iPhone Street-Cred Part 2

Apparently even cool spies gotta have their iPhones as was seen in this week's episode of the NBC action-comedy Chuck. In the one hour spy adventure from Charlie's Angels producer-director McG, Yvonne Strahovski plays the CIA agent Sarah who needs to rescue her partner, the rival NSA agent Casey, played by Adam Baldwin.

She finds her rival tied to a bed in his boxers and seizes the opportunity to make use of the iPhone's camera features to his embarrassment. I am getting the idea that this device has already so penetrated the pop culture mindset that soon you won't be able to go anywhere or watch TV without seeing them around. Of course, with the iPod Touch being visually indistinguishable from it, we may see more than we think we do.

The great thing is, when it comes to iPhone manga, it won't matter whether it's an iPod Touch or an actual IPhone. They will both show the full color visuals in all their glory. Now with the release on iPhone in other international markets, the need for content will be immense. Some are predicting that because of piracy in some Asian markets, mobile phone content may be the holy grail for content producers, especially as mobile carriers are more than willing to shell out the big bucks to get it.

The future is bright for mobile publishing and iPhone manga will be a large part of that. The printing costs for full color comics are a large part of the reason most manga you see is black and white. Now, in the digital world, any manga can exist in its full color at whatever level the mobile screen can handle.

I've been able to see what the mobile has done for manga and art in general in Japan. In the past, being published by one of the majors was essential to even getting noticed. Then came the rise of the doujinshi world where amateur artists could create their works and find outlets for them through self publishing. The problem is they still have to deal with printing costs and few of these books became big sellers. Those that did were usually snatched up by the major publishers. All that has changed now with web and mobile content publishing.

Today manga artists have numerous outlets to show their work, even if it is just a collection of images, and some are doing very well! This is the most exciting time to be in the arena of content creation. Mobile devices on the level of the iPhone are standard in Japan. I can't wait to see what happens next!

Tags: iPhone, Pop Culture, TV, sightings