Nook Tablet Vs Kindle Fire for comics

My lovely wife purchased me a Nook Tablet for my 30th birthday and I was extremely excited to receive such a nice gift. I had done some research and decided that I liked the specs on the NT more than those on the Fire. NT has 1gb of memory and Fire had 512mb, so it made more sense to buy the device that had double the memory for the same price. I knew that the Comixology app was available for the Fire, but I figured I could read the comics I bought in the browser on the Nook.

This turned out to be a large overestimation of the NT's browser. It crashes without 2 or 3 pages into a comic and is extremely buggy during normal browsing. It runs Barnes & Noble apps just fine, but the selection of comics is limited to collected editions and even with that, is pretty sparse. I like that they have all volumes of Irredeemable and The Walking Dead, as well as various Marvel, Dark Horse, Archie and IDW trades, but their library seems to be very narrow among that. If you'd like to read any DC material, you are out of luck, since B&N had a falling out with DC and pulled all of their books. This prejudice expands into Dc's Vertigo imprint, too, which is unfortunate, because most of the trades I read are Vertigo.

There's also a few design issues with the unit itself that annoyed me. The expandable SDcard port is tucked behind and under the cute little embellishment on the bottom left corner of the device. You have to open the flap on the back and try to get the card in the space between the little corner bar and the side of the Nook. You have to be a fucking surgeon to succeed. I thought my feminine petite man-hands were just slightly too big, but my gnomish wife also had problems. Then the Nook didn't even register that it was in there. Also, I thought the face plate of my Nook was chipped, only to find out that the tiny ding on the top right of it was actually the microphone. Ugly design choice.

About the browser issues, I was vindicated upon reading message boards on B&N's own website, that many people seemed to be experiencing the same problems. The unfortunate side of this is that I did not see any customer support in the way of providing a fix for the problem, or even responding to these complaints.

I was left very frustrated and had a childish meltdown while trying to use my Nook. I feel horrible that my wife, who bought me a really nice present that I picked out, had to watch me cursing it. I know that apps can be sideloaded onto the device. I know that it can be rooted for total freedom to use third-party apps. I'm not very tech-savvy, so I don't want to deal with working around the devices software to use it the way it should work out of the box. Maybe that's expecting too much, but stay with me.

I took the Nook back to the B&N store and explained my frustration to the Nook guy there. I told him that I wanted to love this Nook and if there was a way that he could show me to enjoy comics on it, I would keep it. To his credit, he was very upfront with me and explained that the in-browser comics I was reading were probably taxing the browser's cache too much and there really wasn't going to be a way to read Comixology-purchased comics without the app. I thanked him for being honest and returned my Nook.


We then went across the street to Best Buy. I played with the demo Kindle Fire they had and was pleased to see that the Comix app provided a wonderful reading experience. The browser still crashes when trying to read the comics in the browser, but I have an app to download and read to my hearts content. The touch screen also seems much more intuitive and scrolling through the apps feels much more fluid than on the NT.

I explained to the gentleman at Best Buy that I liked the Fire, but didn't like that it was half the machine as the NT. Then he enlightened me to the news that the new KF had 1gb of memory, just like the NT. Sold. She bought the Fire, I took it home, and read some Batman. It looked great, and I actually found that I really enjoyed reading digital comics.

It's also very nice having access to a much larger marketplace than being restricted to the apps that B&N offers on their website.

In conclusion, I can say from experience with both devices, that for what I want out of an ereader/tablet the Fire is the winner by far. I don't read many books, so maybe the Nook would be better for someone who doesn't care about comics, but for me, the Nook fails pretty miserably.

I fully endorse the Fire if you are planning on using it to read comics. It's very nice.

And if anyone else tells me 'why don't you just buy an iPad?' someone is gonna get choked.

Avengers Aliens

My guess is that the mysterious alien race in the Avengers movie are the Badoon. The split-second screen shot in the trailer in which we see humanoid invaders leaping from their airborne conveyance to...a splattery death on the pavement of NY's streets, one would assume, have undoubtedly been analyzed by every fanboy who has a voice on the interwebs. They don't look like Skrulls. They don't appear to be Kree. They look like Badoon. I suppose they could be a made-up-for-the-movie race of extraterrestrials, which would be a sensible move by the writers and Mr. Whedon. This would give them total freedom without being chained to continuity. If they are original creations, then they look a helluva lot like Badoon. What do you think? They have the silly head gear, and under the armor in the comic picture, they are reptilian humanoids with loin clothes. For the Horde!

Power Horse Universe reboot!

I was looking at my Power Horse pages that I have done, and I was thinking that they were sub-par. The art was good and all, but I didn't think the story was what I wanted it to be. So, we are rebooting the PHU. Yes, in this never-before-seen maneuver, a comic is being rebooted in the first issue! I've already rewritten the first 5 pages, and I like them much better. No turning back now! Expect a new preview within the next 6 months, at the rate I've been going.

Don't worry. PHtHwHP will be back and better than it was before! Stay tuned for the glorious return of Horse Power!

Treasure!

My wife's grandmother sent me a flat rate box that was full of old comics. This is awesome. In it were an assortment of silver age comics from various publishers. A few noteworthy inclusions were a batch of Classics Illustrated, some Treasure Chest comics, a few Archie, Donald Duck, Road Runner, etc. Basically what the kids read in the late 60's. Some were missing covers, and they were all pretty yellow. Basically the kind of wear to be expected from a box of comics sitting in the attic of a house in southern Louisiana for several decades. In any case, I was thrilled just that she thought of me when she found them and was kind enough to send them to me. I'm really happy to have them and will be reading every one of them.

As I was inspecting them, I noticed that the condition of them was improving as I dug deeper into the box. No doubt they had sat, undisturbed, for years, so the ones on top took the brunt of the moisture and age. To my surprise, I found these two comics at the very bottom of the stack.

Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #125 and Detective Comics #351. This makes an already awesome acquisition even awesomer. Thanks Mimi!

This Fury comic is so racist. It's hilarious! Look at the teeth on these Viet Cong!