As a huge fan of comics and an obsessive collector of several different book lines I’m excited and yet horrified by the possibilities for comics when the Apple Tablet launches. I really like the feeling of getting a new book in hand and paging through…looking at the sheen on the pages and the smell of the ink and paper mash wafting up takes me back. Am I ready to abandon my books forever? Am I to accept the digital versions saved to my hard drive as a collection worthy of the pride I have for my bagged, sealed, and graded copies of relatively rare books?

When I’m buying a line of books I always get 2 copies…one to read and one to bag immediately. Following a particular artist you like can provide hours of discovering new and interesting lines…or a great style or formatting choice. John Romita Sr. was my first real obsession The Amazing Spiderman series in particular. One of my two very favorite is his son John Romita Jr. and his work on Peter Parker: Spiderman and most recently Kick Ass which is being made into a movie.  J. Scott Campbell is the other. This guy can flat out draw. He started on Gen13 was great and followed that up with my favorite series Dangergirl.

Great stuff…but could it be replaced by this new Apple device? My guess is no, but it’s a direction that the smaller book publisher are already heading and it’s incumbent on the big boys to step up to the digital plate in a substantial way. I could see new markets where the were none before because the device, or devices very similar, could be everywhere. The medium could finally meld the interwebs into the true connection it’s supposed to be. The iPhone took me a step closer to that complete integration but this device, well…it could be big.

A good article over at Gizmodo by Joel Johnson inspired this ramble…thanks man!

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