A Superheroic Effort To Bring Comic Books To Your iPhone

HONG KONG — Casey Lau got his first 3G iPhone in 2008. It was about that moment he decided to start Crispy Entertainment.

“I’m a big comic book fan, so the first thing I’m looking for is how comics are going to fit on here,” he said.

The result is Super Kaiju Hero Force, Crispy Entertainment’s original comic book series available as a free app for the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

The series is about a trio of suburban American fanboys who win a trip to visit the set of their favorite superhero show in Japan, where an accident transforms them into some of the characters. The writing employs Pixar- and Simpsons-style humor, with jokes for both children and adults.

Lau and series co-creator Jeff Kwan, who are both in their thirties, had previously pitched Super Kaiju Hero Force to an animation company. When that didn’t go anywhere, they adapted their idea for the iPhone, writing the script together.

Rather than developing digital products for established film and television characters, Crispy Entertainment and similar companies are doing the reverse — creating new brands on mobile devices and then expanding into more traditional formats.

The best example, Lau said, is Angry Birds, a wildly popular smartphone game that is now being turned into a television series.

“The landscape is changing for media,” he said. “It’s being put in the hands of anybody. If you have a good idea, you can do it.”

Entertainment blogs have applauded Crispy Entertainment for producing original comics formatted specifically for the iPhone, rather than simply scanning printed comic book pages and shrinking them down as others have done.

“Since Super Hero Kaiju Force was designed for the iPhone, the screen size made us reconsider how to lay out the story,” Kwan said in an e-mail. “Obviously, to show a standard comic page of nine panels would make for a very small viewing experience. We also decided to have shorter chapters, which is something that is not traditionally done with comics.”

The biggest challenge, Kwan said, was keeping the dialogue short enough to fit inside one or two panels per screen. But customers seem to appreciate the effort.

“The story line is a little too childish for my liking, but I can see that kids could really enjoy this,” said one customer review on iTunes. “The text is easily readable. The comic is formatted very well for the iPhone.”

Super Kaiju Hero Force currently breaks even on advertising revenue, Lau said. It also contains numerous product placements, from Yahoo! Japan to Mos Burger, which Lau had hoped would be another source of funding. The companies didn’t bite, but Lau left them in as jokes and pop culture references.

The comic is advertised mainly through social media like Facebook and Twitter, as well as in online comic forums.

“The most important thing is to get the eyeballs, get people to know the brand,” Lau said. “It doesn’t matter how.”

The idea is to build a fan base for Super Kaiju Hero Force and then develop games, merchandise or even a live-action show for an audience eager to buy.

Crispy Entertainment is a lean start-up with low overhead and minimal staff. Lau works out of an office in Times Square where he runs his other business, a blog network called Popcorn Media. But he said Crispy Entertainment is basically headquartered in his laptop.

“Everybody I work with is virtual,” Lau said. “So from accountants to lawyers to writers to artists to programmers, everybody does not work in the same office as I do.”

Kwan, for example, is based in Vancouver, where Lau is also originally from.

“The programmers are here, but the artists are in like Australia or Indonesia,” Lau said. “They’re all over the place.”

Lau originally called his company Crispy Comics, he said, because he thought it sounded funny and was easy to understand. But now it’s turning into something more, hence the name change. Aside from building its own brands, Crispy Entertainment is raising funds to acquire licenses for properties like Star Wars, Harry Potter and Hello Kitty in order to develop games and other apps. Lau has brought on a new partner in Los Angeles to help.

“We’re trying to morph Crispy into basically being the best app developer for kids,” he said.

The target audience is kids ages 3 to 11, primarily in the U.S. but with an eye on the Chinese market. Lau said right now he is more concerned with developing apps in Chinese and other Asian languages than expanding to other mobile devices such as the Android, whose users don’t buy as many applications.

But of course that could change. Lau said start-ups like Crispy Entertainment have to be flexible enough to adapt their strategy as new technology and opportunities appear. In 2009, when the first issue of Super Kaiju Hero Force was released, the iPad wasn’t even in stores (Lau encases his iPad in a custom Super Kaiju Hero Force cover).

“The app market, the smartphone market, the tablet market is still growing, so people are still trying to find business models for these things,” he said.

But is something lost from the comic book experience without the community of a neighborhood shop? Kwan and Lau don’t think so. Kwan noted that not everyone lives near a comic book store, but anyone with an Internet connection can access digital comics.

And while digital comics will probably drive most physical stores out of business, Lau said, some will survive with a new purpose. In a digital world, comic book fans can still visit stores to watch trailers, buy merchandise and get recommendations from staff and other customers.

“It’s like the bookstores, too, they’re going to change. When you go to a bookstore like Barnes & Noble in the future, there will probably be somebody at the front to greet you: ‘What would you like to download today?’” he said. “All these stores will be showrooms.”

Kwan agreed that there would always be some demand for physical stores.

“Ultimately, I think that print — while shrinking in some respects — and digital media will reach an equilibrium in which both can coexist,” he said.