Virtual reality and comic books are something of a new thing.  In fact, the first one, Magnetique, was released just one month ago.   However advances have been made already in that short time.    Right off the bat it has to be known that this review is basically of a preview.  Though in the Oculus store, all comic titles are currently samples.  Some are longer than others, but the overall experience is just a taste of things to come.

Starting the app up leaves you in a dark large dome like room with the comic titles and thumbnails appearing in front of you.    You are treated to names you will recognize, Batman, Ninja Turtles, Planet of the Apes, and My Little Pony, all pretty big licenses.   To start, I just kind of went with something I was already curious about, a title called Revolution from IDW Publishing.  The comic mixes Transformers, G.I. Joe, Action Man, M.A.S.K., Micronauts, and ROM, it's a pretty big event, so neat to see this title that was just released a few weeks ago already given a VR treatment.      

 The comic took a little while to load up for the first time, using an S7 Edge here, but this was the only time I noticed this happen during the whole experience.   Visually it feels like a lot of space gets wasted on this comic, panels could probably be larger.  Reading the comic felt more like a rinky dink small movie screen when we have the ability to have an IMAX size in front of us.  Music came in loud, and things were way more animated than I was expecting.  Not familiar enough with the specific characters with what was going on, I opted to check out another comic.

Justice League Injustice is a choice, I know Batman, I love Batman, so I load that comic.   Music is spot on and everything feels right with this comic, and I start to take in the art.  Though at first I wanted a bigger viewing screen, seeing each panel in this comic come one by one as the story progresses really allows one to focus on the beautiful comic book art.  Everything is fairly big compared to a comic in my hand, and nothing is blurry, really crisp images and colors.    I move on to the Ninja Turtles comic book, no music or sound effects happen, and the silence is deafening.     I liked seeing the cover of the comic at the start of this one, depending on the comic determines how much animation, music, and just work is going into all the little aspects of each comic.   The Ninja Turtles looks so crisp, but the absence of audio really makes a difference, an option to make my own playlist should be available.  For all comics.

Running through quickly the rest of titles, Dave Gibbons of Watchmen fame has Treatment Tokyo, beautiful cover, very 3D feel.  Very animated.  My little Pony, cute and colorful, full of good sound effects.  Planet of the Apes, great music, panels animated but not too much, great amount of story and content with this comic compared to the others.   Somnia: Origins is neat with a full wraparound panel effect coming in within the story that made for a pleasant surprise.   The last title I tried, MONO: The Old Curiousity Shop, featured beautiful wrap around shots and well done sound effects.  For an example, image being inside the image below, it is really something neat to see.

In the end, the only thing that comes to mind when checking this app out, is short.  So so short.   This is a preview, it worked well, it gave a taste of what can be done with just this app alone, but I can see it will be up to the publishers to provide good content.  It is great to see IDW Publishing and DC providing content, let's see if Marvel can play nice too, or at least within DC and IDW get some more titles up soon.  At least one full comic too, maybe reading comics in this way isn't meant for long form, but I wouldn't mind seeing if it is.

Score

4 out of 5 Stars.  If you are sitting in your recliner reading a comic, why not have some sound effects and panels animate sometimes too while you are at it, for right now with this experience being free, there is no reason you should not be on top of downloading and trying it out for yourself now.  Go to the Oculus web store here to start your download.

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