Tapastic Comics for iPhone describes itself as the YouTube of webcomics, but does that means it’s loaded with great user generated content or is it just full of the comic equivalent of sneezing pandas and cute kittens?

Developer: Tapas Media
Works with: iPhone running iOS 5.0 or higher
Price: Free to download here

Getting started with Tapastic Comics for iPhone couldn’t be easier thanks to its familiar store-based home screen which is divided into recognisable sub-categories like Staff Picks, Most Popular, Daily Updates and New Releases. There’s also a featured panel for the best new comics on the app that month. As with any new platform it’s easy to be overwhelmed with the sheer number of titles available, but with these featured titles and sub-categories, you can quickly navigate the best titles and get reading. Titles can then be favourited and saved for later, and there’s also access to Tapastic‘s forum and blog for additional content and to share your experiences.

What separates Tapastic from other more basic webcomic apps is that rather than rely on a traditional panel-by-panel view, Tapastic uses vertical navigation for many of its comics similar to Doug Lefler’s Scrollon app (which uses horizontal rather vertical scrolling). This is an incredibly intuitive way to read comics, thanks in no small part to the ubiquity of web browsers and tablets with vertical scrolling. Reading vertically instead of horizontally is now second nature to most iPad comics fans and by being able to create for this format (instead of the restrictive landscape) opens up a whole new way of telling stories that works perfectly on the iPhones small screen without affecting the ease of readability.

As we mentioned earlier, Tapastic is hailed by it’s creators as the YouTube of webcomics and that’s because creators can upload their comics for readers to enjoy and share. You can even make money from publishing then on the app. As with any product which relies on user generated content, the quality can vary drastically but thanks to the curated content on the front page, you are able to quickly and easily find comics that suit you.

Two of the favourites we found early on were Golf Star (a manga-style golf-meets-the-Karate-Kid adventure) and Andy Warner’s History of Everyday Objects, (a sublime strip that educates as well as amuses). These along with many others that we tried are incredibly polished and very well put together, which is always a bonus for an app like this.

The only negative we found to the whole Tapastic experience is that it requires a constant Internet connection to get access to the comics. With it being a mobile app this may not seem like a problem as your phone is always on and active, however if you want to read a book where signals are unavailable (or prohibited) then Tapastic is found wanting. This is a real a shame because because there is no element of the app that can be viewed without it, and apart from this minor drawback, Tapastic is one of the most exciting and original ways we’ve seen to enjoy comics on your iPhone.

“A slick and stylish portal for collecting webcomics into one place on your smartphone. Mixing user generated content of the highest order, it’s vertical reading approach is the real highlight though and makes Tapastic the perfect way to read webcomics on an iPhone.”