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Forget Comixology: get your inexpensive comics from the Humble Bundle folks
Pretty soon Humble Bundle is going to run out of new things to sell. The company has already conquered video games, ebooks, comedy albums and briefly dabbled in film, now the pay-what-you-want kings are turning its sights on comic books. Starting at 11AM PT today you can get a fine collection of digital comics from Image, including Saga and East of West for as little as a penny. If you do care to cough up more (over $15, to be specific), you can get vol. 1 and vol. 20 of The Walking Dead. But this is just the beginning: Humble wants to be known for its book bundles as well as its game offerings. Once this Image Comic promotion is over on May 15th, Humble will be launching a new tab on its site dedicated to ebooks, audio books and comics. That means that there will always be two bundles running simultaneously: a game or other media bundle on the front page and an ebook bundle on a separate tab. And you can expect two different book bundles per-month.
PlayStation Network gets original TV with superpowered crime drama
Microsoft and Xbox won't be the only producers of original television content aimed at console owners this generation. Variety reports that Sony Pictures Television will be producing an original series called "Powers," which will air via the PlayStation Network. Powers will be an adaptation of a long-running comic of the same name, written by Brian Michael Bendis (Ultimate Spider-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy) and illustrated by Michael Avon Oeming (Judge Dredd, Catwoman). The comic mixes crime drama and superhero fantasy, sort of like Law & Order, if Jack McCoy was prosecuting Magneto. Bendis and Oeming will also serve as producers for the show, which currently has 10 episodes in the works. No release date was given for Powers. [Image: Sony]
Comixology claims responsibility for banning Saga #12, rescinds ban
Yesterday, we posted about Apple reportedly banning issue 12 of a comic book called Saga, due to a couple of graphic sex scenes included in it. The book's creator, Brian K. Vaughan, had posted that Apple wasn't allowing his book to be sold on the App Store, though it was available through a number of other channels. But today it turns out that Apple isn't to blame -- instead, the book's digital publisher, Comixology, has confessed that they made the decision not to sell the book. Comixology runs the very popular Comics app on iOS, and they publish the digital versions of books from a number of different publishers, including Image Comics, who publishes the Saga series. The company's CEO, David Steinberger, has posted on the company blog that Comixology made its own decision to not publish the book, based on its assumption of Apple's policies. Of course, after the news yesterday, Apple says it would not have a problem with the book being published in Comixology's app, and Steinberger says the issue will be available soon, and apologizes to Vaughan and Image Comics for the confusion. So there's both good news and bad news here. The good news is that this decision did not come from Apple -- instead, it was Comixology that jumped the gun and decided to not publish the book on the App Store. But the bad news is that while Comixology did make the mistake, I can't really blame them for being concerned about Apple's retribution. Just yesterday, the company did threaten an App Store developer with removal over some adult content, and we've seen examples before of Apple being overly concerned about content that was already labeled for users 17-plus. That's why we here at TUAW jumped on this story and took the comic's creator, Vaughan, at his word -- because it's not hard to believe, given Apple's unclear and inconsistent polices on this matter, that they would have a problem with this book. Fortunately, they don't, and all credit to them for confirming that. Macworld followed up with Apple to confirm the supposed ban, and in hindsight, we should have done the same. But as long as Apple's policies and their enforcement on what's OK and not OK for the App Store remain unclear, we may see more issues like this pop up, either driven by developers dependent on the App Store for revenue, or by Apple itself.
Apple bans Brian K. Vaughn's Saga #12 comic book due to graphic sex scenes [Updated]
Update: It turns out this is not true -- the ban came from the book's digital publisher, Comixology, not Apple itself. Comixology has since rescinded the ban. Original Post: I never thought I'd write two stories in one day about Apple attacking the comic book industry over adult content, but that's indeed what's happening today. The latest controversy comes from writer Brian K. Vaughn, who writes a terrific series called Saga. The just-released issue number 12 of the book contains "two postage stamp-sized images of gay sex," according to Vaughn in a press release, and as a result, Apple has officially banned it from the App Store, commanding various comic publishers to not carry the book digitally for sale on the iPhone or iPad. Vaughn says he could have considered changing the images, but "everything we put into the book is there to advance our story, not (just) to shock or titillate," so the material is staying in. In the meantime, he says, you can find the book at any brick-and-mortar comic book store, on Image Comics' website outside of Apple's marketplace, or even (and here's the real laugher) in Apple's iBookstore, where apparently the company is less lenient than it is for third-party publishers. Obviously, these images and this book aren't appropriate for children, so it makes sense to be cautious about how the images are shown. But Saga is hardly pornography -- it's an excellent, well-written and insightful piece of art. Apple's censorship on this is at least more timely than some of its other attacks on "adult" material, but still, the fact that Apple is trying to block specific content from its store for arbitrary reasons is disturbing.
Read first issue of Dead Space comic online ... legally
Image Comics and Newsarama have made the first issue of the Dead Space comic book available to read online. The story in the six-part series takes place prior to the events of the video game on the USG Ishimura. Some finer details of the game might be spoiled by reading the comic, but those who've finished the game will get more backstory without having to read Ishimura crew logs. The comic series was originally released earlier this year and is also available now in a collected hardcover edition. If you want to know more of our thoughts about Dead Space, be sure to check out our "Game of the Year" post about this "strategic dismemberment" thriller.[Via Big Download]
