::A Geek in Korea::

Back in middle school I was one of those comic book reading geeks sitting in the back of class. After I got my homework done, I was all about reading comics in my spare time. I grew up reading Marvel superhero comics, but I dabbled in the DC universe from time to time. Anything about superheros and justice was my thing. Eventually, I realized I didn’t have the time or interested to read every comic under the sun, and I dropped the hobby like a bad habit. I had a few friends in college that still collected, but even they couldn’t draw me back in. They didn’t read my books. There was even a local a comic shop, but the people in there looked at me like I was a freak by simply venturing outside in the daytime. They lived in realms of untold geekdom I never ventured to see in much detail. By the time the comic book shop had closed in my second year, I had ceased to care about comics entirely.

Fast forward to some day after the launch of the Nintendo DS. I was sitting on the toilet one day, playing a portable gaming system with two colorful, bright screens. Not only that, but I was thinking, "Hey, with a touch screen interface, you could simulate turning pages in a book, or scrolling around a document. That’s a really cool idea. I hope someone, somewhere, thinks of a clever application that would make use of the Nintendo DS in such a way. I would like that very much." Then I flushed, and forgot entirely about this idea.

Suddenly, two hobbies collide, and their offspring is: Comic DS.

Bam! A Nintendo DS friendly homebrew comic book reader. Awesome.

The program works as advertised. Drop some files supported by any comic book reader program and watch it work. These can either be some legally obtained comics (Golden Age Comics) in .cbr, .cbz formats, or just some zipped files or just a folder with images of your pictures of your last vacation. Once these are placed into the bundled conversion software, simply wait for them to be converted into a .nds file. This file can be read by the Nintendo DS. After that, preview them with the included .nds reader to see if they were correctly compiled. From there, placing the files onto a Nintendo DS homebrew solution is simple.

Using the Comic reader on the DS is great. The screen might be small compared to an actual comic book, but there are options on zoom, options to use both screens, and handy ways to scroll through the images using both the touch screen and the control pad. The program even uses thumbnails for easy navigation and a bookmarking system to remember where you left off. It’s a very polished, well designed homebrew application that does exactly what you want. This is rare, but worth looking into if you are considering dabbling into the Nintendo DS homebrew scene.

Comic DS extends the machine to something that not only does "just games", but into a multimedia device. I have a music player, but I don’t have a portable image viewer. Now I do. This is great, because if I want to look at pictures, or read some comics, I’ve got a way to easily carry it with me. Now when I sit on the can, I can ponder what is next in the homebrew scene while I read some comics to keep me entertained.