Cognito Releases Operation Ajax on iPhone & iPod

"Secret deals, underground rumors of revolt, and dark plots of government overthrow are employed by American, British, and Persian agents. Iran’s oil would flow, by any means necessary. Every actor has a stake in the game. No one can be trusted. Nothing is as it seems." so reads the blurb for Operation Ajex, the multi-award winning digital graphic novel by Daniel Burwen, published by Cognito Comics.

Originally released in 2011, Operation Ajax is a crtically acclaimed adaption of Stephen Kinzer's Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, and has now been reformatted for the iPhone and iPod (currently priced at $ 2.99 for a limited time).

Artist Daniel Burwen recently told Publisher's Weekly that the work "translates well to the iPhone ... it’s all in there. We did bump up against some limitations but the reading experience doesn’t suffer.” Adding support for the phone, Burwen said, adds more storytelling features for the future, “if a character is using twitter or making a phone call, the reader has a phone in their hand and we can actually use the phone call in the story.”

Described as "One of the coolest media experiences I've seen on the iPad" by the New York Times, Burwen states that one of his biggest challenges so far has been raising awareness of the App. “People are ready for this [multimedia graphic novels] but there’s 870,000 titles in the app store. It’s a big problem; it’s a big bucket and Apple can’t seem to come up with something to fix it. The store doesn’t work for anything more than 99 cents and it’s a grab bag of stuff,” he said.

I really can't recommend Operation Ajax highly enough so if you'd like to try a full 210 pages of a "revolutionary new way to experience a graphic novel on the iPad. Combining subtle animation with a full film score, the story unfolds in a groundbreaking cinematic reading experience" then do visit Cognito Comics and grab a copy - at the current price it's a virtual steal.