's much-loved but no longer published titles such as Warlord, Sparky and Starblazer.
The Beano and The Dandy are published every week by D.C. Thomson & Co. Ltd., based in Dundee. Other DC Thomson magazine titles include Commando, Shout, The People’s Friend, The Scots Magazine and My Weekly. 2011 sees the 60th Anniversary of the first appearance of Dennis the Menace – 17th March 1951 – The Beano have been celebrating this as “The Year of the Menace”.
• A Beano or Dandy digital subscription lets you read every issue of each comic on your iPhone and iPad as they come out. Each comic has a separate app.
• You can buy each individual issue of the Beano or The Dandy digitally for just £1.49
• The apps will remind you every week when the new Beano or Dandy is ready to give your chuckle muscles a workout, but if you buy a digital subscription to the Beano or Dandy, every issue will be delivered straight to your iPhone or Ipad each week. A 6 month subscription costs just £24.49 and a 12-month subscription costs £47.99.
• Once your subscription starts, you can't cancel until it ends, so make sure you choose the right one for you.Unless you tell DC Thomson otherwise, your subscription will auto-renew.
• The apps are free to download for iPhone, iPod touch or iPad running on iOS 3.2 or later and include read free issues right away!
• Users of The Beano and Dandy apps can choose to subscribe and receive every issue automatically - £24.49 for 6 months and £47.99 for 1 year. Or they can download the apps for free and pay £1.49 for individual issues.
The prices and release date details for the most hyped and anticipated gadget this year, the Apple iPad, which features a number of digital comic products were announced for the UK this week. The device has been much touted as an ideal comic reader and, indeed, Apple itself is promoting the device as a comics reader in its promotional pages for the UK launch.
The iPad will be sold through the Apple Online Store, Apple retail outlets and via approved resellers from Friday 28th May 2010.
Pre-ordering began this week from the Apple online store where, you can order all the iPad Wi-Fi models, together with all the iPad WiFi + 3G models, in time for delivery on the 28th May.
Compared to the US, where the iPad is already on general release and selling in huge numbers, as usual for Britian, the prices do appear rather high. A basic model will set yo u back £429 (for the 16GB Wi-Fi iPad model), with a top of the range product priced at £699 (64GB Wi-Fi + 3G iPad).
But is it any good for reading comics? (Assuming, of course, you're a fan of digital comics - I'm fully expecting the usual comments from folk who prefer paper, which they're entitled to have).
Reaction has been mixed but fairly positive.
"If the screen were about 20% bigger, this would be the best comic book reader yet, feels Gizmodo's Jason Chen of the iPad. "You wouldn't need to pan, to zoom, to scroll or to pinch. You could just read."
How many comics are available? Well, there are plenty of companies vying for your App loyalty, including PanelFly, Comixology and Marvel's reader, the latter of which is just Comixology, but only delivers Marvel Comics.
Earlier this month, technology site BoingBoing reported the Marvel Comics app would launch offering more than 500 titles through the application, including all the Marvel classics are here: Avengers, X-Men, Hulk, Spider Man, Iron Man, Captain America, and a number of newer titles. To navigate, you simply 'finger swipe' the page to get to the next one, or single click on the left or right edge to go back or forward. You can also scroll through the thumbnail bar at the bottom for faster, jump navigation. The app also enables you to 'zoom in' on the artwork using a double-click or two-finger 'pinching', which iPhone users will be used to
When you've zoomed in on a single frame, finger swipes or single clicks also navigate frame to frame rather than page to page.
"Scrolling is intuitive, brisk, and elegant," enthuses BoingBoing's Xeni Jardin. "I'm amazed at how smooth. The store interface makes sense to anyone familiar with iTunes and App store. Flipping and reading, one luminous full-colour page at a time, I do not miss paper." You can view a video review from BoingBoing below.
"You'd be a fool not to run screaming to the App Store and download this comic reader," feels EnGadgets' Joshua Topolsky. "Not only is the app built in a clear and cleanly laid-out manner, but you get access to tons of great Marvel titles to purchase and lots of free books to download off the bat, but it features a guided view which is about as close as you can get to a motion comic without... reading a motion comic. Our only complaint here is that they don't offer more of the Marvel catalogue."
Of course, given that this is a British comics blog, you might be interested in supporting a British comic app - albeit one with significant overseas investment. Graphic.ly recently launched it AIR app for desktops which includes a digital comic reader, store, and social activity feed and Apps for the iPad, iPhone, Android, and Windows 7 are coming soon. It will also be delivered as native Web app.
