Read This Review First – Comic Life Review

I have pushed this app to the limits creating my own full length photocomics and I can say with conviction that a good number of the negative reviews, especially on this latest version, are from people who didn't read the manual and/or were looking for a quick-fix "caption my pic" app. You CAN change colors, font types and sizes. You can even create and save styles combining these things for easy re-use. The packaged templates ARE fairly simplistic and "quirky", but they're tailored towards the beginning user and/or children. The desktop version is used heavily as an educational tool, so this is understandable. One reviewer states, "You practically only can make text bubbles with it." Well, you can. And as a matter of fact, the balloon controls in this app are second to none. No other app currently in the app store provides extension bubbles, precise bending of tails, or adding multiple tails to the same balloon. These things are critical if you want to approach a classic comic book feel and/or create dialog without filling your panels full of "bubbles". However, that's far from being the only thing you can do with the app. There are a dozen or so other apps for that. Comic Life allows you to start from a template or start from scratch with a blank page, building your comic panel by panel. Even if you start out with a blank template, there are over 300 layouts in 14 different styles to choose from. Once a layout is applied to a page, panels can be resized, rotated, moved or deleted, and new ones can easily be added. Some reviewers complain about the inability to transfer comics to the desktop app, but honestly, I have had very few problems transferring comics both ways using the built in import/export options with DropBox. The desktop versions have more pre-packaged templates, and I've successfully transferred most of those into my iPad library by creating a comic using the template, adding a page for each included template layout, and then exporting the comic to DropBox. The exported comic retains all of the template style choices, so you can use the duplicate function on the iPad app to create new comics from your "template" at any point. You can also use this method to create templates in any of the supported sizes in the desktop app and export them for use on the iPad. The app isn't perfect. As many of the more positive reviews have noted, there is a serious need for "snap-to-grid" functionality, and I have found accurately sizing and lining up panels to be the most tedious aspect of using this app. It needs support for importing fonts like Strip Designer, the only real competing app in the store. On many occasions, I've used Comic Life to build my balloons and then exported to Strip Designer for custom lettering. I'd love to be able to do both in one app. There are plenty of things that could be added, but honestly, if you've gotten far enough into the app to care, there are forums for that. All-in-all, this is a well designed app with a lot to offer for a very reasonable price. So buy it and spend some time with it... Or buy a $0.99 app and a latte... Your choice.
Review by Apptronica on Comic Life.