The homepage has two large features for Wizards of Mickey and Superduck:

Then there’s an Info page with some questions and answers. First it is made clear that the digital comics will be available on “mobile and smartphones, iPhones® and iPods®, PSP™ and PSP™go”. Secondly it says that “5 new stories will be released each week within the Comic Store of PlayStation®Store and Apple’s online stores, and will continue to be available in an ever growing Digicomics’ digital archive.”

I had previously heard that they were planning to release 10 stories per week, but 5 is still a good amount. The service has now been available on the PSP for two-and-a-half weeks and the number of stories is still 40 as it was the day it launched.

I can not find any information about DigiComics on the US website at Disney.com, even though the service has launched here on December 16th too. It has always surprised me that there is never any information about Disney comics on the company’s main corporate website. Everything is covered, from animation to television and from books to theme parks, but the comic books are not mentioned anywhere, even though in a lot of countries in the world that is most people’s main access to the world of Disney every week.

Disney DigiComics is using the vast library of comics created by The Walt Disney Company Italy for Topolino and other Italian comics. The Disney stories are in a special section in the PlayStation Store on the PSP and they are organized by character. You can browse by Donald Duck, Daisy, Gladstone Gander, etc. Special series, like Double Duck and Wizards of Mickey, are listed separately. The short stories (around 25 to 30 pages) are $0.99 each and the longer ones (around 50 pages) are $1.99. There is one free 8-page comic for download, which is titled ‘Donald Duck and the Fussy Genie’ (I-2270).

The titles and descriptions of the stories in the store are a bit stilted, but the translations of the stories I read so far were okay. After downloading a story it becomes available in your Digital Comics Reader, which can be downloaded from this page. I found the interface of the Reader very easy to use and I was reading my comics in no time.

The Reader uses the ‘AutoFlow’ system that shows the story how the author intended it. The screen scrolls from panel to panel as you hit the next key. Sometimes it zooms in on action for emphasis or a text balloon if it was too small to read. There is an occassional simple sound effect (the blast of a gun or the blowing of the wind), which is a bit cheesy. Fortunately, you can turn these sounds off and the reader allows you to play your own MP3 music while reading your comics, which is a great feature. At any time, you can zoom in, zoom out and scroll across the page at your leisure to have a closer look at the artwork. When you’re ready to continue, just hit the next key and it will continue AutoFlow where you left off. It’s a very smooth and intuitive system.

The longer sagas of Wizards of Mickey and Double Duck that are now available in digital format are also currently being published by Boom! Studios in the United States. At $1.99 per chapter, the digital version is a bit cheaper than the $2.99 it costs to buy a paper copy. It is interesting to note that both digital and Boom’s versions of Wizards of Mickey have the same translation but different lettering.

If you’re just in it for the stories, DigiComics are a great new way to read them. They’re cheaper, faster, cooler, and you even save some paper. If Disney is truly going to add five to ten new stories per week, you’ll be able to read the stories faster than Boom will be able to put them out. Many of these Italian stories have never been released in the United States, or anywhere in English, so this is a great way for fans and collectors of Disney comics to read lots of new material in English. Of course, it’s going to be different in each country. Here in the USA we are just getting some of these stories through Boom! Studios, but Australia and the UK currently don’t have any classic Disney comics, so for people there this will all be new. Yet in other countries, like Germany and Italy, Disney comics can be found on every street corner and lots of people may already own these stories in paper comics.

I have been reading Disney comics for over 25 years but had never read one on a hand-held device until this weekend. After this new experience I must say it was not bad at all. I still prefer to hold the paper copies in my hands, but this was definitely a fun and relaxing way to read. At $0.99 to $1.99 per story I do find it a bit on the expensive side. I’m used to storing Disney comics on the shelves in my collection (I know, old-fashioned, right?), and having a story just in digital format on my PSP feels like I don’t really own it. As a collector I’m going to (for now) continue buying my paper comic books, but I may purchase a digital story now and then that I want to read and is not available to me otherwise.

Below you can find my attempt at a video demonstration of how the PSP’s Digital Comics Reader works. The real thing looks much better than what you see in this video, but hopefully you get the idea:

I received the following email in my inbox this morning. Check it out, there’s pictures of Wizards of Mickey and X Mickey in there!

Sony’s comics website is available in the following countries: Australia, Germany, Spain, France, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Austria, South Africa, United Kingdom and the USA. I haven’t tested yet if Disney comics are available in each country, but this is quite a big launch.

Disney DigiComics has an ambitious rollout schedule. They are still planning to release them this year! In December they will first be made available in Italy and English speaking countries, including the United States. This will be on Apple iPhone, iPod and Sony PSP.

In the new year, DigiComics will enter some countries where Disney comics have a strong history and the paper versions are already read by millions each week: Germany, the Nordic countries and the Netherlands. Later in 2010, DigiComics will become available in France, Spain, Poland and other countries like China and India. More platforms will be added throughout next year as well, including Nokia phones, Nintendo and more.

When DigiComics is launched in December, it will have about fifty different stories available for download, stories starring Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and the gang. After that, five to ten newly digitized stories will be added each week (!) depending on the platform. Initially, all these comics will be taken from the huge archive that The Walt Disney Company Italy has built up in the last 50 years. These stories were originally made for the Italian weekly and monthly magazines. However, my contact at Disney Publishing Worldwide said that it is likely that in the future new stories will be created specifically for the DigiComics platform.

There’s no information on pricing yet. One of the screenshots on this page has Euro prices on it, but these are not confirmed.

On the list for the launch are the following classic Italian stories:

• X-Mickey – A unique series that features Mickey Mouse and his sidekick Pipwolf (Goofy as a werewolf) solving mysteries about monsters and the unknown;
• Wizards of Mickey – a 266-page fantasy saga starring Mickey, Donald and Goofy as wizards;
• The Canterville Ghost – a 1990 story written by Alessandro Sisti with art by Roberto Marini;
• Casablanca – a 1987 story written and drawn by Giorgio Cavazzano;
• The Phantom of the Opera – a 1984 story written by Alessandro Bencivenni with art by Luciano Gatto.

Gianfranco Cordara (writer of 100+ stories) and his colleague Dario Di Zanni started their idea last year when they developed a working demo of a Disney comic on their iPhone. They showed it to their boss in Milan, then went to Disney offices in London, New York and eventually to Disney HQ in California. After convincing the Americans of their idea the two have been working hard to get Disney DigiComics off the ground. The plan is to release traditional Disney comic stories in animated format to iPhones, iPods, other mobile phones, Nintendo DSi, Playstation Portable and regular computers. Consumers will be able to purchase stories as they do music on their iPod through a digital comic store (similar to the Apple Store) and play them in a special Disney DigiComics player on their device.

Serving traditional comics through new media like mobile phones is not new. GoComics was started back in 2006 and last February Marvel Entertainment announced plans to release their Motion Comics (with enhanced animation and audio) via iTunes. The Walt Disney Company Italy has also had digital Disney comics on their website Disney.it for a while.

Want to see a demo of these Disney DigiComics in action? I’ve found two: there’s a video interview with the creators on the Adobe Flash Lite website and a more interactive demo on Wired.it.

What do you think of this new development? Would you read Disney comics on your mobile phone?

(via DCF)