Digital Comics?

Blog@Newsarama posted about the Bone graphic novel being downloadable for the iPhone. While the iPhone doesn't much interest me as a piece of tech, the idea of portable, digital comics does. The trouble with physical comics is that they take up space (though, to be fair, that's really the main problem with everything in the analog world, isn't it?), so I would be really excited about the possibility of a high-quality, portable reader for e-comics. The iPhone doesn't seem to be ideal for this, the screen seems a bit small for it, but it is a step along the road and that I'm happy about.

E-readers have been around for a while; the latest entry in the field (I think) being Amazon's Kindle, which I've been drooling over for the past year (Oh, to have $360 to spend on a gadget). Still, while it looks like it would be great for reading books (and other plain text documents), the current incarnation isn't suitable for comics: no color. Still, I'd be interested in seeing how well the screen could render black and white comics.

Meanwhile, digital comics are already here. Aside from the less than legal downloads floating around the net, Marvel Comics has fully embraced digitizing their comics, offering online access to a large part of their back-catalog, and a few online-only comics, for a subscription fee. DC has been more resistant to offering their mainstream titles on line, but they do run Zuda Comics which is home to a lot of interesting webcomics.

So, I'm hopeful. Hopeful that all of these separate endeavors prove successful and pave the way for my dream gadget.