PSP Comics - Some Publishers, Little Spark

Sony has unveiled some more of the publishers and comics set for the PSP's comics reader. So far it's a mix of the obscure, comics for kids, licensed stuff and a few quite obvious Marvel series.

The list, as presented by Sony, looks like this:

- 2000AD – Featuring Judge Dredd, Durham Red…
- Disney – Follow the adventures of Mickey Mouse, Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck….
- IDW – Astro Boy, Transformers, Star Trek, Wormwood…
- Insomnia – Burke & Hare, Cages, Cancer Town… Insomnia and Geek Syndicate are also running a competition
- iVerse – Who bring us content from Ape Entertainment, Archie Comics, Dabel Brothers, Image & Red 5.
- Marvel – Astonishing X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four, Iron Man, The Amazing Spider-Man
- Titan – Wallace & Gromit

It's a little difficult to tell who Sony's pitching its comics reader at, looking at the selection so far. The likes of Astonishing X-Men and (assuming it's Ed Brubaker's awesome run) Captain America provide solid fare on the super-hero front, but (unless Sony is publishing concurrently with the paper releases) is nothing existing comics readers won't have already read or dismissed before. On the flipside, there's not that much of it mentioned for new readers.

Licensed materiel is generally weak, and accounts for two of the publishers listed. Disney comics can be charming, but they're for a younger market than Sony pitches the PSP at. 2000AD, alas, is a distinctly niche publication and if people like its content they're probably already reading it. The stuff listed for iVerse and Insomnia is just obscure for the most part (but not, largely, in the 'hidden gem' way).

And where the hell is DC?

Sony also gave a bit of description of how the reader's 'AutoFlow' will guide you over the page, stating, "With AutoFlow all you have to do is hit one button and the camera will float over the page to the next panel, panning and zooming automatically. We also let you move around manually if you want to get up close and personal with your comic."

To show it off, Sony's provided more redeemable codes, this time for Star Trek: Enterprise Experiment #1 (ages 9+) and Astro Boy Movie Adaptation #1 (ages 3+). The codes are:

- UK: MH75 – L3BF – HA95 & FG9D – NFBB – GQ33
- Ireland: CET2 – GQBA – LGDB & 2EAJ – PTBH – TLE5
- Australia: BC8L – E9B8 – G975 & H3BL – JPB8 – 6T8Q
- New Zealand: EK6C – KHBQ – RAKT & JQR4 – 97B7 – BHFG
- South Africa: F9GA – MFB9 – 9L57 & JLQ5 – C4BT – GFCF

No word on price yet, though Sony has said it will vary from publisher to publisher. Expect upwards of 500 comics when they start turning up in mid-December. There's no firm date from Sony on when that is, but the above codes are valid until December 16th, the 17th is a Thursday - PSN day - and that date's firmly in the 'mid' part of December. Just saying...

^{Source: PlayStation Blog}