Fun Kindle offering, May 11, 2009

By 

Joseph P. Menta, Jr. (Philadelphia, PA USA) –

  

  

  

“Star Trek: Countdown” is a four-part comic book mini-series that covers events leading up to the new 2009 “Star Trek” movie, which is in theaters as I write this. So far, it’s a satisfying, involving little story that centers on the older 24th century Ambassador Spock and Romulan miner (and later villain) Nero, both of whom will later shoot back in time to the era of young Kirk, Spock, McCoy, etc., to participate in the movie’s story.

While the re-formatting for the Kindle 2 isn’t perfect, it’s more than serviceable. For example, if an original comic book page from the story has four or more panels of art on the page, the Kindle version separates the panels so that one panel, or two at the most, appears on a single Kindle page. That way you can see the details in the art, and- more importantly, not have to deal with too-small word balloons. All word balloons and captions are at least readable, and most are large enough to go well beyond minimum readability. Further, I actually own the printed comic book version of the first issue of this series (which this Kindle version adapts), and it seems to me that all art and text has been carried over to the Kindle with no abridgements. Of course, you have to view the art in black and white, giving up the nice colors of the printed comic. But for me that’s small price to pay for the fun of reading comics on the Kindle.

It’ll be interesting to see if the new Kindle DX, with its larger screen, will simply duplicate the page layouts of the comic books it sells. If so, great. But for now, comics pages re-formatted for the K2 shouldn’t turn you away from this interesting little story, or- if skillful re-formatting is the norm in the future- other comic book stories that the Kindle 2 may offer. This review also applies, of course, to those who want to read this mini-series on the original Kindle, which will presumably offer the same re-formatted installments as the K2.

With all that said, I’m now off to read issue 2 of “Star Trek: Countdown”. For only a buck and change, why not? And besides, an old-favorite “Star Trek: The Next Generation” character makes a surprise appearance on the last page of this first issue, and I want to see what he’s been up to since “Star Trek: Nemesis”.

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not for kindle, April 6, 2009

By 

James Michael Mcleod –

  

I jjust wanted to see how this formatted o n my K2. Not too good. The gray scale makes for good quality b&w graphics but you go blind trying to read the captions. The story is good and I’ll keep this on my K2 to show off its graphics instead of the goofy author pics.

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