iVerse app shows comics on iPhone, Android

By Seth Rosenblatt on 27 February 2009, 11:03am

Earlier this month, just in time for WonderCon 2009, the comic book and media convention in San Francisco, iVerse launched its comic-book-reading app for Android, following on the heels of its iPhone app that debuted in November of last year.

The thought of cramming a detail-rich comic book page onto the tiny touchscreen of a smart phone seems ridiculous because it is.

iVerse has solved the problem by chopping comics into panel-sized chunks. On both Android and the iPhone, you slide your finger across the screen to move on to the next panel and slide in the other direction to move back. The story's presentation is surprisingly clear and clean, and there should be no concerns about eyestrain from squinting because it's one panel presented in high resolution.

From there, the Android and iPhone apps diverge in functionality, although the features remain largely the same. We tested the Hexed comic for both the iPhone and Android.

Tap the iPhone and an 'i' appears in the bottom right corner. It's small so it doesn't intrude on your reading experience. This information button wasn't as responsive as we would've liked, but, if you hit it enough times, eventually it will open a window with a few details about the comic and the copyright info. You can also change your navigation method from 'slide' to 'fade' or 'curl', with the last option simulating a page curling back.

There's a page slider as well, so you can jump panels out of sequence, and the app remembers your last-read page when you return to it. There are no advanced accelerometer features nor is there a way to bookmark specific panels or sequences.

The Android iVerse app has similar features, although accessing them is much easier because of the T-Mobile G1's menu button. Pressing it brings up four options in the lower fourth of the comic. Choosing 'information' shows a screen with tiny text, telling you who the writer and artist is, offering a link to the publisher's Web site, and showing copyright information. Hitting the menu button again takes you to iVerse's Android store for more comics.

The navigation button brings up a window with a slider and a text field. You can enter the page you want to jump to directly, or you can slide there. One of the problems on both platforms is that it's pretty clear that the panels are taken from a comic designed for print, but there's no indication what the print page numbering is. Since most print comics tend to between 22 and 24 pages without ads, it can be much harder to jump around if you're looking for a familiar spot.

The preferences button allows you to adjust your page movement. The Android version has 'slide' and 'fade' options, but, instead of 'curl', there's 'deck', where panels change like a card being slid from the top of a deck of cards. There's also a checkbox to toggle whether page numbers appear, but note that these are the page numbers in the Android app, not the print comic.

There's also the option to register the your email address with iVerse, which will allow you to copy the comic onto your SD card.

A demo that iVerse produced can be seen here.

The selection of comics available is quite large, from $0.99 (70 pence) Star Trek comics to free comics starring Flash Gordon and stories from Boom Studios, a comic-book publisher in Los Angeles. Frustratingly, however, each comic you download installs as a separate app.

The comics run on iVerse's proprietary comic-book-reader software, forcing each comic to be configured separately.

We'd like to see more of an jukebox-style database interface from iVerse so that users can choose a comic to read in the same way that they can choose which song to listen to. It's not a perfect interface, but it's definitely legible and a sure-fire way to take at least some of your comics with you without having to shove them in your bag.