Will either of the industry leaders ever just break down and start releasing digital comics? For the love of God?
I asked myself this rhetorical question for the four hundredth time the other day as I stood in my yard, absent-mindedly brushing dozens of packing peanuts onto the sidewalk with the tip of my sneaker. The source of the Styrofoam blizzard was a cardboard box in my neighbor’s yard that now contained nothing but a packing slip. On the slip was a list of comics, specifically two weeks’ worth of comics that I was supposed to get by mail order before some kindly neighborhood gentleman had spotted the box and seen fit to steal it off of my front porch.
I am a bear of very little brain, and as I looked at the evidence in front of me I was processing what had happened less like someone on CSI and more like an ape with a Rubik’s Cube. It just didn’t make any sense. Clearly, somebody with huevos mas grande had moseyed up my stairs and grabbed the box of comics in broad daylight on one of the busiest streets in the city, but they had also brazenly, nakedly opened their ill-gotten booty right there in front of the house. And then found ten comic books inside it. And then, instead of saying “goddammit, this isn’t an iPhone at all!” and abandoning their worthless spoils, they took the comics. And left the box, like the peanuts were weighing them down.
I can appreciate the thrill of Christmas morning as much as the next man — I want to know what’s in the box more than Brad Pitt in Se7en — but if it was a stolen box I’d at least wait to get home, you know? I mean, am I bad at robbing people or is he? It’s him, right?
The only satisfaction I got from the whole episode was knowing that he opted to keep the comics, which either means I created a new reader this week or that my thief was the last person alive who believes comics are going to be worth something again. All week, I kept imagining him trying to trade them for meth only to have the dealer look at them and say, “Sorry, dude. I can’t go anywhere near Spider-Man after what Quesada did to Mary Jane… oops! Excuse me, another of my teeth seems to have fallen out.”
But I digress.
Longer ago than I care to remember, I started getting a handful of comics sent to me in the mail because the store I was going to at the time would routinely sell out of the less “popular” comics I was reading. (Sorry; I can’t type the phrase “popular comics” without employing quotes.) I was not lackadaisical about my shopping, either; the store would open at 11:00, and I would get there at 11:09 only to find that the owner had only ordered three copies of Nextwave again and they were all already gone. One day after this had happened to me a couple dozen times, I was fruitlessly lapping the block looking for a parking space for the 14th minute when I thought, “I bet somebody’d just send these things to my house.”
And indeed they do, but that has its own little Curb Your Enthusiasm aggravations associated with it even when some criminal mastermind doesn’t saunter off with them. I’m particularly thrown by the packing peanuts every time. I mean, I’m glad that the comics don’t show up in wads or folded like origami swans, but they pack the effing things like they’re Faberge eggs in a box the size of a mid-priced Subaru. Twice a month, this box gets wheeled into our foyer and my wife says, “Wow, did you get us a plasma screen?” and I say, “Oh, no; this is four magazines.”
And so this week, I looked at that box and those peanuts tumbling in the wind, and I thought about the waste. All the wasted Styrofoam, and all the wasted cardboard, and all the wasted time driving around looking for parking, and all the wasted gas as they ship the comics to the middle of the country and I drive out to buy them, and oh my God all the wasted paper that then collects in ever-growing spires in my house and houses all over the world as we hoard our issues of Thor.
And I thought, as all of this waste and the prospect of replacing my stolen property rolled around my mind, I could walk right back inside, turn on my laptop, and pirate every single one of these effing books in less time than it took the guy to get off my porch. I could have gotten them the day they came out, and no one would have had to pack or ship or print a thing, and I could keep them as long as I wanted while they took up exactly 0 cubic feet of space in my house.
But of course, you can’t do that. It’s wrong to download comics that someone (for some absolutely befuddling reason that will never, ever be adequately explained to me) spent God-only-knows-how-many hours meticulously scanning page by page and digitizing and uploading for absolutely no pay when he could have spent that time biking or napping or learning how to talk to a girl. You have to pay for ’em, and I do. But so help me Xenu, if I could pirate my comics and Paypal Marvel twenty bucks a week, I would start doing it this very night with a song in my heart and a spare closet where my long boxes used to be.
