Calibre is a cross-platform, open-source library for your e-books that can also sync them to your e-book reader. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, it offers a massive range of individual book customizations, as well as format conversion and newspaper-style RSS feed grabbing, but lacks a slick interface that would go a long way toward convincing skeptics that it's a powerful tool.
Calibre's lackluster interface is nevertheless replete with features.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)The number of things that Calibre can do for your digital book collection is stunning. You can view books in a basic spreadsheet layout or with an adaptation of Apple's Cover Flow. Cover Flow here lacks a default image, and the sudden white rectangle where the book cover should be is jarring. It can be toggled with the big, white arrow icon in the bottom-right corner of the main window--an equally awkward placement.
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Although the idea of Dave Chappelle writing or drawing his own comic book might be appealing to some, this is a different kind of Comics Sketch. By taking two great Web flavors, social networking and Webcomics, Comics Sketch mashes them up and wraps it all in a package that's not quite ready for prime time.
Users can read, draw, and share their own Webcomics using the built-in comics creation tools. It's a great idea, but the interface is clunky, the drawing tools are limited, and navigating within the site is slow-going.
The front door of Comics Sketch acknowledges that they're still making changes to the site.
(Credit: CNET Networks, Inc.)The artists' palette features more than 70 colors and the ability to change both line thickness and line opacity. Creators can also change the hue, saturation and brightness of the color in use. Although the only drawing tool is a freehand pencil, you can erase by switching the color to match the background. The pencil also seems to incorporate some kind of auto-straightener--it was much easier than normal for me to draw a perfectly straight line.
There is no text tool, so all captions need to be drawn by freehand. Given the limited interface, though, this is likely to make the comics hard to read more than anything else. After checking out about a dozen different comics, very few had legible dialogue, if they had any at all.
The drawing screen makes it easy to Create a new panel, Save, Delete and Undo, as well as change the width of the panel.
(Credit: CNET Networks, Inc.)The panel creator and manager is interesting, but I accidentally wiped out my comic by hitting creating a second panel and the Edit button before saving. To avoid such boneheaded mistakes, be sure you hit the Save disk icon on the panel you're currently working on. This wouldn't be such a concern if you could import images, but that's not an option. Exporting is "comming soon," as the site would have it.
You can arrange your comics into "books" which keep related strips together. This is an excellent idea for managing multiple strips, using familiar terminology instead of having to reinvent the wheel. The social networking aspects of the site also track hits, views, votes, and ratings, as well as interpersonal communication.
The idea of being able to create Webcomics without having to download a graphics editor or creating a Web site is appealing, and having an instant community to garner some attention and feedback from doesn't hurt, either. If the tools and their interface can be improved upon, Comics Sketch could be far more appealing.
(Credit:
DC Comics/Zuda Comics)
Despite a few hiccups on the big launch day, DC Comics' webcomics initiative Zuda Comics went live before the end of business Tuesday on the Left Coast. The first webcomics push by a corporate comic book publisher, Zuda is attracting a lot of attention as the webcomic-o-sphere tries to figure out what it all means.
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The Zuda Comics front page will promo currently running comics, an ongoing webcomic contest for users to vote on and forums.
(Credit: DC Comics, Inc.)DC Comics has been publishing comic books even before Superman debuted in the first issue of Action Comics nearly seven decades ago. On Tuesday, they launch Zuda Comics, their first foray into webcomics, throwing the full weight of a major publisher into a game that has been dominated by independent and self-published creators.
So what took so long?
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Scott Rosenberg shows off a t-shirt with a Drunkduck comic printed inside and out
I start off every day by reading my favorite Web comics. It's the online, nerdy version of paging through the funnies in the newspaper. In the last decade or so, Web comics have gotten pretty big, with huge comics like Sluggy Freelance, User Friendly, PVP, and Penny Arcade getting thousands upon thousands of hits every day. However, these Web comics usually stay almost entirely on the Web, with only the most successful comics materializing in the form of trade paperbacks and print compilations. As it is, Scott Kurtz's PVP is one of the only Web comics to become an actual print comic book, published monthly by Image Comics.
Scott Rosenberg would like to change all that. Scott is the chairman and CEO of Platinum Studios, a comic book company that has branched into merchandising, media, and most importantly, digital publishing. Platinum Studios owns Drunkduck.com, one of the largest Web comics communities on the Web. Drunkduck hosts over 4,700 Web comics, and over 700 of them are updated at least weekly.
Cowboys and Aliens is one of the Web comics that Drunkduck hosts. The comic launched on Drunkduck on September 28 and hit comic book stores in December. You can still read the story online, but you can get a hard copy of it as well. Hero By Night is another case of comic book crossover. Hero By Night won last year's Comic Book Challenge and is scheduled to hit comic book stores in March. The Hero By Night Diaries are currently available on Drunkduck as an ongoing Web comic.
Scott shows off KISS 4K Destroyer Edition by wearing it
Of course, Platinum Studios isn't the only publisher to get in on the Web comic action. Marvel Comics offers some issues for free on its Web site, and Web comic site Keenspot sells compilations of several of its Web comics.
If you don't already read Web comics, you're missing out on some great, free stuff. I know this post has been a bit dry, so I'm going to wrap things up with a picture of (ostensibly) the world's largest comic book. Platinum Studios is putting out KISS 4K Destroyer Edition, a massive comic book based on the band Kiss. It measures 30x36 inches when open, and will retail for about $50 when it goes on sale later this spring.
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