TALKING TO GO COMICS' HAROLD SIPE

[MattBrady]

by Chris Arrant

Heralded as the first mobile comic books and manga in North America, GoComics is set up in a subscription-based "anthology" approach to reading comics on your mobile phone. Started back in 2006, GoComics is a subsidiary of uClick, an all-around content publisher providing graphics, games, applications and video for internet and mobile devices.

The comics are edited and formatted for a panel-by-panel view which is ideal for mobile phones. That catalog includes traditionally created comics ported for mobile phone viewing, as well as a comic made for mobile phones. GoComic Books include work from Virgin Comics, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, GODLAND, PvP, Elephantmen, Too Much Coffee Man, Five Fists of Science, Umbra, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys. It also includes a full range of content from TOKYOPOP such as Princess Ai, Dramacon, Van Von Hunter, Peach Fuzz, The Dreaming and others. GoComics offers aren't just limited to traditional comic books either, they also include newspaper comic strips such as Bloom County, Garfield, Doonesbury, Ziggy and others.

For more, Newsarama.com spoke with Harold Sipe, GoComics' Manager, Mobile Product Development. Sipe oversees comic book and manga products for GoComics.

Newsarama: Thanks for talking to us, Harold. Lets go straight to brass tacks. How much does the service cost?

Harold Sipe: Our current applications: GoComics and TOKYOPOP mobile manga are subscription products. The services each cost 3.99 a month. This allows the user access to the whole list of titles we have available in either of the applications. Also, the subscribers have access to a growing back-issue archive, which can contain more than 8 issues of any of our titles at any given time.

The next release of the application ¬ we are currently calling it the “mobile comic shop,” will be downloaded for free. A user will be able to go in and read previews of various titles and then purchase individual issues for 99 cents each. I am not sure of the price point for whole manga volumes or OGNs just yet.

NRAMA: In July, GoComics announced its first original comic content, Thunder Road. What led the company to commission original work instead of the cell phone distribution of previously published work?

HS: We had actually been thinking about original content from the get-go.

Right now, with mobile phones screens so restricted in size, a lot of work and thought goes into formatting print comics for this kind of presentation.

It struck us as an interesting idea early on to craft work that would play to the strengths of the medium - how pages display and stories advance on mobile. We had talked to several creators, and then after we began publishing Five Fists of Science to phones, artist Steven Saunders brought us the pitch he had worked up with writer Sean Demory.

We have been really pleased with it ¬ it looks amazing and is a hell of a read. We really hope to do more original content, and are looking to roll out another title toward the end of the year.

NRAMA: When did GoComics originally begin it's mobile comics distribution?

HS: We started distributing comic strip mobile readers featuring strips like Doonesbury, FoxTrot, Bloom County and others in mid-2003. We released GoComics and TOKYOPOP mobile manga a little over a year ago, July 2007.

NRAMA: How many subscribers do you have at the current time?

HS: We have well over 10,000 subscribers to all of our mobile comic and manga products. The great thing is it is growing. We offer free trials on Sprint and Verizon and last month had over 50,000 downloads and over 4 million page views. We believe that in many cases, these are folks who aren't 'fans' per se, but people just searching for compelling content on their phones. We really hope we are able to get some of the titles and creators we are working with in front of new audiences. In some cases, a title may have as many as 3 times more readers on mobile than in print.

NRAMA: There's two versions available now, 'GoComics Books' and 'TOKYOPOP Mobile Manga'. Is there a difference besides the content?

HS: Really, the only difference is the content. The GoComics reader has a really wide variety of titles. We have indie (Too Much Coffee Man, Daniel Spottswood¹s Disquietville coming later this year), superhero/adventure (GODLAND, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), fan favorites (PvP, Elephantment, Bone) and even some manga like Guilstein;¬ this is particularly cool since it¹s a Japanese manga that¹s only available in English on mobile). This isn't even everything - we want to have something for everyone with a wide and diverse list of quality titles that will get the word out about how big a tent comics can be.

The TOKYOPOP mobile manga reader features a list of their OEL titles covering multiple sub-genres: from award-winning romance title Dramacon, to action/adventure Psy-Comm, to fantasy spoof Van Von Hunter.

NRAMA: Currently GoComics is carried by AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and Amp'd Mobile. Do you have any plans to work with other cell phone carriers?

HS: Our goal is to have the comic readers on as many carriers and handsets as possible. We are always working with carriers and new partners to get these products out, and we¹re also pushing the reader applications out a lot more in international markets.

NRAMA: For those of us without mobile phones with these carriers, are the GoComics also available on the internet?

HS: Some features have very successful web presences already, so we will take that on a title-by-title basis. As we move to the mobile comic shop model we would like to have content available to users either on mobile or the web.

Toward the end of the year we hope to have some comic book and manga content available on our site ¬ http://www.gocomics.com

[NimbusV]

Sounds cool, i'll have to tried those.

[AbacusComics]

It's too bad everyone doesn't just have an iPhone. You can download PDF comics, scan through them, enlarge panels...

But this is a great option for those of us without that darned iPhone contraption.

[Peasily]

CBR would be a better format than PDF.

[Cray_ws]

Originally Posted by Peasily

CBR would be a better format than PDF.

CBR is not a format, its nothing more than type of zip file. Inside the the zip file (CBR) is a bunch of JPEG files. So really you are comparing JPEG to PDF files. JPEGs are inferior in terms of showing text and highly stylized fonts.

[Peasily]

Originally Posted by Cray_ws

CBR is not a format, its nothing more than type of zip file. Inside the the zip file (CBR) is a bunch of JPEG files. So really you are comparing JPEG to PDF files. JPEGs are inferior in terms of showing text and highly stylized fonts.

Pedant. Excuse me for saying format when I should've said "method of displaying." And, if you want to be pedantic, a CBR is the proper moniker for a RAR file for the CDisplay app (thought naming a zip or rar cbr or cbz doesn't matter). Also, CDisplay reads zipped PDFs, as well as JPEG.

Comics PDF's are usually a series of JPEGs converted to PDF, rarely with vector graphics and embedded fonts.

JPEGs can be removed from PDFs the same as they can from a zipped file.

[AbacusComics]

I just saw this:

http://wowio.wordpress.com/2007/08/0...oks-the-video/

Shows the iPhone as an e-book reader. Small, but cool. Comics look even better.