I would do damn near anything to live in a world where Marvel or DC (okay: Marvel) took my credit card number and just e-mailed me PDFs of whatever comics came out this week. Hell, I’d even keep paying the six-kinds-of-ridiculous $3.00 an issue and read all of the “Tobacco is Whacko” ads. (Whyyyy am I paying $3.00 an issue for something with paid advertisements in it, by the way? How much would it cost without the Army recruitment ad? Sometimes six issues collected in a book isn’t even fifteen bucks.)
How much paper/gas/money could be saved if one of the 200,000-selling companies just stepped up to the plate and said, “Single issues are online from now on”? I know, Marvel has a digital comics service already, but they only have old comics and don’t let you download them to read at your leisure, opting instead for some bizarre proprietary online interface that makes me feel like an 80 year old trying to learn Pokemon from his grandchild. (Is Pokemon still a thing? God, I am dying.) Digital options available right now are hamstrung at best. I’m reminded of DVDs… you dutifully spend $20 on a new DVD, and then when you put it in the first thing it does is warn you that the FBI will waterboard you for stealing it. “Well… I bought it, but thanks anyway, a-hole.” (Am I the only person infuriated by the FBI warning, or has everyone else just come to accept it? Just me? I see.)
Going digital would take virtually nothing, save countless resources, and of course be a potential windfall for the first company to do it…
…except for the part where the comic book stores who have single-handedly propped up the industry for the last fifteen years all simultaneously go out of business.
And there’s the hell of it. The seismic, possibly catastrophic change that would be caused if a company actually looked at the world, took a deep breath, and yanked off that Band-Aid has the potential to ruin everything for a lot of decent people. The alternative is a needlessly silly system that costs a lot of people a lot more than it needs to.
My kiddo is going to inherit the world I leave her; one day, I will be gone and she will be left to try and figure out what in the hell she is supposed to do with three boxes of G.I. Joe. When that day comes, I think we all know that monthly, 22-page comic books will not be in a store somewhere on paper. But how do we get from here to there, and when do we get there? Who’s the pioneer that pulls the trigger? What is the event that finally needs to happen? If you figure it out, let me know; I’ll be out in the yard with a broom reminding myself how awesome my hobby is.
Jim Mroczkowski was promised a flying car. He can be reached through the wonder of electronic mail at jim@ifanboy.com or via his “web-site,” Jimski.com.
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Well argued Jimski. And, as always very entertaining (I’m sorry about your comics… savages).
Now what you need is an exit strategy. How do the comic companies withdraw from the stores without aggravating the independent retailers and the … stalwart enthusiasts? The underground, Kinko’s copying revolutionaries might rally the lemming like fan… enthusiasts, who inturn recruit the retailers, and then we’ll have a full blown insurgency on our hands… leading to civil…
I’m sorry. I was thinking about something else… stupid NPR.
I agree that the Digital comics are not what they could be. Personally i would love it if you could buy individual issues as a pdf and then go to the store and buy the paper versions of the books you were really looking foward to. Ron could buy the digital versions of flash then if they got better he could start picking up the paper issues without having a unbroken line. i think the main thing that is keeping digital comics from being widely excepted is that there is nothing that takes them from your computer. if someone had the genius to create a device that was light weight and about the size of a normal book that you could download your books on to and read them from there. i guess it would be a ipod for comics.
Am I the only person that would probably buy more on a weekly basis if they were digital? I think for the right price, I would try out just about any comic if it looked interesting. I think the concept of the current Marvel Digital thing os ok, but I don’t to read my comics through a flash player. I want to be able to go offline and read when I want. Say for example if I there was currently a way to do this, I would download the CBR… err… I mean file to my laptop.. flip that badboy sideways and read whatever books I could not justify paying $2.99 for. Not that I have ever done this, but I’m just saying…
Digital paper, man. Digital paper.
