I’ve been reading Digital Manga as I talked about in my post “Justifications for Scanlations” but I got to thinking about more Western Comics and how Digital versions can be handy.
Now first and for most since I know many people are sensitive over the Physical v Digital debate when it comes to comics.
I am not saying I hate Physical Comics, far from that; hell I own an autographed copy of the 2016 reboot Faith #1 by Jody Houser from Valiant Entertainment, but that was a gift I was given.
As for my history with Comics I was mostly into the Original X-Men Trilogy but fell out of Comics for a while I want to say 2015-ish having grown tired with things like the fact “House of M” ran for over 50 issues across multiple series and would end up costing over $200 to follow going issue by issue I ended up having burnout deciding to just follow Manga and the occasional Trade Paper Back.
I liked Digital Comics over physical for the most part, it’s mostly due to things like YACReader and some subscription sites Marvel Unlimited or DC Universe [both of which I tried and could rant for ages about how awful the sites where to the point I was trying to find plugins to make it work better].
There are also sites like drivethrucomics or comixology [RIP] where you could buy one off comics, it’s thanks to drivethrucomics I slowly collected the Army of Darkness Omnibuses and tie-in comics.
As someone who’s been slowly writing a whole internal wiki for references, reactions and thoughts about story-lines.
Having digital copies make it far easier to just take screenshots of panels and copy information such as Writer, Artists, Inker and so on.
So really I feel if you are going to real large amounts or can handle the issues found in things like Marvel Unlimited, I swear to god that app is so enraging.
I mean if I wanted to find issues with a B-Tear character it was a full on nightmare, maybe it better on mobile, but I was using a browser since I removed Google Services from my device I would use to read comics on.
Another thing you should look out for is make damn sure you are able to remove DRM or get DRM free content, since I can say first hand it was a nightmare when comixology shut down to get copies of VIZ Media’s Sgt. Frog manga digital releases.
While it nice to have physical comics for key issues or things that are important to you. For me, one example of an important comic is getting some Ashley Crawford/Big Bertha comics graded, namely Great Lakes Avengers #7 [June 2017] and Great Lakes Avengers #5 [April 2017].
So really depends on you, but I prefer Digital for note-taking, screenshots and just keeping storylines together in my head since I can add them to an internal wiki I run off a Raspberry Pi while I much prefer physical for the comics that are important to me.
If you are looking to run an Android, I’d recommend an Amazon Fire HD 10 [2019] tablet as you can flash or a cheap refurbished iPad like the Air 4th or 5th Generation or iPad Pro (3rd generation) and you’re laughing.
Until Next Time
FlySafe
The Professor