Robot, DSComics Host Digital Comics for Nintendo DSi

Can’t be bothered to bring a few comic books to pass the time while you’re out?  Happen to own a Nintendo DSi?  Robot Comics and DSComics.com hope to accommodate both of those conditions with free comics specially designed and formatted for the hand-held console.  Users can access the free service through the Nintendo DSi browser by visiting dscomics.com, without downloading or installing third-party add-ons.

The new service currently offers three series.  Two of them are licensed by Creative Commons, which offers readers more interactivity and allows them to share and remix the titles however they please.

“Our goal is proximity in the broadest sense of the word. We don’t want anything –distribution, hardware, even money and copyright – to get in the way between comics and their potential readers,” says Robot Comics Director Hermes Pique.  “By releasing free comics for popular hand-helds we are reaching a brand new audience that was largely ignored by the comics industry.”  Robot Comics also hosts comics publishes and produces digital comics for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch, Google’s Android mobiles, and Amazon Kindle.

The following are summaries of the three titles already on DSComics:

Thunder Road #1

A high-action, wide-sweeping episodic pulp adventure by writer Sean Demory and illustrator Steven Sanders (Five Fists of Science).

SYNOPSIS: The bomb-ravaged American Heartland has been largely left out of the equation, falling prey to unchecked corporate land-barons and motorcycle-riding, nazidope-smoking MEF veterans ravaging the wastes. Some small towns have become fortresses, while others have followed the Soviet model and taken to the road, with clans roaming from one corp-compound to the next. Route 66, Interstate 70 and a dozen other superhighways have become the new frontier, where fortunes can be made with grit, cunning and a steady hand.

Welcome to the Thunder Road.

Anda’s Game #1

An adaptation by Dara Naraghi (Terminator Salvation movie prequel) and Esteve Polls (Mega-City Noir) of the short story by Cory Doctorow (Boing Boing editor, Little Brother).

“[A] riff on the way that property-rights are coming to games, and on the bizarre spectacle of sweat-shops in which children are paid to play the game all day in order to generate eBay-able game-wealth. When I was a kid, there were arcade kings who would play up Gauntlet characters to maximum health and weapons and then sell their games to nearby players for a dollar or two — netting them about $0.02 an hour — but this is a very different proposition indeed.” -Cory Doctorow

Originally published in the Creative Commons comic Cory Doctorow’s Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now by IDW Publishing, Anda’s Game is remixed by Robot Comics to create a new version specifically designed for mobile devices.

Misery Depo

A mystery/science fiction one-shot drawn by Juan Romera (Zombie Highway: Directionless) and written by Hermes Pique, intended for mature audiences.

SYNOPSIS: An anomaly causes an elderly mother to awake undressed inside a humid capsule. The voice of her daughter echoes in her memory, the intent of her words forgotten. Was she sharing the completeness of their unity, or hatefully wishing her mother’s demise?

A seemingly infinite corridor of capsules hosts hundreds of persons, calmly sleeping, miserable underneath. Yet, an old man shares the mother’s awareness, and is even certain of the nature of the place: a high-technology concentration camp; the second one for him to escape...

You can read more about Robot Comics on their website.

Source: Newsarama