Hello, big interview with me (PJ) on Newsarama here.

Not ones for sitting on our hands lamenting, infurious has been furiously working on it’s next big project. And here it is: EyeCandy - comics for kids. For 99cents you get a goofy little comic (featuring all the same coolness as the murderdrome comic, ie you can skim through to the inks and to the pencils - which are super simplified to help kids copy the artwork) and we’ve added some funky extras - every panel can, with the press of a button, become a colouring in page. Up will pop a little palette and off you go colouring. And, is if that wasn’t fun enough, every issue will feature a very cool little ‘toy’ - issue 1 has a googley eyed horse. Shake him and listen for the whiney… (While his eyes roll around his head…)

Watch it on youtube, and, in the next week or so, you’ll be able to download it for your iPhone/iPod touch for just 99cents.

The infurious digital pixies (Phil and me) are busy at work putting the final touches to Eye Candy our second project. Eye Candy will be under the BLUE PILOT software banner, for reasons that will become apparent.

We expect to have it with Apple in a couple of days, and then we wait… should be no problem with content on this one or the next… 

(Cracking logo design by Jim Lavery)

We’ve gone from one ‘banned‘ comic, to a heap of content. Project Number Two is almost complete and we’ve got three more really impressive projects being built as we speak. As soon as they appear on the App Store, we’ll post the URLs here so keep an eye or even better, subscribe!

We’ve spent the last few days accosting strangers in cafés and showing them the MURDERDROME comic and watching their jaws drop when we reveal some of the features that didn’t even appear on the YouTube video. We’ve also had the opportunity to show it off at the last local Mobile Monday event.

As well as some really cool stuff we can’t talk about, we’ve been invited to demo the application at a local business networking event. The MURDERDROME comic #0, even without half the features, was described as:

“one of the most promising pieces of technology from the province this year”.

And, by ‘homing in on’ I don’t mean ‘deciding’ or ‘getting ready to think about’ I mean, in a couple of days we should be sending Project Number two to the Apple Store.

What to expect? Well… something different. So different we’re going a slightly different name (though, not that different). You’ll understand when you see it.

Personally, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this could just reinvigorate the comic book industry or create what the comic world has sorely needed for the last decade. I wouldn’t go so far to say that… but I’d defend the right of anyone who would…

Hi gang, you can read an interview with me (PJ) here.

Our little youtube video seems to be the featured video for youtube in a number of areas:

Here at infurious HQ, I’m something of a leaky bucket. It’s just to darn-gosh-hard to contain the excitement of the stuff we’re doing. Yeah, it’s a shame about Murderdrome, but it’s certainly not dead. Just … waiting. In the meantime, if you hear the name John McCrea mentioned… well… you didn’t hear it from me…

-PJ

While we’ve enjoyed our 15 minutes of fame, we haven’t forgotten that the whole point of this is to get some crackin’ good comics on the iPhone.

Just to be clear - we are absolutely in support of Apple’s decision to decline to accept material they find unsuitable for the audience, we are asking that they consider that the market is large and varied and what might keep one person happy is going to offend someone else. I’m sure that Apple will come to some decision regarding a ratings system on the App Store outside of games/entertainment appications.

In the meantime, it’s up to comic writers and illustrators to create their content for this new platform. We’re dealing with the first wave of comic creators at the moment and I hope we’ve not missed replying to each and every creator and attempting to keep you all informed.

Which links to the Mashable site:

I can understand why Infurious ran afoul of Apple this way and why in some ways Apple is totally within its right to do what they have done, considering the language of their SDK, but are they really ready for the reaction? On top of that, if they do stand by this action without finding a workable solution to the problem are they setting themselves up to become an Internet censorship board? All I know is that this isn’t a position that I would want to find myself in.

and then the BuzzOutLoud podcast. Few minutes in. After the BGP news.
MP3 Link

and Valleywag hit the nail on the head:

Do hyperviolent comic book authors also always go by three names?

John Paczkowski writes for All Things Digital on the Wall Street Journal:

Apple is being accused of censorship after banning the Murderdrome comic from the App Store for violating the terms of its SDK, which prohibits “content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgment may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.”

Philip Elmer-DeWitt writes for FORTUNE magazine on CNN Money.

Murderdrome is not Ulysses, Lolita or Lady Chatterley’s Lover. It’s a dark, bloody comic strip marked by the type of over-the-top violence that has made its genre so popular among young readers with a lot of pent-up rage.

But Murderdrome has now joined the pantheon of suppressed fiction as the first digital book banished from Apple’s App Store by censors in Cupertino.

Stephen Withers writes for ITWire

Apple already tags tracks in the iTunes Store that are unsuitable for children and it sells R rated movies, so why isn’t there something similar for content such as books and comics in the App Store?

The call to add age categorisation comes after Apple ruled Belfast-based Infurious Comics’ Murderdrome did not comply with the App Store’s content guidelines.

Infurious officials described the free comic as “darkly humorous.”

The company has “already secured another script and art and will be submitting another comic written and drawn specifically for the iPhone/iPod touch to the App Store in the next few days and has commitments from established creators for exclusive content

Jack Schofield from The Guardian writes:

Apple may be worried that iPhone users don’t have quite enough braincells to figure out that if they buy something called Murderdrome, they are not going to get a Disneyfied version of Peter Rabbit and the Flopsy Bunnies. Or maybe they are just being protective of the huge number of iPhone buyers who are under the age of 14….. Either way, couldn’t the problem be solved by having a ratings system, as InfuriousComics suggests?