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ComiXology Releases Special "Digital Variant" Cover

CYBORG-009-TrulyDigital-Variant[1]Good Idea: Making an animated GIF which shows a funny clip.

Bad Idea: Making an animated GIF and using it as a book cover.

Comic books have had a long history of offering special or variant covers for certain issues of paper comic books (including at least one augmented reality cover), and today comiXology expanded that tradition to include a one-of-a-kind cover for a special issue installment in the Cyborg 009 series.

The cover, which you can see at right, was created in order to celebrate the 75th birthday of legendary manga creator Shotaro Ishinomori.

In 1964 He created the series which it has since grown to include 34 volumes of manga as well as several TV shows, movies, and a video game. It’s back in the news again today because the series is being relaunched by Archaia Entertainment.

This special issue will be Chapter 000 and include features the first 17 pages of the first issue of the new Cyborg 009, as well as the first 61 pages of the original 1960’s era Cyborg 009 Volume 1.

You can only find the issue with the variant cover via comiXology (thank goodness), and there are no plans yet to repeat this offense against digital publishing. You can find this cover on the comiXology website, as well as their iOS, AndroidKindle Fire, and Windows 8 apps.

And here I was thinking the "talking mouth" augmented reality cover that Valiant tried last July was most gimmicky idea for a cover. No, this is worse. It’s a shame they didn’t think to include sound effects; why stop halfway to a horrible idea when you can make it worse.

 

 

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Comments


Mike Cane January 23, 2013 um 6:00 pm

I disagree. Comic books, graphic novels, and books for children are well-suited to this. Better than a damn all-talking-all-loud grunting steroid goon on the cover of a digital Sports Illustrated.


Logan Kennelly January 23, 2013 um 6:38 pm

I think I agree with Mike on this one. Especially for "special edition" releases, I don’t really have a problem with animated covers. I could even see there being a convention for using the last frame of the cover as the thumbnail when browsing the shelves if a shelf full of animated covers was considered distracting.

I only look at the cover for a second or two anyway before turning to the real content. Why is a small touch like this such an abomination?


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