I have been a comic book lover for years, I even owned my own comic store for awhile; talk about a kid let loose in a candy store, and when I first heard of Graphicly (previously Graphic.ly but they seem to have dropped the ‘ly’ domain extension) I will admit to being a little sceptical.
It wasn’t so much the idea of a web based comic book service but rather being more of aesthetics as I wan’t overly convinced that digital versions of our favorite reading material could be pulled off. I have checked out other offerings, from Marvel for example, but none of them hit my personal sweet spot when it came to reading my comics online.
Graphicly though, has through its platform iterations, been a pleasant surprise and now they have gone one step further and created a fantastic web reading experience using HTML5. Additionally they have incorporated all the social features that you could want for sharing your favorite comic much as you can see from this screenshot of one of my favorite comics Witchblade.
If you want to get even more immersive in your reading you can go to full screen mode and enjoy the smooth transition between panels, as well as drill down into each part of the panels depending on your viewing options you will really be able to enjoy your reading experience.
For those of you that aren’t so fond of doing everything in your browser Graphicly also has a really nice cross-platform desktop app (AIR) which is my preference.
Now if you are more into the mobile aspect of reading your favorite comics Graphicly has apps for Android, iPhone, iPad, and Windows Phone but to be honest I didn’t enjoy the reading experience that much. It might be different on a tablet but I really believe that is the smallest form factor for enjoyable reading.
Anyway if you are a comic fan, and especially indie comics then head over to Graphicly and try out their apps, or the web version, with any of the many free comics that they have available. I don’t think you’ll regret it.
thanks to Louis Gray for the heads up on the HTML5 release
