Sorry of the delay with this review, I'd give you a good excuse, but I'm a little hungover and I can't think one up right now. Having used Marvel's selection of digital comics which they have offered for free for the last few years, I had some idea of what I was getting into. I had hoped that Marvel would have used the free digital comics to work out the kinks in their flashed based digital comics reader, I was sadly mistaken.
The comic reader has a few options on how to view the comic, one page, two page and "smart" panel. The smart panel is a great idea, it allows one to view one or two panels at at time and merrily scroll through the sequential panels. However it often crops the bottom of the panel, or looses me when it zooms out to the whole page to read a larger panel. The only way to get the whole story with smart panel is to switch between it and two page mode to zoom into what it cropped.
Two Page mode is just what it sounds like. Showing both pages on your screen, allowing you to zoom in and out to read the panels. Marvel has included a small magnifying glass which you can use to zoom the dialog boxes only. However in some cases Marvel forgot to include the larger version of dialog boxes.(i.e. Adventures into Fear # 16)
I most often use the one page mode, in which you can scroll top to bottom with the with of the page fully fitting into the with of your screen. Even this mode has a huge flaw, it crops the bottom of EVERY page. When the writers include dialog boxes at the bottom of the page, I found the need to switch back to two page mode and once again zoom to the area which I missed.
Allin all the two page works the most like it's designed to, however zooming and scrolling on every page tends to be more trouble than it's worth.
A few other flaws have slipped trough Marvel's hands, in the most noticeable of which, dialog boxes are set on the page askew off by (on my screen) about an eight of an inch.(i.e. Astonishing X-Men # 5, Irredeemable Ant-Man #2) I Also found a few pages to be under digitized,
essentially appearing on my screen in "lo-res"(i.e. Irredeemable Ant-Man #2 pg 13 & 22)OK, so even with those challenges I must say I love this idea and hope they fix the issues as well as add more content. The truth is digital comics aren't nearly as nice as sitting down with a comic or a trade, but this is a great way to allow readers to explore Marvel's vast history. I do love reading comics and the digital comics are no exception I have now found myself staring at my computer screen for hours on end for an entirely new reason.
So my final call: Great Idea, Fix the reader Issues and add more content. But still wort the price of admission.
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