stela

Weekender: Stela, Webcomics, Vampires and NSFW Bible Stories
Weekender: Stela, Webcomics, Vampires and NSFW Bible Stories
Weekender: Stela, Webcomics, Vampires and NSFW Bible Stories
The weekend is here! Put down your paperwork, throw your stationery out of the window, and do a victory spin in your office chair, because it’s time to catch up on that greatest of all media: comics! What’s been going on this week? There’s so much comics that there’s no way anybody can keep up with all of it — so Weekender is here to catch you up on some of the stories you may have missed, and some of the best writing about comics from the past few days.
Vertical Horizon: Stela Aims to Shake Up the Digital Comics Platform
Vertical Horizon: Stela Aims to Shake Up the Digital Comics Platform
Vertical Horizon: Stela Aims to Shake Up the Digital Comics Platform
There hasn't been much innovation in the digital comics market since the iPhone arrived in 2007. Even with the debut of the iPad and competitive operating systems like Android and Windows Mobile, the formula for what makes comics work in the digital format hasn't changed drastically over the past eight years. Where once there were numerous apps all vying for the attention of the consumer and publishers, the format for reading remained almost identical across the board. You open the book, you tap an edge or swipe to turn the page, and you can zoom in and out accordingly to get a better look at the action and art. That's pretty much been the default nearly every app has gone with simply because it makes sense and it works. However, as great an experience as that kind of reading is on tablets, it doesn't hold up quite as well on mobile phones. Constantly pinching and zooming around isn't quite conducive to an enjoyable reading experience. As people have become more reliant on the phones for day-to-day content consumption, it only made sense that some developers would find a way to make comic reading more comfortable and compatible with smartphones. That's where Stela (pronounced Steel-ah) hopes to make its mark. Developed by BreakoutBit, and spearheaded by former Ubisoft manager Ryan Yount and former Dark Horse editor Jim Gibbons, Stela doesn't see the limitations of a phone as a problem, but as an answer to getting comics to hundreds of millions of people.