My thoughts on Digital Comics (LONG!)

[lugaru]

This is a subject I love and talk about until I'm blue in the face on other forums but it has not really come up here much. Here are my thoughts:

Improved Quality Normally we expect digital copies to be of lesser quality. They are not blue ray, they are compressed, etc. With digital comics you could see better art than you could ever see on the comics page. Colors would be limited only to what photoshop can produce, you would have no smudges and no blurs... whatever the artist scans and sends in would be what you read, with a size reduction of course but still leaps and bounds more faithful than a comics page.

Better portable devices I think the i-pad is the first apple product I would not mind owning. But at the same time I see competing devices that will be out soon which I'm more interested in. Still Marvel already has a $2 dollar an issue (very reasonable since they could have started at $4) store and competition will hopefully lower prices, weed out DRM and potentially create flexible pricing so that online stores could have quarter bins full of old Fantastic Four and Superman issues. If I could buy the first 100 X-men and read 'em on a nice tablet for $25 that sounds great.

They might make it easier for indy creators: right now the best thing for creator owned projects is to cut Image a check to print and distribute your book. With purely digital books you could spend whatever you spend on post production (lettering, colors and ink) and spit it out, with a small chunk going to the distributor (Apple, Comixology, Longbox) and the rest pouring in directly to the artist/writer team. With this model could make $1000 off only 1000 issues... and if it catches on there is no limit to supply... in other words normally you sold every issue and while your comics where worth a lot you never made much profit. Now they are worthless (non collectible electronic files) but you can keep selling and selling until every human being has a copy. Got a few thousand lying around from digital copies? Print a fancy hardcover with extra sketches and pin ups.

They could subsidize books on verge of cancelation Is Dr. Voodoo and MI 13 not covering the printing costs? Make them online only, make sure the creators get paid and the rest is pure profit.

Versatile comics As a translator I can tell you the price of translating comics is cheap. 500 to 1000 words would probably cost 50 to 100 bucks. That means they could spit out spidey in Spanish, Portuguese, French, German and Italian a day after the english one. Likewise you can do "alternate" versions like no dialog balloons, pencils only or anotated. And if all this can live within a single file (much like DVDs have tracks and extras) that would rock.

Free distribution Diamond has limits on how few comics you can print and shipping is a pain. When everything is free you could even use this method to distribute FREE comics such as webcomics, sketch books and portfolios, free promotional editions, catalogues, fanzines and guides. In other words I could wake up, run my program (like a podcatcher) and find my new Penny Arcade, a new sketch from Mike Mignola, a first look to a new book, a free issue of Iron Man hyping the movie, etc.

Comic stores evolve forget the single issues... they could specialize in collectors items. Back issues, action figures, statues, posters, trades, hardcovers, t-shirts, dvds, manga, novelty items (green lantern rings for example), trading cards and such. We have a very succesful chain that already does this in Boston (Newbury Comics) and most comic shops make more off magic cards, trades and action figures already than they do on single issues. Some will die, many will improve and take over the gaping holes left by book stores, magazine shops, music stores and movie rentals.

Less landfill I live in the city, one small apartment after another. This has me looking forward to a future where the ONLY phisical media we consume are collectors editions. I want my music to be MP3 except for special editions and vynil. I want my comics to be digital except for imprtant hardcovers I want to loan to friends and get signed by creators. I want to stream any movie ever made off Netflix except for those where I need to know every detail, hear the directors comentary and watch every documentary. So yeah, no more $1 flea market DVD's or impulsive buys... just owning what matters and streaming the rest.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

As someone going into the Multimedia field, I definitely agree, but I also think there's a big place for traditional print comics too. Just wouldn't be the same without something physical like that. There will always be print comics around.

But yeah, using digital media is definitely the way to go, as a major distribution outlet. I'm looking at publishing some roleplaying game material independently in the future, and PDFs are gonna be my go-to for that. It lets you reach a wider audience, and you don't have to pay stocking costs (nearly as much) for your customers. You can reach the same (or greater) audiences, but have it all stored in one central location they all can access easily.

[murs47]

I absolutely agree with every point you've brought up Lugaru. This one the most:

They might make it easier for indy creators: right now the best thing for creator owned projects is to cut Image a check to print and distribute your book. With purely digital books you could spend whatever you spend on post production (lettering, colors and ink) and spit it out, with a small chunk going to the distributor (Apple, Comixology, Longbox) and the rest pouring in directly to the artist/writer team. With this model could make $1000 off only 1000 issues... and if it catches on there is no limit to supply... in other words normally you sold every issue and while your comics where worth a lot you never made much profit. Now they are worthless (non collectible electronic files) but you can keep selling and selling until every human being has a copy. Got a few thousand lying around from digital copies? Print a fancy hardcover with extra sketches and pin ups.

How many books have been canceled because they don't create enough profit after spending costs? This would really allow titles to stick around a lot longer because there are no printing costs.