Wow, that's all I can say. I've had experience with digital comics before from Marvel's offerings to NBC's Heroes series. Both work really well on the computer: it's easy to zoom in and out, bookmarks are easy to create, and most of all the art looks amazing. When Sony announced that it would be offering a digital comic reader on the PSP, I was pleasantly surprised by the news. The PSP is a great platform and with Sony's push for more digital content for the system, it only made sense to expand outside the realm of video games and movies to something bigger. I was cautiously optimistic about the idea, I loved the fact that I would have access to the old classics as well as the hordes of new generation comics. There were some things that had me questioning how successful digital comics would be on the PSP though. First off, the screen is a lot smaller than a standard PC screen. How were they going to make a page fit on the PSP without diminishing the integrity of the art? It's a ratio thing, a comic book page is taller than it is wider and the PSP's screen is wider than it is taller. What about navigation? How would they combat navigating a comic book page to both allow the reader to actually see the art in each panel as well as read the text.After updating my PSP's firmware to 6.20 (I can't believe we've gone through so many already) and downloading the newest PSP feature - I found my answers. It's stunning how well it works. When I opened the first issue of the Astro Boy movie adaption comic, I found the art looked gorgeous. The PSP's screen really shows off every color and detail. The controls were easy to use and actually made sense. Unlike some features and games, navigating around the comic was easy and the button mapping made perfect sense. Though, you can't customize the controls, there are two variations that work very well, nothing as ridiculous as having the jump button as triangle.
You have your basic page advance and page back, a zoom in and out, as well as a great "snap back" button that returns you to autoplay. Autoplay, genius at work. I've worked with a few autoplay features in comic readers that are absolutely worthless but the PSP offers a very functional autoplay feature. Every time you advance (by either using the directional button or the shoulder button) it automatically scrolls over the panel and text. With panels that are large, it will zoom out to show the panel then zoom in to show the text. It is amazingly well scripted to show every detail and in order as well. With some of the action scenes, you even get a bit of camera jolt to add a dramatic flare. If, at any time, you want to zoom in or scroll about the page you can, then just use your "snap back" button to return to the panel and start the autoplay again. You can also adjust the scrolling speed, just in case you want to really examine every detail.
Another fun feature is the ability to play music while you read by hitting select and then selecting either a single song, album, or playlist from your XMB. Your comics are also sorted into categories for genre, series, recently added, and unread. Though the actual comic store isn't available yet, there are a number of codes to try out the reader, including four for the NA territory (click the header photo for the link to a list of all the codes for all the territories). Though, I don't know how they are going to price the comics once they do open the store later this December, I do know that I am hooked and I want more . . . a lot more. By far the best digital comic reader I have worked with, I have no complaints except for the fact that I can't buy any new comics yet. Hopefully, they will have a reasonable price plan (unlike some other items in the PSN Store) up and running in a few more weeks. My only question now is, "When are we going to get some Manga?"
