Unabashed Plug: Ligeia the Vampire (and more) on iPhone

I've been a fan of artist Rodrigo Diaz Ricci's work for several years and happily promoted his vampire character, Ligeia the Vampire, when it featured elsewhere. I'm so glad the strip - 40 episodes in all of vampire, zombie and wartime menace - is now on iPhone, the result of a partnership between Rodrigo and ROK Comics.

Ligeia was first created back 2006, inspired by the story of the same name by Edgar Allan Poe. Drawn in a style echoing the work of Alex Toth, Frank Miller and Alberto Breccia, Ligeia is inspired by various sources as well as Poe; there are also elements of HP Lovecraft, especially his lesser known work "Medusa's Coil" (by Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop, more than anything because Ligeia's hair moves in a lively, bizarre way).

The strip also pays homage to movies like La Maschera del Demonio, directed by Mario Bava, more than anything because of the use of black and white in that film. Physically, Ligeia is a blend between Barbara Steele and Edwige Fenech and other actresses of the Golden Age of film.

The story itself is inspired by the story of Hanussen, a Jew in the court of the Third Reich. Rodrigo was astonished by this bizarre character, a Jew who was the magician of many senior Nazis, but hated by Gobbels who considered him a charlatan. Hanussen believed in The Temple of the Uunseen, but made the mistake one night at a party of having a vision and predicting that a building would be burned, causing a major sea change in the Weimar Republic. One day later, someone set fire to the Reichstag and Hitler came to power. Shortly afterward, Hannusen was found shot dead in a park.

This is one of the first 'white label' iphone comics apps Rok Comics, where I still work part time, is putting out in partnership with the creator on a revenue share deal - Rok provides the delivery app, the creator the content.

We've also created apps for Rich Dieslin's 'Mobile Gospel' - a quirky but fun re-telling of the gospel of Luke which I think will have a wide appeal beyond the Christian community - and Steve English's 'Madd Science'.

Steve's strip won the Rok comics competition a couple of years back, judged by the editor of the Beano, so it seemed a no brainer to include it in this first tranche of iPhone releases.

With Ligeia: Treasure of the Vampire, as well as a creepy story, you get the world's most evil cat, Edgar, and a dangerous gang of mercenaries, the Danube Bears, thrown in for good measure.

(Their leader is called David Freeman - I suspect some homage from Rodrigo!)

The app itself delivers the comic well, in my opinion - simple slide to view and tap for the next episode. Works both portrait and landscape. Nothing fancy like some comic apps - the content is king.

Some things I'd like tweaked in an upgrade - episode titles get clipped in the strip listing for example - but they don't affect my overall enjoyment of this first Ligeia story.

Hope you'll check it out.

• Ligeia the Vampire: The Treasure of the Vampire on iTunes at http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/ligeia/id409858722?mt=8

Google eBooks Now Available In US

Google has rebranded Google Editions and launched its web-based Google eBooks service in the US, making some three million books available as digital editions across mutile platforms and readers at a stroke.

The company describes Google eBooks as a platform for selling ebooks, making it easier for writers to find new audiences for their books, and for readers to find, buy, and read books on most devices.

The new platform could also of course be used to present comics and graphic novels.

Google is working to bring the product to other countries in 2011, after it reached what it described as a groundbreaking agreement with US authors and publishers. The project means
Amazon, Apple and Google are now the biggest players in the ebook market. (Apple launched  its iBooks offering for iPad back in April).

With Google eBooks, readers can discover and buy books from the Google eBookstore or get them from one of our independent bookseller partners. Whether you buy a Google eBook from Google or from an online bookseller, they are all stored in your online library.

The platform enables readers to read books on devices from laptops to netbooks to tablets to smartphones to e-readers. Using the new Google eBooks Web Reader, you can buy, store and read Google eBooks in the cloud, using a free, password-protected Google account with unlimited ebooks storage. Being able to access your books from anywhere means that it doesn't matter what device you're using.

Google eBooks will also work on Android and Apple devices through free apps (but not, as yet, Amazon's Kindle, since Google's service uses Adobe's Digital Rights Management software which the Kindle doesn't). For many books you can select which font, font size, day/night reading mode and line spacing suits you.

The Washington Post reports the US launch has not been without its hiccups, pondering Google's lack of success at straight-to-consumer products (citing the failure of Google's online video store back in 2006) and reporting a problem with the quality of some public domain offerings. But it's early days for the platform and while some have derided a web-based approach to book reading, anything that makes downloading books to read simpler for the average computer user, with as few 'steps' to achieving that as possible, should do well.

Google Books was first launched in 2004, as a part-time project developed by Larry Page, co-founder of Google, and set out to make the information stored in the world's books accessible and useful online. Since then, the company has digitized more than 15 million books from more than 35,000 publishers, and more than 40 libraries, and more than 100 countries in more than 400 languages.

• Google eBooks Web Reader


• This Associated Press video details the project: