Comic Book Resources

That’s a lot of ways to slice $3 especially since the retailer alone keeps $1.50

The retailer keeps $1.50 because the retailer isn't allowed to give the dogs that don't sell through back. If the retailer IS allowed to give them back, the retailer ain't keeping $1.50 of the cost in the first place. So once the publisher of Atomic Robo can convince some poor sucker...er, I mean retailer that Atomic Robo is going to sell four copies, the retailer gets NOTHING from the first two copies that sell. The third copy goes to pay rent, utilities, and maintenance. If the fourth copy sells, the retailer gets to eat.

Why does a retailer get $1.50? Because they get the LAST $1.50. Better hope that publisher wasn't telling any little fibs when they told the retailer how good it was going to sell.

Apologies for posting instead of paragraph breaking.

That said, Atomic Robo is, at least, a book of which I can support trying to sell that fourth copy, and I don't want to mislead anyone into thinking otherwise. however, let's be frank here - generally speaking, the retailer has the most risk in the rquation to manage, particularly given the unreliability of replenishment. Anyone who wants to dump even more risk on the retailer by cutting margin is wished a hearty good luck on the webcomics scene.

I don't mean for the quote, or me, to disparage retailers. I understand their exasperation and find their current economic situation to be a nightmare. But I also worry for the creators of good books who ain't gonna be able to find audiences because the distribution system is collapsing and the recession means the retailer's gonna side with a sellable product like Dark Avengers over something like Robo, or Proof, or any lesser-known title.

It isn't exactly Reinventing Comics on the webcomic side of the business anymore. Check out webcomics.com, which is being run by the "How to Make Webcomics" guys (Guigar, Kellett, Krutz, and Straub). I have half a shelf of webcomic trades, most of them by guying doing webcomics as their full-time jobs. Ads, swags, and books supported by free ongoing content has been become a clear business model.

A model for paying for downloads of comics hasn't been worked out to my satisfication yet, but it is interesting to watch the attempts to make it work. I expect it will be a Kindle-like device and not the I-phone that makes it work, though. Give me a high quality, off-line, and in-hands experience that frees up some of my shelf space, and we'll talk.

I'd never buy an i-phone, even if I could read comics on it.

Hey, guys !!

Isn't that the kind of conversation that occured back in the days when mp3 was still a new thing & dsl not the norm ??!

I don't know but denying the fact that digital comics will become more & more prominent is swimming against the current.

Just take a minute & look at the numbers of comics available through piracy.

Don't neglect the advancement in technology.

In France, a mobile phone provider built an apartment with all kind of new technologies in order to give a glimpse of what will be available in near future, one of the thing was a software that converted into screen a 2D pencil into a 3D model, LCD & plasma screens are already there & become cheaper every day with resolution of 1920x1080 you can link them to a pc (if it's powerful enough), multimedia hard drives are already there, TVs with hard drives are already there, rotative PC screen, E-book reader will definitly go with colour, ultra thin like a paper page...

Imagine being in the living room or in your bedroom & reeading a comic on a 50" screen with all kind of options available (zoom, panel by panel, page by page), rotate it & you got a huge comic page, imagine that comic becoming 3D, a ebook reader permiting you to embark a load of comics like an mp3 player today.

The Iphone model that alot of people have problem with is only the tree that hide the forest & the easiest way to promote thing RIGHT NOW.

OK when it comes to comics people are still attached to having a physical comics in their hands but will that be the case for the next generations of reader ???

Prospective & projection is the master key in this case.

Would you read comics on your iPhone? Hell, would you ever buy an iPhone?

Yes, I do. Yes, I did.

Atomic Robo is the best thing available at the iPhone at the moment, and it works and reads fine...

There are a lot of comics like this that SHOULD move to iPhone... For whatever STUPID reason, you can't read Zuda Comics on the iPhone!?!? Apparently the Safari web-browser and the FlashPlayer used by Zuda are incompatible... £%£%$% Apple... Q£%^$^%$ DC...

