ebooks
Ben Templesmith covers Warren Ellis’ ‘Dead Pig Collector’
Warren Ellis has a new ebook debuting June 15 18 called Dead Pig Collector, and Sunday, via his Machine Vision email list, he revealed the book’s cover, by his Fell collaborator Ben Templesmith.
Dead Pig Collector, Ellis says, is “a love story. It is also about killing people and effectively disposing of their bodies.” Check out the complete cover after the jump.
Comics A.M. | Platinum shareholders move to oust Rosenberg
Platinum Studios
Publishing | Heidi MacDonald reports that shareholders of Platinum Studios held a conference call Wednesday, with President Chris Beall sending a letter to founder Scott Rosenberg suspending him indefinitely as the company’s chief executive officer. Rich Johnston posted the press release announcing the call, and some of the topics on the agenda were fairly jaw-dropping. [The Beat]
Publishing | Andrews McMeel Publishing and Universal UClick (which are different divisions of the same company) are collaborating on a new line of digital comics, Udig, which collects themed newspaper strips into short e-books (the one I checked had 55 comics) for $2.99 each. [Good E-Reader]
Two creators branch out with children’s book Little Particle That Could
Have you ever tried explaining particles to a 5-year old? Me neither. I have a hard enough time explaining them to myself. But comic creators Jason Rodriguez (Postcards: True Stories That Never Happened) and Noel Tuazon (Elk’s Run) are doing just that in their new illustrated children’s book The Little Particle That Could.
This 22-page book follows a girl graviton who is out to meet the little photon boy of her dreams. In addition to the illustrated story, Rodriguez wrote a four-page primer on particles, gravitons and protons that is ideal for kids or adults to explain the science behind the story.
Currently, The Little Particle That Could is only available as a digital download for the Kindle, but it’s available there FREE for a limited time. Here are two pages from the book:
R. Stevens takes a bold approach on Kickstarter
The Diesel Sweeties eBook-Stravaganza 3000 is a cut above the average Kickstarter campaign, both in the breadth of the project being considered and the originality of the prizes being offered.
The Kickstarter drive (which has already garnered over $10,000 worth of pledges, over three times its original goal) will pay for Stevens to compile a downloadable e-book of all his Diesel Sweeties strips. While the strip is a free webcomic, and Stevens has made smaller collected editions in a variety of formats, this would be a 3,000-page book that would include every strip; Stevens plans to correct typos and other errors, do some minor editing, and index them—in other words, this would be the definitive edition of Diesel Sweeties.
Five questions about the Kindle Fire and digital comics
Immediately after Amazon announced its new full-color tablet, the Kindle Fire, on Wednesday, eagle-eyed comics fans noticed something they hadn’t seen before: evidence of a digital version of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ seminal comics work Watchmen. The next day, DC Comics officially announced an exclusive deal with Amazon to offer not only the full Watchmen story in one download for a single price, but to unleash a wave of other graphic novels and collected editions, all formatted for the November-debuting Fire.
As with any announcement for a product not yet available, there remain some questions about the Kindle Fire, the DC agreement, and their effects on digital comics. Here are the ones Robot 6 has:
Tech rumor: B&N to debut color e-reader?
The current Nook, in glorious black and white
CNET has picked up on a rumor that B&N will show off a full-color version of the Nook tomorrow. The supposedly reliable source reports that the new Nook will be Android-based (like the original) and feature a 7-inch screen and a price of $250.
It’s worth taking a look at the lengthy comment string on the post to get an idea of the issues involved; the commenters at CNET are a lot more tech-savvy than I am. But this does raise some issues from a comics reader’s point of view. Most people focus on the screen: The iPad’s backlit screen is bright and makes the colors pop, but it also shortens the battery life and is hard to read in sunlight. Dedicated Kindle and Nook readers prefer their e-paper screens because they are easier on the eyes. The early Kindle had terrible resolution, rendering comics unreadable (I tried), but they seem to have overcome that problem, and the Japanese company Animate is actually publishing yaoi manga direct to Kindle.
But as Steve Jobs could tell you, it’s not all about the technology. Everyone talks about the iTunes store, but I recently had a conversation with a creator who pointed out that when people want books, they go to Amazon, not iTunes. In fact, iTunes makes it hard to find comics unless you are using a dedicated app, because the store doesn’t have a separate section for them. Neither does Amazon, but the search function works more smoothly and displays the results in a more useful manner (with product details right on the search page). So for someone who is looking for the digital equivalent of poking around a comics store, a retailer who specializes in books may have an edge.
And for someone who is just looking to read comics, $250 looks a lot better than $499, the starting price for the cheapest iPad.
(Via CrunchGear, via Journalista.)