‘Cover’: A Comics App for Windows

Comics are the reading du jour in our house. If we don’t have a book of some sort lying on our bedside table or the kitchen table or, y’know, the floor, we’re not really in our own home. We are also a decidedly Mac environment for the adults. When my parents got the kiddo an Asus/Windows product because “it’s for kids” and “cheaper,” we were kind of at a loss. But this provided the opportunity to download Cover, a comics app for Windows computers. The receipt of a few review copies of comics was also pretty helpful.

The comics sent for review were Gotham Academy, which was a great choice. Number one, because I wanted my son to start reading comics and having someone else send a thing meant it was obviously better than anything I could offer him. Number two, it provided a nice, non-traditional art setup to look at when reviewing how the Cover app works with comics.

What I like about Cover is that it moves you from panel to panel but doesn’t zoom in automatically, like other comics apps. It allows you to use the arrows to move through the page. When you click the arrows, it seemed to move to sections of the page itself as opposed to simply moving through individual panel views as other apps do.

For example, in the picture shown above, the image has no clear rectangular panels. As such, when most applications move panel to panel, they zoom in on one section, ignoring the overall picture. The problem this causes is that it ends up ignoring the overall art by targeting smaller sections, to the detriment of the artistic vision. By not cropping the art, Cover allows for full incorporation of the visual and written text, the essence of what makes comics their own important medium.

Cover, therefore, carves out its own special spot in the comics reading market by allowing easier appreciation of the art itself.