This past Wednesday, DC Comics launched their digital comics storefront in association with comiXology. This new section of the DC website syncs with iPads and iPhones, and features over 800 backlist and current issues … “current” being a relative term and such.

But hey, digital comics are the future of the medium, for better or worse, and DC’s jumping on gives the format credibility and helps propel it into said future. So what can you expect from the DC Digital Comics Store? A sprinkling of titles and a basic but easy-to-use interface … with a minor hitch or two.

A Little Bit of Backstory

First off, DC’s innovation is most likely a means to compete with Rantz Hoseley’s digital comics platform LongBox, which has taken the industry by storm and offers weekly updates of comics every Friday for roughly $1 a pop. LongBox provides comics from a number of small publishers, but so far hasn’t toppled big names like Marvel, DC, or Dark Horse—and this is where DC’s recent announcement steps in. It’s doubtful the top contenders will ever fall unless LongBox totally tramples them, an unlikely possibility despite its innovation.

The Pirate Problem

Most digital comics at DC’s new store are priced at $2, but don’t waste your time scouting out brand new issues—or titles, for that matter. Whether DC will expand their digital library enough to match each week’s print release list is debatable, but I’m betting no. Is it so much to ask for a publisher to offer both digital and print copies of their issues without snags? Piracy rages on while some customers are completely unable to walk into a local comic shop because they simply don’t live within range of one. Surely publishers worry about losing money by providing digital copies, and that’s an understandable concern, but they’re losing money anyway.

The DC Storefront

DCU, Wildstorm, and Vertigo comics can all be purchased at the online storefront, but you’ll need a comiXology account to access them. My registration confirmation email got lost in my spam folder, so look there in case you don’t receive yours right away.

One thing that puzzled me was the lack of a Wildstorm tab in the top navigator. There’s “DC Comics,” “DC Universe,” “Vertigo,” “New Releases,” and “Free Comics” (as try-out samples), but no Wildstorm. Zuda, DC’s web comics branch, is also missing. These comics are mixed in under “DC Comics” and “DC Universe,” but the sloppy categorization is a bit odd.

How It Works

Opening comics and reading the pages works well enough: You simply click the left margin to go back, the right margin to go forward, and any of the buttons on the small, translucent bar in the middle to see issue credits or to pull up the Chapter View (basically an overview of all pages).

The most notable function is the Guided View, which limits the viewing window but adds more action to the experience, moving from panel to panel—sometimes zooming out for effect, sometimes sliding to the left or right, but always readable. I tried this with the Wonder Woman #600 Preview and it worked wonderfully. Comics with fewer, bigger panels like Bayou #1, however, are viewed best with the regular scroll. There’s also a click-and-drag function, if you prefer to explore each page manually.

Pages load relatively fast, and I haven’t encountered lagging yet. The center control bar (mentioned above) becomes annoying after awhile, and I wish more thought had gone into minimizing it. Instead of any movement of the mouse triggering its appearance, rolling the cursor over its general area could have sufficed as a solution.

Recommendation

The DC Digital Comics Store is a nice option, but not necessarily a convenient one. You’ll still have to order new comics or buy them the traditional way, and it’s disappointing that publishers haven’t found a way to overcome this hurdle. Overall, DC has taken the right step forward, and by this trend, the possibilities for reading comics digitally will only increase with the coming years.