As a lead in to the new STAR TREK film, there is a ‘prequel’ story by JJ Abrams, Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman (the director and writers of the film) that is available in traditional form and as an iPhone app.

Star Trek: Countdown

(click on graphic or links to launch iTunes).

The iVerse ‘comic reader’ is nicely designed, each important story panel is presented in full iPhone landscape view …

So, there is no need to move or “scroll” to read that particular page to read the comic book.

There are three simple settings for changing from one panel/page to the next – the default setting is to swipe to get to the next page. You can also choose between two other page-turning effects as your setting – one is a fade in effect when you swipe – which is nice – giving you the slight illusion of motion and the other is a page turn effect. There is also a slide bar where you can jump to a particular page – in this case, it’s 90 pages though of course, each “page” is really just a “panel” count versus a printed comic’s ‘actual’ page count.

The artwork is nicely done and visually interesting. About the only real disappointing thing is that you cannot enlarge the panel/page artwork.

And in the case of something like Star Trek, it might’ve been nice to add some random sound effects but otherwise, nicely done.

I believe the original comic book printed version of this was $3.99 so in essence you are saving $3 per issue and a few trees though maybe there are some transitional no-dialogue panels they did not include in the iPhone version?

The one obvious logistical problem is that since this is a 4-part series, you are really going to have to ownload 4 apps to read all 4 issues. This seems like a problem that will be resolved with the iPhone 3.0 software as publishers can sell you #2 as the next download without requiring you to download a new app.

Of course, since comic books are issued as separate issues, they did not want to give an advantage to iPhone readers in releasing a complete 1-4 before 1-4 of the printed was out but it is kind of unweldy now and maybe now, they should offer a complete version for $4 or $5?

The iTunes links for book #2-#4 are:

Star Trek: Countdown #2
Star Trek: Countdown #3
Star Trek: Countdown #4

Or if you prefer the traditional printed book version, they have al been collected together – Star Trek-Countdown TPB (Amazon link).

So, an iPhone comic reader is a solid way to go for those who want to read the comic book without necessarily collecting them (or for those who buy two, one to read and one to store – now you have a second option – though not many comics available this way – yet …). I definitely fall into the category of interested comic book readers but don’t necessarily want to buy 4 $3.99 issues of it and would prefer being able to read it for $.99 on my iPhone – a better option for me so here’s hoping this is the beginning of a great trend.