iPhone® Fully Loaded, Third Edition

Chapter 11. Comic Strips

The Skim

Stripping for Fun

I had a great childhood. The clearest sign of this is the fact that one of my chief sources of heartbreak was the fact that Peanuts was my favorite comic strip and our house subscribed to the Boston Globe. The Herald carried Peanuts. I'd have to go to the Periodicals room of the local library and catch up on a week's worth of Charlie Brown and Snoopy in one sitting and if I got there too late, the papers had already been thrown away and I was stuck.

So. I'm grateful to the world of technology for providing me with, you know, a career. But I'm just as pleased that it's now possible for me to access every strip I like from every source possible. It's a keen concept on the desktop but it's well-suited to the iPhone as well, a device geared toward acquiring fresh, timely media and allowing you to enjoy it wherever you are.

STRIPPING FOR FUN

There's a difficulty getting your comic strips digitally: The landscape is even more fragmented today than it was when I was a kid, reading strips via mashed treeware. In addition to the separate old-fashioned newspaper syndicates, each independent Web comic creator hosts his or her strip on a separate site.

And it goes without saying that all of these separate sources haven't banded together to create standards for downloading strips, or create an "iTunes Store"-like experience. So: You can't simply download ...