While I sympathize with Jimski (who is taking his situation with aplomb…I would have smashed an entire city in a Hulk-like rage), I’m somewhat skeptical of any sort of digital movement. While I enjoy my computer, I don’t want to sit and read from it, especially if I’m sitting in front of one every day at work. Also, if comics go digital, it makes them even more susceptible to pircay. The current piracy movement requires someone to meticulously scan, upload, etc. If some hacker could break through a digital based system, it’d be lights out for the industry. Think of all the pirated music and movies some of you have and tell me that comics could survive piracy on that scale…
I think there needs to be a useful medium for digital comics. A Kindle-esque piece of equipment that could be used to download our monthly comics to. I’m optimistic about the e-paper I keep reading about in PopSci magazine–it’s lightweight, durable, and you can download pretty much anything to it to be displayed. And it’s reusable.
I don’t think we’re going to see a massive movement toward digital anytime soon, but maybe, when many of us are bald and graying, we’ll see a solid implimentaion of digital comics.
It’s gonna take an indie publisher. Someone who’s sick of Diamond (take a number, please). If they have a good book, that crosses media (becoming a film or video game), this publisher can market directly to the net savvy kiddies. Come to think of it, the book would likely be a manga. Hey! What about Gold Digger? That could work.
I do agree that e-paper will facilitate the transition.
On a stupid note,
Have Caucasian neighborhoods gotten that bad?
"No thanks. I’ll stay in the ghetto. Where books are the last things stolen."
Sorry. I’m sick.
I like what you said about the advertisements in comics..heck i would think that with ads. comics should be cheaper. Most print magazines make their money on ad revenue, not necessarily paid circulation. Digital comics could prob. make some smaller indy presses more moolah with ad support. I enjoyed WOWIO while it was up and discovered Artesia by reading it there…now I’m actually buying the hardcovers to own…and only becaause it was online and free…so in that particular case, the digital model worked (i think!)
A few decades is not enough to overthrow a tradition that is thousands of years old. The day comics go exclusively digital is the day I give comics the finger and say "burn in hades mutha! I like to sit on the couch not in front of a frickin’ screen thank you".
A lot of people felt that way with the advent of the staple. Also, those committed to rolling instead of folding.
Are they even able to do color in epaper right now? I thought it was monochrome only right now.
the tech and demand is there for digital comics but like you said Jimski, it would seriously effect the already struggling direct sales comic shops the hardest.
3 bucks a book is really steep but ink is pretty expensive by itself. A good color laser printer isn’t that bad to get these days but to print out a copy of a digital book for yourself gets steep when you throw in all the ink you go through.
i often wish there were some way i could share the load with someone who insists on hoarding these things. like say, i pay $1 to read it and then give it to the guy who paid the other $2 so he can infatuously bag and board. there’s nothing in it for me. all i wanna do is read them.
thought i’d waited long enough to hit the digital revolution. guess i did if i wanted to read old comics, which i don’t. so i drive to the store and buy. how concerned would i be about the well-being of my LCS guys if everything got released digital? not much. nobody ever made a point to buy american cars so i could keep my job. noone quit shopping at Wal-Mart because it destroyed local business
it’s comin, jim. don’t worry about forcin it. soon enough it’ll be available. enough of us will buy into it and inevitably shut down the LCSs. no way i’m payin three dollars a piece for pdf files tho.
Wow @gene, that was kinda racist. Like…really racist actually.
Anyway, I don’t see the point of digital comics. It immediately cuts out a large portion of the paying readers who partially buy to collect. There’s a reason the comics industry hasn’t been totally undermined the way porn and music have been by the digital age. People like to hold them in their hands. When newstand publications like newspapers, Time Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Sports Illustrated start to go completely digital and stop publishing on paper, then you can expect comics to do the same. But that’s not going to happen for awhile, and hopefully not ever.
Basically, I’m with @jumpingjupiter. And seriously, is anyone else at all bothered by how racist what @gene said was?
Judging by his profile icon and the facst that he said "caucasian," I’m guessing @gene isn’t white. I’m pretty sure that makes it more racist. Either way it’s still not okay.
Yeah. Although I am African-American, my humor does cross the line from time to time. I apologize if I offended anyone. As we all know, humor is subjective, and we all have different lines of tolerance.
Peace,
Gene
The writer in me is still marveling at how he shoe-horned both a CSI and Winnie the Pooh reference into the same sentence so seamlessly. An ape and a Rubik’s Cube too.