With an emphasis on material from independent publishers - although mainstream ones are on board - Grpahic.ly has taken a 'social' approach to digital comics reading, launching with an activity feed showing all the comics your friends are reading and their comments. This serves as a discovery mechanism.
If you get your comics elsewhere and then import them to your iPad, then you need Comic Zeal or Comic Reader. (The Comic Reader app itself went through a painful gestation period for the developer, which is documented here on the ComicReader forum).
There's also a iPad version of iVerse, and iVerse Comics founder Michael Murphey is enthusiastic about the device's potential to attract new comic readers. The latest version of their app, demo'd here, adds much requested features like ZOOM for both iPad and iPhone in this update, but overall iVerse hope that the application fades into the background and you can just enjoy reading your comics.
"The things the iPad does it does so very well that it's going to be like the iPhone – once people have their hands on it, they're not going to want to not have that device," he told Comic Book Resources back in January. "It's very slick and very well made, and it's going to allow us to be able to present comics in the best possible way on one of the best devices to do this on."
Most importantly, will comics on the iPad - as well as other digital devices - increase comics readership? Many think so. Making strips available for consumers to download on a tablet could change "the mentality that comics are just meant to be collected," artist Dave Dorman, who has drawn for issues of Batman, Star Wars, and numerous additional comics told Bloomberg Business Week last month.
"Forty years from when I grew up, comics could potentially make a big breakthrough to a new generation," he feels.
Celebrating the first anniversary of the Credit Crunch, Alex, the investment banker we all love to hate, whose strip adventures now appear in the Telegraph, has been brought to new life on the iPhone and iPod touch, in an "all-new" Tapisodes format.
Alex is a much-loved, occasionally hated, cartoon strip by Charles Peattie and Russell Taylor, which first appeared in the short-lived London Daily News in 1987, before moving to The Independent later that year and then to the Daily Telegraph in 1992. The strip is also collected annually.
Billed as the "first (proper) interactive mobile motion comic" for the Apple platform - a blending of comics, animation and tap interaction - 20 animated and interactive Alex strips, each themed around the market crisis, are being rolled out daily, downloaded straight into the Alex app.
“We are excited to bring a new way of experiencing comic books and animation to the world’s most trendsetting mobile platform," says Jörg Tittel of Tapisodes. "We hope to please the legions of Alex fans and introduce thousands more."
Alex - Credit Crunch Special will offer a new episode every business day from today until 23rd October, with each episode downloaded straight into the application at no additional cost. You can choose to receive a “push notification” each time a new episode is available, or browse intuitive thumbnails for downloaded, available and upcoming episodes.
Alex also comes with social networking integration, so you can do what bankers do best: tell friends about your favourite Tapisodes, all in the safety of your iPhone and out of the nosy IT department’s reach.
Alex is only the first of a series of Tapisodes mobile comics. With a patent pending on the technology, the producers have been working with other high profile brands and franchises to create new content.
“We have always embraced other entertainment mediums and therefore are very excited about the opportunities for games companies in interactive storytelling and film," explains Paul Farley, CEO of mobile game developer Tag Games.
"To be able to work with the talented team at Tapisodes on the Alex project was too good an opportunity to miss. We trust this initial collaboration will spawn many more successful titles in the future.”
Tapisodes and Tag Games were brought together through the Play Together program Creative Industry Switch created by TIGA (the trade body which represents the UK videogames industry) and NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts). Creative Industry Switch is designed to foster communication and collaboration between the videogames industry and other UK creative industries such as film, TV, radio and animation.
“The Play Together initiatives were created to provide a forum for the UK’s creative minds to meet, exchange ideas and get commercial projects off the ground," explains Lorna Evans, Project Manager of Play Together for TIGA and NESTA. "We believe this is fundamental to the continued success of the UK’s creative industries.”
“This is exactly the sort of commercial collaboration between video games developers and other complementary media providers that we had hoped the Play Together initiative would achieve," argues Jackie McKenzie of NESTA.
• The ALEX iPhone application is available for download from the Apple iTunes App Store at a cost of £0.59, with 20 animated, interactive tapisodes gradually made available for download - straight into the app and at no extra cost. Recession proof, it does however requires the iPhone 3.0 Software Update or later.
The prices and release date details for the most hyped and anticipated gadget this year, the Apple iPad, which features a number of digital comic products were announced for the UK this week. The device has been much touted as an ideal comic reader and, indeed, Apple itself 
