I wasn’t going to buy one. I really wasn’t. Especially with all the jerk-face wankery that Apple has been showing lately, I was going to vote with my wallet and not buy one. I was going to be strong. Plus, I read personal finance blogs sometimes when I feel like giving myself nightmares, and I know all about waiting for purchases, including all the little rules to curb impulse spending.

A free issue of the Fantastic 4 in the Marvel app

So I waited three months to make sure if I really wanted it. I researched, I read, and I drooled. I made myself forget about it for awhile. But finally, my love of comic books overcame my hatred of Apple’s wankery and I bought an iPad, the cheapest version:  16GB WIFI.

And lord almighty, this machine is a comic lover’s dream. The form factor, battery-life, and touch interface are perfect for reading comic books. Before that, I was reading the occasional issue on my laptop or desktop to try out digital comics, but you can’t lie on your side in bed while reading on those devices. The desktop stays on the desk. The laptop heats up, makes fan and hard drive noises, and is really only feasible while lying on your back. Plus, I could never find an application that I liked – they were all slow or cumbersome, even on decent machines.

It’s a whole different game on the iPad.

There are a bunch of different apps to read comics on the iPad and they all have their strengths and flaws. Eventually I decided on Comic Zeal as the ideal reader, although I still have some problems with it. But I’ve been talking to the dev on Comic Zeal’s site, trying to give some feedback in hopes of making the app better. Other than that, the other apps aren’t bad. I like getting free comics from Marvel every few weeks through the Marvel app – that’s nice.

Before I bought it, I wasn’t sure if I’d like reading comics on the device of not – I made several trips to Best Buy and the Apple store to play with it to make sure. But the real test was a few days after I bought it, when I sat down to actually read some comics. At first it was a little strange, I couldn’t get past the interface and really get into the comics. The reading experience is different than a paper comic – you scroll the page and turn the pages, instead of moving your eyes to look down the page. It took me a few issues to get used to it, but then – WHAM! I looked up, four hours and thirty issues later and realized it was time to go to bed. Holy hell, it’s powerful awesome.

Now, I love reading all types of comics, but my true love is Spider-man, which I’ve been collecting since I was a kid. I have a full run of Web of Spider-man, Spider-man, Spectacular Spider-man, Amazing Spider-man (volume 2), Spider-man Unlimited, Sensational Spider-man (Vol 1 and 2), Marvel Knights Spider-man, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-man, and a bunch of mini-series and one-shots. I’m about 150 issues away (mostly the expensive early ones, unfortunately) from a full run of Amazing Spider-man (volume 1). I’m still waiting to find an old lady at a garage sale to fleece her out of Amazing Fantasy 15 (fingers crossed!). All told, my collection contains well over a thousand printed issues.

Too many comics

The collector in me wants to keep all those print issues forever, but the digital monk in me wants to get rid of them, as much is feasible, for the sake of digital issues. Physical issues take up space, have to be moved, sorted, and protected in plastic sleeves. They stain, get wet, get chewed up by animals and kids, and have to be handled with care. I treat my comics well, but there’s a decent amount of comic collecting that is just maintenance of their physicality. Not to mention that reading physical comics in bed annoys my girlfriend – unwrapping the plastic, reading the book, rewrapping it in plastic, shifting the mattress to reach down to the long box by our bed to get the next issue – she’s a trooper, but she still complains from time to time. All that noise and movement isn’t necessary when reading comics on the iPad. So I’d like to completely transition to digital.

Of course, most of the comics I have are only available digitally through piracy, which isn’t an option for me.  I really like Spider-man and want to pay to ensure its continued production. The Amazing Spider-man, however, especially the expensive early issues I’m missing, is available on a DVD from Marvel. So I picked it up, as an experiment. I want to see if selling my print comics is really feasible or not. I want to know how I feel about only having the issues digitally. I’m still very attached to them (I’ve had some issues since I was eight years old), but sentimentality alone is no reason to keep stuff around.

So that’s why I bought an iPad. There are tons of problems with the machine – no Flash (already bothering me – hell, even the WordPress Stats add-on uses Flash to display graphs), lack of file management (data is stored inside Apps instead of separate files), crappy file syncing, no USB ports, and all that Apple App store wankery.

But for reading comics?

Pure unadulterated awesome.