When the first generation iPad was announced, comic books were among the initial wave of ideas that seemed perfectly suited for life on a tablet.  Many, myself included, began to salivate at the idea of picking up the latest issues of our favorite books on the device, and also never miss a back-issue ever again due to limited copies at our local shops.  It’s taken the iPad awhile to get there, but comic books are finally taking off on Apple’s tablet, all thanks to the Comics app from ComiXology.

The comic app launched sometime in 2010, but the catalog of digital books has been very slim for several months.  It would take weeks for current issues to arrive on the digital platform, and it wasn’t even guaranteed that your favorite book would be released at all.  It was too inconsistent to be very useful and made it only worthwhile to collect old, legacy issues of classic books like Justice League of America.

However, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you may have heard that DC Comics has recently relaunched their entire line of superhero books.  Everything from Batman to Superman to Teen Titans have all been reverted back to issue #1, allowing a perfect jumping-on point for new readers.  And the best part?  Every new issues from this point forward will be released digitally through the Comics app.  So if you miss an issue or two of Detective Comics, they will (at least for now) always be available for you to purchase and pick up.  Plus, the stylized pane-by-pane reading functionality of the application is just a lot of fun to use, and presents your books in a fun, new fashion.

The "Comics" storefront.

Even if you’re not in to superhero books, other publishers such as Image Comics have been recently releasing all of their digital books day-and-date as print on ComiXology’s store.  There is definitely something for everyone and if you’ve been teasing the idea of picking up comic books, either again or for the first time, there’s no better place to start than Comics.

And I highly implore you all to at least try out a few of DC’s new books, as many are very well written and deserve some mainstream attention.  My recommendations?  Batman, Batman and Robin, Nightwing, Green Lantern, Action Comics, and Justice League are great places to start.