Amazon will launch an Android-powered tablet in September or October, according to the New York Post. The device will sell for “hundreds less” than Apple iPads, according to the report, presumably subsidized by content sales. This will expand Amazon’s footprint in digital sales, using a model brought to high art with the Kindle: sell tons of devices cheap, sell tons of content through them. And a tablet will put Amazon into a number of businesses in which it’s not with the Kindle: color books, video, music, and games. 

The big news for geek culture is that an Amazon tablet will be able to handle graphic novels much better than the Kindle, which has been suitable only for b/w content. Amazon already has a major share of the paper graphic novel market; it’s been one of the few sellers of graphic novels with consistent growth even in the recent tough times. So it knows the graphic novel buyer and what they buy. 

B&N’s Nook is continuing to expand its comic content. Graphicly released 16 graphic novels for the Nook this week, including titles from Boom, Archaia, Top Cow, and Red5. The company is also playing with format in ways that could be applied to comics as well. This week the company announced that it was making several Peanuts classics available for the Nook in its Read and Play and Read to Me versions, including It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Happiness is a Warm Blanket, and Happiness is a Warm Puppy.

The iPad, of course, already has tons of comics available through apps from comiXology, iVerse, Graphicly, and others, and through numerous publisher and branded apps. It’s also getting more content available for it all the time, with a lead that is going to be hard to overcome by newer entrants.

And the Android software platform is growing rapidly beyond the bookseller devices, with the power of Google behind it and the Android marketplace already an important venue for comic sales.    

These events, brought to a boil with the launch of an Amazon tablet, will create a battle royale among Apple, Google, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble over sales of digital content on their own device's platforms. 

But people will buy comics through the different devices for all kinds of reasons in addition to the content, including price of the device, loyalty to the retailer, device features, and the other types of content available for the device. 

With the relative strengths of all of the players, it’s tough to call this one; it looks like it will be a long period of multiple formats and platforms in the digital comics space.