Mobile Manga Review & Poll: Dramacon Available for the iPhone

From PRWeb: Uclick and TokyoPop announced that they've added another title to their mobile manga selections for the iPhone: Dramacon by Svetlana Chmakova.

Just head over to the iPhone App Store either through your iPhone or from your computer via iTunes, and search for Dramacon. You can also go to Uclick.com via Safari on your phone. Volume 1 of Dramacon is available on the iPhone App Store in four parts at $.99 (US) cents each, which in essence gives you most of the content of the hard-copy version (minus Chmakova's entertaining omake / bonus chapters at the end) at about half the price of the print edition.

But even taking this into account, is it worth the price? Has uClick figured out the digital delivery dilemma that is mobile phone manga? Read on for my review of the Dramacon on the iPhone experience, and your turn to vote in a mini-mobile manga opinion poll.

I bought and downloaded the first part of the first volume of Dramacon, and found it interesting to see this story that I had read and enjoyed as a graphic novel reinterpreted for the iPhone. The interface is simple and easy to use, altho there isn't much by way of bells and whistles (e.g. animated sequences, like I've seen in other demos of mobile manga).

Part one includes content that's equivalent of pages 1 through 40 of the first volume of this three-volume series, spread out into 240 screens. The pacing seems to work okay, although it is fairly obvious that this story wasn't originally designed to be chopped up and read this way. Several horizontal scenes are split up into two parts, and some scenes are presented in irregular polygons that look a bit awkward and haphazardly edited.

The other weird thing is that each part of Dramacon shows up as a single icon on the iPhone screen, rather than a single application to read a library of downloaded comics from Uclick. Even now, I can see that if I opted to buy more than one mobile manga (or graphic novel) title, things could get pretty cluttered on my iPhone screen, pretty quickly. And not sure where I could store / save these downloads if I needed to make room on my phone for more. So from this iPhone user's point of view, uClick's mobile manga is promising, but it's still a work in progress.

The other Uclick offering from TokyoPop is Reality Check by Rosearik Rikki Simons and Tavisha Wolfgarth-Simons. I dropped a line to TokyoPop to check about other titles that might be in the works, but haven't heard back from them yet. If I get more info on this, I'll post an update later.

There are other titles available from Uclick on the iPhone, including Bone by Jeff Smith, Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Papercutz manga versions of Nancy Drew Mysteries drawn by Sho Murase. So while there's a decent selection of titles, right now it seems like it's still in the "proof of concept" stage, where Uclick and their publishing partners are testing the waters and ironing out the kinks in this new digital delivery mechanism.

Uclick was formerly Universal New Media, the digital media division of Andrews McMeel Universal, the content syndicate that offers comic strips, puzzles and syndicated columns to newspapers all over North America. According to the blurb on its website, Uclick is the "largest packager and distributor of comics and word games on the Web." As a part of a bigger company that already has a plethora of existing relationships with creators and publishers, Uclick has got the resources to figure out how to make mobile comics a worthwhile alternative to buying graphic novels. I don't think they're there yet, but it's a step in the right direction.

So what's your take on buying and reading manga on the mobile phone? Is it something that you'd try, or do you prefer to stick with buying graphic novels at your local bookstore or comics shop? Take this quick opinion poll, and / or add your comments below!

Manga Poll: What do you think about reading manga on mobile phones?
(click a link below to vote):

• It's great! I've already downloaded and read comics on my phone.
• Sounds interesting. I'll give it a try soon.
• Bleh. I don't see any titles that interest me so far. Maybe later when there's a better selection.
• Nah, maybe when cell phones in America are more advanced.
• No way. Nothing beats buying and reading a real book.
• I don't have a mobile phone. Hey! You got a problem with that?

Image credit: © 2005, 2006 Svetlana Chmakova and TOKYOPOP Inc.