We’ve gone from one ‘banned‘ comic, to a heap of content. Project Number Two is almost complete and we’ve got three more really impressive projects being built as we speak. As soon as they appear on the App Store, we’ll post the URLs here so keep an eye or even better, subscribe!

We’ve spent the last few days accosting strangers in cafés and showing them the MURDERDROME comic and watching their jaws drop when we reveal some of the features that didn’t even appear on the YouTube video. We’ve also had the opportunity to show it off at the last local Mobile Monday event.

As well as some really cool stuff we can’t talk about, we’ve been invited to demo the application at a local business networking event. The MURDERDROME comic #0, even without half the features, was described as:

“one of the most promising pieces of technology from the province this year”.

While we’ve enjoyed our 15 minutes of fame, we haven’t forgotten that the whole point of this is to get some crackin’ good comics on the iPhone.

Just to be clear - we are absolutely in support of Apple’s decision to decline to accept material they find unsuitable for the audience, we are asking that they consider that the market is large and varied and what might keep one person happy is going to offend someone else. I’m sure that Apple will come to some decision regarding a ratings system on the App Store outside of games/entertainment appications.

In the meantime, it’s up to comic writers and illustrators to create their content for this new platform. We’re dealing with the first wave of comic creators at the moment and I hope we’ve not missed replying to each and every creator and attempting to keep you all informed.

John Paczkowski writes for All Things Digital on the Wall Street Journal:

Apple is being accused of censorship after banning the Murderdrome comic from the App Store for violating the terms of its SDK, which prohibits “content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgment may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.”

Philip Elmer-DeWitt writes for FORTUNE magazine on CNN Money.

Murderdrome is not Ulysses, Lolita or Lady Chatterley’s Lover. It’s a dark, bloody comic strip marked by the type of over-the-top violence that has made its genre so popular among young readers with a lot of pent-up rage.

But Murderdrome has now joined the pantheon of suppressed fiction as the first digital book banished from Apple’s App Store by censors in Cupertino.

Stephen Withers writes for ITWire

Apple already tags tracks in the iTunes Store that are unsuitable for children and it sells R rated movies, so why isn’t there something similar for content such as books and comics in the App Store?

The call to add age categorisation comes after Apple ruled Belfast-based Infurious Comics’ Murderdrome did not comply with the App Store’s content guidelines.

Infurious officials described the free comic as “darkly humorous.”

The company has “already secured another script and art and will be submitting another comic written and drawn specifically for the iPhone/iPod touch to the App Store in the next few days and has commitments from established creators for exclusive content

Jack Schofield from The Guardian writes:

Apple may be worried that iPhone users don’t have quite enough braincells to figure out that if they buy something called Murderdrome, they are not going to get a Disneyfied version of Peter Rabbit and the Flopsy Bunnies. Or maybe they are just being protective of the huge number of iPhone buyers who are under the age of 14….. Either way, couldn’t the problem be solved by having a ratings system, as InfuriousComics suggests?

TechRadar UK have a short interview with PJ where they examine the ratings system on the Apple iTunes App Store that we’re keen on having implemented for content other than games.

TR: Were you shocked that it was banned?

PJH: After we’d seen the other apps that were banned it wasn’t a massive surprise, no. Unfortunately, we were too far ahead in development to stop and start with something new.

TR: Do you think Apple were right to take this decision, given that the comic is, obviously, centred round comic-book violence?

PJH: I think Apple is right to do everything in it’s power to make the iPhone / iPod touch a mass market item, I think they’re wrong in allowing games in the App store to have ratings and not books or comics.

Click through to read the whole text.

As I said in the last post, we’re getting some serious interest - we’ve been emailed by creators and publishers alike with the intent of becoming a distribution source for their material. This is because the digital format we’re pioneering (codenamed Kirby while it was in development) will open up comics to a whole new set of readers as well as ushering in new models for distribution.

Mike Cane’s Blog

Take a look at this video. It is staggering. It is Apple Insanely-Great staggering. It is an absolute breakthrough in the field of electronic comic books. I can’t say enough about how radical and breakthrough this is. Look!!!
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They’ve gone beyond anything I could have imagined. I salute you! You have taken my breath away! You will change the world!
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It is a work of genius, seriously. It is revolutionary. And like I said in a msg to Blue Pilot, I wish this had been around in the 1970s and Jack Kirby’s Fourth World was on it. I would have been able to peel away Frank Giacoia’s terrible inks from Kirby’s wonderful pencils (thank God Mike Royer came in!).
 

Bad Librarianship

Gotta admit, I’m really proud of homeboy P.J. Holden: he may just have created a revolutionary way for comics to be distributed. All these years writing about how we need an iTunes for comics, and it turns out to be iTunes itself (basically).

One of the early demos was this insert on Warren Ellis’ forum, whitechapel.

This then led to Ed Kaye’s Hypergeek.ca which gave a pretty accurate description of the business model and comparison with the traditional print model as well as the sort of numbers seen on other digital distribution formats.

They look to have this just right for an iPod screen, as it it isn’t overly heavy on the text, so it is easily readable, and they’ve gone nice and clean and bright on he art i.e. there isn’t a tonne of background detail etc, which might make things look cluttered on the iPod screen.
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Well, I love the art, love the story, and very much dig the concept. I’m always pleased to see people doing new things with comics. Any new format that will get new readers into the medium has got to be a good thing. I love the idea of being able to go down to the inks, then the pencils, what a cool idea! It really takes advantage of the format, something you definitely couldn’t do with PDF distribution, or some other such.

We’re breaking new ground with material specifically designed not just for the screen, but for a digital comic that you actually thumb your way through.

This is the original thread from panel and pixel that sort of kicked us off here. We’d not been intending to release anything for a couple of weeks but - well - excitement got the better of us and there were more and more people who had seen the application ‘in the flesh’ and were talking about it!

“If I had an iPhone already, I’d definitley buy this from you!”

“I’m very interested in the iPhone as a comics platform. Very, very interested.”

What more could you ask for?

The first Youtube demo of Murderdrome which in only three days has garnered nearly a thousand views.

In the demo you can see some of the major features of the application, why it appeals to the casual comic reader, the dedicated comic fan and also someone looking to get started in the comic industry.

Some comments:

So now I have to buy an iphone
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Looks fantastic! I’m really looking forward to this comic and this iPhone app ^_^