What pushed me? Well, the first issues of a lot of the iComics are free. Second issues and on are 49p (99c) each. Against $2.99 or $3.99 that is translating to £2.75 or £3.40 at the moment in my LCS...

I've also tried Clickwheel.net, both on the PC and iPhone. the majority of stuff on there is free too!

Not to mention reading FreakAngels every week and then ordering the Hardcover collection.

The Sony Pagereader mentioned above is the next real step. Once this becomes capable of colour, you can seriously forget the vast majority of the printed stuff in ten years time...

Digital really is going to take over. (and I say this as a guy with over 30 longboxes and a room full of TPBs and Hardbacks...)

Anyone remember cassette tape, video tape, or 8-track? I don't count vinyl, as that is still around, used by specialists like DJs.. That's where comics are heading - the floppies will pretty much vanish except maybe on FCBD, to be replaced with electronic versions and collected trades...

Unless Marvel and DC start to print and distribute locally (i.e. Marvel UK is responsible for PRINTING AND DISTRIBUTING Marvel US's titles in the UK) it could be cheaper!!

Anyone remember cassette tape, video tape, or 8-track? I don’t count vinyl, as that is still around, used by specialists like DJs.. That’s where comics are heading - the floppies will pretty much vanish except maybe on FCBD, to be replaced with electronic versions and collected trades…

I'm not altogether disagreeing with you, but there is a difference.

Firstly, people are still buying CDs so MP3s haven't completely taken over.

Secondly, comics are a complete product in their own right. A CD requires a device to play it - as does any other medium for music.

It might still happen for comics - and I'm certainly keeping an eye on the book readers for when they start being in colour.

That's why I ddn't include CDs...

Digital comics require a device - be it a PC or an iPhone or a Sony Reader...

I still see comics being around, but more in the format of TPBs and Absolute versions...

I just see the digital comic being the evolution of the printed comic. (actually in the same way that CDs evolved from previous formats of music storage)...

Buy an iPhone? I finally bought a mobile phone just last year, so I suppose anything is possible... someday...

Personally, I'm over 30, something of a late adopter and spend enough time at a computer as is, so I like paper media. Having acknowledged all that, however, I still find it faintly ironic that, at a time when comics production quality is at an extraordinary all-time high, almost everyone is anticipating their replacement by a low-resolution format.

I mean my display has about 100 pixels per inch; I don't know what the line screen on most new color comics is but it's a lot better than 100 dpi. And that on-screen resolution applies to everything, not just color halftones, whereas in a printed comic black text isn't even made with dots. It's crisp and smooth. Anyone waiting for electronic display resolution to increase is probably going to keep waiting a long time, too. Meanwhile, on coated paper, printed comics don't even give up a whole lot in terms of color vibrancy.

That's just an observation, though, not an argument; the economics are pretty clear.

My feeling about digital distribution has always been about one thing. The format. Music is music. While the delivery method has changed from vinyl & magnetic tape to CD to MP3, it's still all done the same way. Print is different because there are a multitude of formats that won't necessarily into the format of a single reader. There are books, magazines, and newspapers, each with several sub-formats of their own. Since people aren't going to buy multiple readers, the format of the content will have to be altered somewhat.

While an early adopter might not have a problem zooming and scrolling a scanned comics page, especially a two page spread, I'm not sure the average consumer will. Most likely, any reader will be geared more towards the size of a typical hard cover page and those should be the dimensions that the comics page will have to be optimized for.

I'm not sure about the CD thing because if tomorow the music industry finds a new way to provide content or a piracy proof mp3 thingy, you can be sure they'll drop it as they did with the previous formats.

OK, comics are "complete products" but the thing is that we're in 2009 & going on wich means that it's quite improbable people don't have PC or cell phones...

The digital comics just need to find the viable format & it'll certainly boom like the Ipods

What Wraith said.

