Zinio, self-dubbed “the world’s newsstand” launched their iPad app last Friday. The app enables iPad-owners to buy and read interactive full-color multimedia magazines. After purchase, the magazines can be shared on all sorts of devices. From your iPad to your iPhone to your desktop.

Zinio’s line up of magazines is impressive taking into account how early we still are in the digital magazine revolution. Zinio includes over 1,500 magazine titles like BusinessWeek, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, National Geographic, Popular Science. In addition, it runs an adult publishing platform called UndercoverMags.com sporting the same technology and delivering titles like Penthouse, Playboy and Hustler.

A video of Zinio’s app on the iPad is shown below, although you’ll have to tilt your head to get the full experience:

Zinio is not the only one getting into digital magazine on the iPad. Major publisher Conde Nast of titles like WIRED previously reported to start publishing most of their titles on the iPad by the end of 2010.

Zinio is available now from Apple’s App Store.

With the advent of the web, comic books experienced quite a revitalization after fans started scanning them, posting them up in online comic communities and making them available for everyone to read. To avoid being late for the party as music publishers were with online music sharing, comic publishers like Marvel quickly stepped in and started publishing their comics digitally. Marvel has been selling them through its store Digital Comics since 2007 already.

Your PC display won’t cut it

Just like with e-books, a computer screen just isn’t the most comfortable way to read a comic. Computer displays tire your eyes quickly, especially when you’re reading content. And the fact that you can’t really hold your computer like you would a comic doesn’t help the viewing experience either.

Panelfly on the iPhone

Now the iPhone was mostly meant to be used as phone, a digital communication device and to quickly browse the web. However, data shows that a high proportion of users actually use their iPhone to read e-books, comic books and magazines; and lots of them. Applications like Panelfly make it possible to download, save and read comics on the iPhone with great simplicity. All good, right? Well, that iPhone screens just seems a tad bit too tiny to read a comic on that is supposed to be the size of a Letter or A4 page.

The iPad and comics

Here’s the good news: Panelfly announced they are developing an iPad version of their comic book application. The iPad is perfect read comics on. Just like with your comic book you can walk around, lie down or put it against the wall while you read it. The app will feature an interface matched to the iPad; details are scarce but it seems to be looking really good according to Gizmodo. Panelfly already supports Marvel Comics, so you can buy those with ease. Details on how purchasing comics will happen on the iPad with Panelfly are still unknown.

Apple has remained silent if it will include comic books in the announced iBookstore. Many sources say they won’t, as the iBookstore app just is not optimized for the multimedial experience comics can bring.

The future is dynamic content

Seeing how magazine publishers are already mentioning adding dynamic multimedia objects in their magazines like audio and video, I can only speculate that the same thing might happen to digital comics in the future. What about moving to the next page of your comic and seeing Batman jump in to the page fighting the Riddler for some seconds, then slowing down and changing into a still comic book page again? I can’t wait!

Have you been reading comics on your iPhone or other mobile device? Does it work for you and how do you expect the iPad to change things for comic readers around the world? Tell me in the comments!