Hasta La Ideas

by Laura Neilson

The smart new iPhone application from Panelfly fills the digital void for comic book fans with a mobile platform for purchasing, storing and viewing comics.

An all-encompassing reader app—currently the only one of its kind available via iTunes—it includes a mobile store offering titles from a growing spate of comic publishers like NBM, SLG and Sterling, as well as complete library functionality that organizes purchased books according to title, publisher, author, artist and genre. It also takes advantage of the iPhone’s landscape viewing capability, allowing users to browse with a sideways cover flow option.

When reading comics, users can swipe between full pages, refer to a page index menu or find a previously-saved page via bookmarking. Don’t have the eyes of a teenage fan? The application’s exclusive navigation engine intuitively zooms in from one sequential panel to the next at the tap of the screen. It’s a feature that, unlike other mobile device readers that reformat the text and illustration layout, maintains the integrity of each comic’s illustrations on a full-color display, giving them the unabridged focus they deserve.

Panelfly is available from iTunes for $2. Comics vary depending on publisher, but run approximately $3 each.