How many books did the bandit get?
this was a great article by the way. And nice catch Paul!
barely used comics for sale every wednesday! just two dollars!
LOL. Please define "barely used."
So, you don’t have a comic shop in your area that will do pulls for you? Wow that sucks, I show up every wednesday take my comics out of my file, look around for anything I might want new this week, pay and go on my way. Much more civilized than a box full of packing peanuts in my opinion.
Also, digital comics will be the death of the industry. Piracy will go through the roof.
That was a wonderful read, good sir. I audibly chuckled at "I am dying."
Damn you, Jimski, can’t you ever just write about… I don’t know, ‘Spider-Man’s cool, huh’ or something? Why you always gotta make me think? The brain hurts! 😉
In all seriousness, this is a tricky one for me as Jim argued both points brilliantly. I only get to go to a comic store 2 weeks out of the month when I go visit friends. The rest of the time I mail order them, and while they’re nowhere near as heavily packaged as yours sounded, it’s still a waste and I still have to wait and there’s still excess packaging involved. I can also understand not wanting to hoard issues in longbox after longbox if you just want to read them (I personally love it, not because I think they’ll be worth anything, but more because i’s like watching an old movie or prose book, but I totally understand your reasoning).
Digital certainly has some merits as a format, most of which you stated so I won’t repeat them. It also has the advantage of being able to discover and purchase new talents, the way myspace has done such for unsigned bands (or even big artists who are starting to give away, or deal exclusively online, in recognition of the dying CD format). It has drawbacks, as not every comic writer or company is rich enough to give their work away, and many big companies simply won’t want to. It’s a business, after all, but being online has proved the potential for a different route.
For me, though, I’ll keep reading comics on paper as long as they make it on paper. Point one – It gets me away from the computer and is a tangible experience. I like buying a physical item, the smell of the pages, and being able to see the colours with my eyes rather than pixels. Point two – I don’t see comics being any different than other forms of writing, meaning that if my favourite prose writer released their new novel on digital only, I’d be disappointed. I like bookshelves, and I like my longboxes.
That’s just me. There’s good arguments on both sides. Just my two pence.
@gene – read once and stored in a longbox for all eternity. unless it’s a grant morrison story, those i have to read twice. so, $1.50 on copies of Batman and Final Crisis 🙂
@FACE
Got any Vertigo stuff? Any old Valiant?
Great article!!!
Is Amazon’s Thimble, or whatever, any good? Does it work for comics? ‘Cause I don’t ever want to read comics on my computer again. I’ve tried and it there is no joy in Mudville.
I like the digital paper thing. What if there was a system where you could go into your comics shop and download whatever issue – past or present – into your reader thingy for $3 a pop. I know, this would have to be available online too for it to work, but what if they just threw retailers a bone and let them sell it directly to soften the blow. Some people would still buy floppies anyway. Trade sales might still keep them afloat.
But I think it has to be available on a high-quality video screen to really work. I’m surprised nothing has been done yet with the iTouch/iPhone, because that might be getting close to a viable option. But it would suck for the big 1- and 2-page spreads.
@Paul: There’s a big huge gigantic difference between the phasing out of staples and the doing away of paper!
@Jupiter – I was just kidding.
But digital paper, a foldable and altogether paper-like gadget might not be so difficult to get used to. I don’t want to read comics on a screen either. I do like what they’re doing with digital paper though. Imagine you have a blank comic book from the company, be it Marvel or DC or Dark Horse or whatever. On the cover you get a menu of all the comics available that week. Maybe you have an RSS subscription to certain titles. You pick which book you want to read, and your digital paper becomes that book. It’s gonna happen. It’s a ways off though.
@PaulMontgomery
They’re already talking about that kind of thing for newspapers. You’d just download them to your blank book, which is essentially a flexible computer. So, it will also work with comics. In fact, it’s probably inevitable. The best of both worlds.
Here’s an interesting question. Let’s say they develop this digital paper. And they want to transition comics to that format. But here’s the catch. At least for a while, it’s only black and white. Would the convenience be worth the loss of color?
This is purely hypothetical.
