I like steak. And I like jelly donuts. But I wouldn’t want to eat a steak jelly donut. Similarly, I like comics. And I like iPhones. But I am not wild about this new mesh of the two as reported by Daniel Brusilovsky over at TechCrunch:

PanelFly is partnering with Marvel Comics, one of the largest comic book companies in the world, to bring all your comic book fantasies to the iPhone. Marvel’s line up of comics is quite amazing — the original Spider-Man series, X-Men, X23, Age Apocalypse, and Iron Man. These titles are now being offered in the Panelfly iPhone application, going back to the very first issues.

So, I haven’t actually tried it and therefore can only poo-poo the idea in the abstract. In practice, it may be super awesome. But physics and math suggest that it will not. The average comic book size is the standard 8 1/2 x 11 (or somewhere in that ballpark). The iPhone screen is 3 1/2 inches diagonally. That tells me that reading options are going to be somewhat limited. Panelfly’s video tour of the app shows a full-page viewer that the user can zoom in on to read the otherwise microscopic print.

This holds no interest to me, I enjoy seeing and reading full pages. But I could see how someone could easily become accustomed to it. Furthermore, since the app is free and the digital comic issues only $.99, you would hardly be risking much to try it out and see if your tastes differ from mine.

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