Except that I have yet to buy a cell phone (or *anything* electronic & hand-held, except I guess for the remotes to my TV, DVD player & ghetto blaster) & am planning never to remedy that situation.

(Oh, & the remote to my VCR as well. Anyone who would give up his/her VCR is like someone who would give up his/her turntable ... unfathomable.)

Whoever gets Marvel and DC to sit down and decide on one digital standard is going to make millions.

Okay, I'm gonna chime in at a bit of a tangent here.

I like comics. I read a few indie comics, but not many. I admit that.

You know why? I like superhero comics. They're fun. They are what brought me into the fold, as a fan, and while I'm open to reading other genres of comic book, I always read superheroes.

Indie comics don't really do heroes. Self publishing creators don't do heroes. You get a lot of quirky, odd, artistic stuff out there, and that's great, but that's not what I'm hungry for. Even when they do heroes, my experience has shown that it's often that poisoned-by-the-90's, grim and gritty ultra-violence. I'll pass, as I can get all the Image stuff from back in the day in the quarter bin, thanks, and it's in colour too.

I don't think, as a consumer, I "actively fight" buying small press books. They just don't sell the comics I want to read.

If I'm ever going to pay for a digital comic, I better be able to download it and read it at my leisure. That's the main reason I don't like the Marvel digital service. Instead of using the widely used method (.cbr's), they went with a flash player that is slow, harder to scroll through, and with low resolution.

And making e-comics only for iPod's is stupid. You are going to cut off a huge chunk of the possible market that don't have said device.

Matt,

The eComics from iComics are going to be available for the desktop (Mac and Windows), and Android.

The ones from Clickwheel were in PDF and CBZ/CBR format first, and are slowly being ported to the iPhone..
iVerse are producing both iComics for the iPhone and PDF/CBZ/CBR comics for the desktop simultaneously... at 99c each.

Scott Maclver:

"Indie comics don’t really do heroes. Self-publishing creators don’t do heroes. You get a lot of quirky, odd, artistic stuff out there, and that’s great, but that’s not what I’m hungry for. Even when they do heroes, my experience has shown that it’s often that poisoned-by-the-90’s, grim and gritty ultra-violence. I’ll pass, as I can get all the Image stuff from back in the day in the quarter bin, thanks, and it’s in colour too. They just don't do the kind of books I want to read."

Well, I have no idea what you think you want to read, but there have been plenty of indie superhero series that aren't of the design you describe. I suspect that either your experience is very limited, or that you just haven't been exposed to the work.

RE: E-Comics --

Personally, I can't say I've had much interest in them. Furthermore, I'm not particularly interested in iPods or any other devices of such nature. I agree that's what many other people like and want, and they're welcome to it. But as a creator, it's not what I want to produce for.

Why not? You (comics fandom at large) weren't willing to pre-order my company's books online via subscription for $15 for 12 issues bagged, boarded and mailed to your goddamned door back when we made that offer in 2000 and again in 2003 respectively, so why would you be willing to pay anything to DL them to your silly little devices, hm? Especially what with all the free online content out there to be seen? I'd say you're not willing. I'd say unless it's the corporate owned or licensed property books, or it's by your fan favorite / personal friend creator, you're all still going to ignore it- regardless of who produces it. And when we say anything, you'll come back with, "Well, who the hell are you? I ain't never seen anything YOU ever did in this business..."

Because you never looked.

whereas in a printed comic black text isn’t even made with dots. It’s crisp and smooth

Not in Powers it isn't.

The resolution of those electronic book readers is incredibly high - possibly already higher than the lettering in Powers - and I'm sure it'll get higher.

Trying to read a comic on a screen the size of a large postage stamp is just dopey. Reading a comic strip the same way, then waiting for the next page to load destroys the narrative flow of the strip. And if the comics is just one panel, it is akin to reading Marmaduke and Family Circus, only through a microscope.

Stopped being duped, America, into trying to read on a small screen. Make those electronics companies come up with something lightweight, portable, and with a full screen.