I think the developers would wait for color. At least in the U.S. Japan is another story. They will probably use e-paper comics before we do.
It’s hypothetical!
As a subscriber to the Marvel Digital service, I can definitely echo the sentiment that a better delivery medium ie a bigger, color kindle is necessary.
I have to disagree with the idea that digital comics would lead to rampant piracy that will crush the comics industry. If a person is inclined to pirate a comic book, they already can. The torrents are out there on the trackers, if you seek them out. Offering a legitimate digital download for sale simply offers a legal alternative to the existing illegal pirated copies.
If comic book companies stick their heads in the sand and ignore digital content delivery out of a fear of piracy, they will only be repeating the mistakes of the recording industry who waited too long to embrace digital distribution. The success of the iTunes store, Amazon’s mp3 store, etc. is a testament to how foolish the industry was to avoid digital distribution for so long.
Steve Pugh, the artist on Shark-Man, wrote an interesting post on the piracy of his own comic:
http://www.stevepugh.com/2008/01/pirated-aar.html
Wel, there’s plenty of good b/w comics and I wouldn’t even mind seeing some of the "popular" comics in b/w. Actually this would open up a lot of possibiliities, like deluxe editions with pencil and ink stages for every comic. I agree though, that this has to be in color for it to work.
@PaulM – I’ll take that scenario, and still take the printed version every time. As a welcome break from the computer it’s worth it (anyone else Wall-E?). Plus these artists put so much into making a book, these artists that do what I could never do, that they’re worth my $3 every yime if you ask me.
@Eyun – I agree with the spirit of the artists’ work being worth the price, but it should be pointed out that the artists see only a small percentage. I recall reading somewhere (maybe their annual report?) that Marvel has ~40% margins on their publishing revenues, which are in turn based on only ~60% of the cover price of the comic. So for a typical $2.99 comic around $1.00 goes to cover the cost of production including printing, administration, and paying artists. Of course that ignores advertising, so perhaps it’s higher, but regardless only a small portion of your comic book purchase goes to the creators themselves.
Not to wish ill will towards comic shops (I’m a loyal shopper at my LCS, myself), but if the 40% cut for Diamond and the retailer were removed from the equation, just imagine how much better the creators (or more likely their employers) could be compensated.
So many good contributions, trying to respond to them all would only result in me saying not much of anything.
I will say that since the advent of the internet as we know it (which, depressingly, I guess I remember) I have heard the phrase "death of the industry!!!" applied to a lot of industries that are still not dead. Though I will grant you that newspapers are circling the drain… but they deserve to. This isn’t a wildlife preserve; there’s nothing guaranteeing every industry’s continued right to exist despite its own inadequacy. But I digress.
Anyway, I think the industry would survive giving me the product I actually want. (I can’t really be the only one who wants it, can I?) Other Time Warner newsstand publications (EW, Time) continue to come out on paper, but if I want to read them online instead, download the articles, print them out etc., I can. Why not Batman?
I really feel like it’s only a matter of time. Once, the music industry didn’t want to provide MP3s, so the public said, "Okay; if you need us, we’ll be over here stealing your product and making it into the thing we actually want." Eventually, iTunes was born to give the people what they wanted (with a side order of DRM) and the money trucks started rolling. Surely history will repeat itself here, no? Or do we need a comics-iPod before we get a comics-iTunes?
@ Jimski
When I opened up iTunes a week or two ago I saw an add for DC animation and actually thought it was DC comics. It got me thinking about all this and one of the first things that came to my mind was "dear god, whichever company strikes a deal with Apple to have their pdf’s distributed through iTunes is going to make a killing." Then I was looking at the Invincible animated series (which iTunes carries) and the new animated version of the Watchmen comics (another iTunes product.) Are these "animated" comics the way of the future or will we see true digital versions of the medium we love?
I really think Paul’s idea is the best, hopefully that happens soon. I love being able to hold my books in my hands. I’ve read some online comics through Marvel’s service and its just not the same. I’m also really gonna miss that amazing feeling of questing to my LCS every week, being the only teenager in their and just shooting the shit with all the guys that hang out there. Its such an amazing experience and I always feel great when I leave. Such a shame. DAMN THE DIGITAL AGE!!! (well… only regarding comics, I guess.)
