Talk the Talk, Walk the Walk is a weekly column by Kendall Swafford of Up Up Away! in Cincinnati, Ohio.  This week, Kendall explores the world of digital comics.

As promised, though a week late, I wanted to talk more about digital comics in general, and the iPad in particular.  I've owned my shiny new iPad for about two weeks now, and it's an unbelievable device.  As a matter of fact, I typed this entire column on my iPad using Pages from Apple.  As the iPad has been reviewed ad nauseum by nearly every journalism source in this country it seems, I'm not gonna go on about the iPad itself, other than to say, "buy one."

I'm here to talk about reading on the iPad, specifically but not entirely about reading comic books on the iPad. Having lived with this thing for a little while now, I'm convinced we're not facing extinction anytime soon.  Don't get me wrong, reading a comic book on the iPad is elegant, the display is beautiful, and it's even fun, but it's not the same.

Taking the Marvel or ComiXology app (functionally they're virtually identical) for example; you're able to see a full-page view, two pages side-by-side, or by double-clicking you get a "guided" panel-by-panel view.  The guided view, while easier on the eyes, does a comic book a great disservice.  A comic book page is so much greater than the sum of its parts, as a properly crafted page tells the story in a continuous narrative, one panel leading you to the next while at the same time, enabling you to experience the page as a whole.  Bouncing back and forth between the two modes is relatively easy, but it requires you to make a more conscious effort thank reading a comic book page you hold in your hands.

As nice and as large as the iPad's display is, it's still smaller than a comic page, closer in size to the increasingly popular (at least to some publishers) 6x9 "Omnibus" format.  I hate that format personally, and we'll talk another time about the proper size of comics.  The word balloons are too small on the iPad to read the page as a whole.  Guided view solves this problem, but creates other problems as I mentioned above.

Having said all that, I have found I really enjoy reading books on the new iBooks app.  Adjustable fonts/font sizes and bookmarks make reading novels a terrific experience.  So why are comic books less enjoyable on the iPad?  Partly for the reasons I've already mentioned, and partly because of weight.  Bear with me on this, I'm still figuring it out myself.  Some of my customers have complained, or maybe lamented, the fact that Marvel's hardcover Omnibuses (Omnibi?), while a great value, are too heavy.  I'm a hardcover reader when it comes to text books (not textbooks, mind you), and so I'm accustomed to the latest Stephen King novel weighing a few pounds.  It's expected.  We don't measure the weight of a comic book in pounds.  Even a typical-length hardcover collection is not very heavy, a pound or two, but it's several comic books bound together.  That’s expected.  Reading a comic book on the iPad is like reading a 1.5 lb comic book.  It's unexpected and foreign in an odd, mostly subconscious way.  Ever own a 12" vinyl record that had only one song on it?  Radio promos were common in this way, but if you weren't a DJ, this was unexpected.  An LP held several songs, not just one.  Same thing.  I buy comics online individually, not as a collection, so I begin reading an issue of Thor or The Walking Dead, and something isn't right.  That perceived, underlying weight-to-quantity ratio is subconsciously disturbed, or so I think.

The upside is of course, portability.  We can cram a whole lot of reading into an iPad.  I know I’ll never travel with a book on vacation again, but I’ll gladly pay for a digital version to take along.  But that’s a matter of convenience, not a replacement for a trip to the comic book store.  If I’m on a plane, I can read a book, comic or otherwise, watch a movie, listen to music or play a game, or thoughtlessly switch between them, just by pointing at them.

As I mentioned weeks ago, and Brian Hibbs elaborated on recently over in Tilting At Windmills, digital comics can be the new newsstand/grocery store checkout/gateway drug that comic books need.  “Real” books are still being printed, despite audio books and e-books.  I still spent $35 on Stephen King’s newest tome, and I’ll spend another ten bucks on a copy for my iPad.  Why?  I’m still a collector, as most people are, of one thing or another.  It’s very cool to own a vintage comic from a bygone era.  It’s not cool at all to admire your thumb drive full of old comics.  We still live in a physical world, and the very reason the iPad succeeds so well is the same reason we’ll still crave holding a comic book in our hands; because we can touch it.  Using your hands to manipulate the Internet on an iPad is a magical experience; it’s visceral.  It makes the Internet tangible somehow.  And making the virtual become tangible is far more important and useful to us as humans than making the tangible become virtual.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely  those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.