That’s the question put forth in the May 2006 edition of Wired.
In an age where most media has or is going digital (willingly or not), is it time for comics to embrace multiple distribution streams? Will it save the industry?
From the article:
So what’s the holdup? I asked representatives at both Marvel and DC. Their answer: “No comment.” No condemnation of piracy, no acknowledgment of what’s happening, no tip of the hat to the vigorous world of independent online comics. Nothing.
This argument was had way, way, way, way back in iFanboy’s infancy. It turned into a very heated discussion over digital versus paper entertainment. It was one of the longest discussion threads in our first year. Sadly, it is locked up in a server somewhere along with everything else prior to 2003.
A lot has changed in the last five plus years. I’d be more open to digital comics now than I was in 2000, when I was staunchly in the paper comics camp. What do people think? Are digital comics the future? Can the Big Two save themselves from their inevitable slow death via cannibalization?
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Are you guys trying to give me a heart attack? Between this and the product placement thread I think you guys are seriously trying to kill me.
I don’t respond well to change.
Online comics don’t really appeal to me. I would hate it if that was the only way to get new issues, but I don’t really see that happening in the near future. I would like to think that there will always be a place for print media, but I am sure eventually everything is going to be digital. I just hope by then I will be a very old man in a retirement home somewhere, breaking out my original copies from their mylar bags.
I love my paper comics. I like holding them in my hands and seeing the TPBs and HCs on the bookshelf. I like browsing through them at the store. I can’t see myself ever switching over completely to a digital comic format…
…However, it would be foolish and naive to not acknowledge that a digital format will become very important to the industry in the future. Pretty much every other type of entertainment has a huge online digital presence. Movies, music, newspapers, and magazines are all making the shift in one form or another. The only holdouts I can see are books and comics, and I don’t think either one will hold out for too much longer.
Why can’t we have both formats for our comics? I wouldn’t be opposed to that. Give people a choice. We can buy TV shows online or on DVD and the option doesn’t seem to be hurting that industry. What if you could buy comics from iTunes for .99 apiece? Imagine how much bigger the potential audience for comics would be.
I am all for the industry to make the leap to digital…as long as I can still buy my hard copies too.
I do prefer to read my comics in the physical form but there is this one online comic I have read that seems to handle it better than most (http://www.platinumgrit.com/). It loads up and you simply hit the right arrow key to thumb through the panels. After an issue you wont mind that you are reading it online the experience is equally pleasant, and I do own the trades so I can directly compare. This is in contrast to some others I have tried to read where I have to click on the next page then scroll down a bit and it is all too clunky. I’d be glad to hear what other people thought on this.
With respect to the need to go digital eventually, or at the very least provide that option I think it has to happen. I am not saying get rid of the physical stuff but at least provide the option. For two reasons, people could get more story for less $’s which is always a good thing and the second, I cant keep taking up bedrooms in my house with my cd’s, dvd’s and book collections.
Start combining digital comics with a portable reading device that allows for it to read well and I am in.
I think we’re all at that point where we have to wrap our heads around the idea of buying media that doesn’t exist in a tangible form. And really, it’s just a matter of habit, and familiarity, but I think you’ve all recognized that this is coming. It has to. It’s happened with so much else already.
I consider myself forward thinking, but even I can’t quite bring myself to pay for a whole album on iTunes. $10 for the whole album, but I don’t get the CD and the case and all that. What if my computer goes down? It just doesn’t quite seem right to me. But eventually, like cassettes, CDs will disappear. I can’t say that paper will disappear in the near future, but I bet 25, 50, 100 years down the road, paper will be so antiquaited that it will only be used for very niche things. It is possible that comics will always fall into that niche, but you can only fight the future so much. And comics fans, oddly for a group who spend so much time in their imaginations, are not so good with change.
A few years ago i was downloading a lot of comics – I’d download a few of a series I was interested in, see if it was any good, and then buy the series from then on if I liked it.
Because of Internet Piracy I spent a lot more money on comics than I would have without it. I’m not sure if this is a trend, but if it is, then this could well be why Marvel and DC allow this to happen without kicking up much of a fuss.