Here’s the thing, and this is just for me; I love how the digital age has revolutionised music. It’s cheaper, easier to access and more convenient. But I still listen to music the way I used to – speakers or headphones. Doesn’t matter how I bought it, I still listen the same way. And I’ll still take a CD over a download most times. I want the artwork, the booklet, the lyrics.
I simply don’t want to read a comic on a screen. They are comic ‘books’ after all. Now if we can print them out on whatever paper makes them as good quality, then that’s cool. But surely the cost of buying them online, getting enough paper and ink to print out a week in which you have, say, ten books (or more in the case of some people) wouldn’t be far off just plain buying them? It might just be me, but when it comes to reading I’ll always go for the physical format and gladly pay for it.
I feel a pang of sympathy for the retailers, because I’m lucky enough to have multiple quality LCS’s in my mid-size city. But I know not everybody is in the same position. And honestly I don’t know if the availablity of a digital format would significantly increase piracy. I feel like people who are going to download comics already do; people who are still buying them either (a) aren’t savvy with the technology (they probably don’t use itunes either); (b) want to support the industry and retailers in principle (c) are opposed to piracy on principle or (d) prefer having the books in printed format. Having a legitimate way to access digital format would only affect the people for whom (b) and (c) are the primary factors. Which — might be 90 percent of the people who talk about comics on the internet, but I have no idea how big (a) and (d) are overall. (You can say that the (a)’s will eventually fade out of the market, but that’s what everybody says about the traditional comics fanbase anyway).
I’m not drawing any conclusions from this, just laying out the issue as I see it.
I wonder if digital delivery would actually increase the profit that creators are able to make off their work? Without the cost of ink and paper (and staples!), even if revenues are somewhat smaller, profits could conceivably increase, and a larger cut could go to the people who write and draw. I’m somewhat skeptical of that theory (I get the impression online/digital publication has trouble making much revenue in general, which is probably as good a reason as any that nobody’s gone to it) — but I thought I’d throw it out there.
Ok, i have a few comments on this.
Piracy. I dont really see how it would increase. You already have copies of practically every single comic out that week online within days of them hitting the shelves. Sure it’d be easier – but people are already comitted to pirating them now – the end result is still there.
I own a device called an Iliad – its one of those e-ink devices and while a little smaller sized than a comic (and despite being grayscale) it would be pretty close to perfect. It can read PDF’s – if Marvel released pdfs (i hate reading pdfs on the computer though) each week of the titles released for a portion of the price and i could download them straight to my iliad i’d be in heaven!
Over here comics cost around 6$ depending on where you go, (keep in mind the aus dollar is pretty much equal to the US dollar right now) and if i want to get comics at a reasonable price i have to sign up to a mail orer company and wait 2-3 weeks for shipping. Direct download legally would be ideal.
I actually intended to download the Git-corp dvd collections but they’ve formatte dthe pdfs as double page spreads which make sit hard to read on my Iliad otherwise..wow..that would have been pure heaven.
"But so help me Xenu"
Heh heh heh
Better be careful Jimski, they’re watching…
I love this topic (and the article). Evey few months I check in on e-readers to see where they’re at. This was my quarterly reminder. I found Fujitsu is getting ready to push out a color reader. I think that’s key, especially for comics, of course.
Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMz1iwkZFbE
This topic makes me cranky.
I don’t want paper… I don’t want digital paper… I don’t want pdfs. I want a troupe of actors to come to my apartment every Wednesday night to act out each issue.
that sounds creepy.
@JumpingJupiter – Oh come on, if you could have Christian Bale come over and act out the next part of RIP… you’re saying you’d turn it down?
That would be amusing.
I want Ed Brubaker to call me every Wednesday and read my comics to me over the phone. Michael Lark should send me PDF’s of the art. I can figure out how it fits together, myself.
And whenever one of Joss Whedon’s books is late, he should bake me a cake.
You can embed flash animation in the new pdf’s. Maybe that’ll help.
@ohcaroline. Whedon owes me alot of cake.