Hoopla Digital, the mobile app and digital content service for libraries, is expanding its recently announced comics and graphic novel offerings after reaching a new agreement with DC Comics. DC will launch the deal with 25 classic graphic novels, adding 200 additional graphic novels and periodicals over the next few months.
This is DC Comics’ first deal with a library or digital subscription service, and gives Hoopla’s patrons access to such iconic graphic novels as Alan Moore’s Watchman, Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns, and J. Michael Straczynski’s Superman: Earth One. In addition to DC, Hoopla offers digital comics content from about 20 publishers including Titan Comics, IDW, GenManga, Boom! Studios, and Action Lab and the service plans to add more.
Hoopla’s app feature’s Action View, a specially designed e-reader for comics that provides patrons with full-page reading or manual pinch and zoom functionality, and when activated, automated panel-by-panel reading for the small screens of mobile phones and tablets.
Through its iOS and Android apps and website, Hoopla provides library patrons with digital access to more than 325,000 videos, music, e-books, audiobooks and comics.
Hoopla functions like an e-book subscription service for library patrons. Any patron with a public library card—Hoopla provides digital content to more than 800 public libraries—can use it for free, 24/7. And the streaming on-demand service does not treat e-books as if they were physical books, so there’s no waiting. Multiple patrons can read the same digital graphic novel simultaneously.
“The demand for access to great comics is high,” said Jeff Jankowski, founder and owner of hoopla digital. “There’s a real need to get comics, do it right and to offer them to patrons via a mobile-centric model. That’s where the growth is.”