Onto a slightly different topic, has anyone seen the ‘Broken Saints’ flash animated comic books? They are comic books animated with some minimal flash animation, and with voice overs, available free to view online. It can be a bit slow going, the pacing suffers slightly from having to wait for the dialogue to finish for every panel, but it really is an interesting look at a new way of presenting comics.
You can have a look here:
http://bs.brokensaints.com/splash-page.htm
I would definitely agree that piracy has lead to more CD sales for me. I’d download something. If I liked it, I’d buy it. Want to support the artist and all that.
But I haven’t downloaded a lot of comics yet. I do have the entire Cerebus run sitting on my hard drive, but that’s a meal and a half right there.
Sorry if I sound arrogant, but I believe that I am highly qualified to answer this thread.
As some of you may know, I have downloaded some comics in Digital Forms. For example, after Batman Annual 25 and The first few OYL Batman issues came out, I downloaded them via torrents. Why? Because they couldn’t be found ANYWHERE in any comic store. But that’s not the only instance. I’ve downloaded Y the Last Man, Watchmen, Exiles and Ex Machina in it’s entirety. I support this option, because there’s some people, like me (being 15 years old), don’t exactly have a large cash flow, and this makes for easy reading.
Why do I bring this up? Because I believe that digital comics should only be used in a certain way. I love getting a trade, or a single issue, because I can read it in the car, at school, on a long trip, or on my bed after a long day. Having my comics on my computer kind of means I have to sit right there in front of my screen, period. End of sentence.
Now, if Marvel or DC decides to make you PAY for comics online, it would just make the pirating scene easier. They would be formatted for digital reading, and it would just be a matter of one person paying like, 99cents for it, and then uploading it to a server for free downloading. And hell, if we get rid of the paper-middleman, WHAT ABOUT SELLING YOUR ISSUE OF ‘INFINITE CRISIS #1’ FOR THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS?! Alot more people would probably stop reading because digital forms of comics wouldn’t have any value later on in life.
What we’re seeing here is the schism between generations who believe they’re entitled to content for free. Now I’m not saying that you’re wrong, but it’s certainly a different mindset than most of us folks pushing 30 and higher come from. Stuff isn’t supposed to be free. You’re supposed to pay for things. If you can’t pay, you don’t play, and if that means, you can’t get comics, too bad for you.
Now, I’ve been known to download TV shows that are unavailable in the US. I can’t even work out if I think that should be OK.
I think things having different release dates worldwide only promote internet piracy. Shows like Lost, 24, Battlestar Galactica etc all have huge problems with internet piracy here in the UK, in my opinion because their regular air dates are one year or so behind the US, and hence one year behind their availability online.
Interestingly i read an article about how the first season of Battlestar Galactica was so popular in America solely thanks to internet piracy: the show aired about 6 months ahead of America in the UK and so there were a lot of downloads from people too impatient to wait. Because this was a new series, the medium of internet broadcast possibly made the show more accessible and more popular that it would have with a regular TV airing; by the time the show hit TV in America it already had a huge fanbase.
I love getting a trade, or a single issue, because I can read it in the car, at school, on a long trip, or on my bed after a long day. Having my comics on my computer kind of means I have to sit right there in front of my screen, period. End of sentence.
This is my biggest problem with digital media. And the computer going down thing.
What we’re seeing here is the schism between generations who believe they’re entitled to content for free. Now I’m not saying that you’re wrong, but it’s certainly a different mindset than most of us folks pushing 30 and higher come from. Stuff isn’t supposed to be free. You’re supposed to pay for things. If you can’t pay, you don’t play, and if that means, you can’t get comics, too bad for you.
Not all of us pushing 30 subscribe to this theory. The digital genie is out of the bottle. Embrace it!
(Having said that, I have an odd personal moral compass that decides what I will and will not download. And it doesn’t make any sense to anyone but me.)
The fact that you have a moral compass proves that you’re at least thinking about it.
well… I think it’s already begun…
it’s good to see people push the envelope. And I can live with this style of comic… check this out: http://arcomics.com – for Sony PSP.
This is as close as you get WITHOUT being a cartoon. It still feels like a comic book to me. No VOICES, NO SOUND, NOT A CARTOON… but some slight visual enhancement – like I said, still feels like a comic with a bonus.