Pow! Biff! Bam! If you've been curious about picking up a comic book — and these days, after the popularity of the movies Iron Man and The Dark Knight, who isn't — there's something new coming from Marvel and Apple that could revolutionize how the next generation reads their comics. The companies announced plans to begin selling titles for download through iTunes. Rather than just consisting of plain old scans of a printed book, the downloads will be multimedia-rich, including portions with animations and professional voice-overs.

The first comic specially made for this format, called In-Motion, will be a Spider-Woman title. Existing fare will also get the In-Motion makeover, spicing them up by inserting animated elements and voices. Marvel demoed the technology with such a copy of the mainstream title Astonishing X-Men.

Marvel's not new to the digital distribution game, offering hundreds of titles for download through its Digital Comics Unlimited service, but those are just scans of printed comics. This collaboration with Apple will be the first time In-Motion is offered. While that should be enough to get readers interested on its own, the fact that the collection will be available on iTunes has the potential to be what really makes this succeed.

The integration of the service with iPhones and the latest iPods will give customers the ability to easily access their purchased titles on-the-go. While traditional comics don't always translate well to the small screen, especially when using visual effects that rely on the physical layout of comic pages, stories that are custom-made for this format should be able to avoid those limitations. There's no word yet on when to expect the comics or what the downloads will cost, but we expect to hear more before the end of the month.

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