CSBG Archive
Friday in a cloud of electrons
A whole bunch of stuff has been happening to me and to comics and it all seems to be kind of pointing in one particular direction, when I think about it a little.
First of all, there was the recent kerfuffle over scans_daily. If I can go there without opening up the whole can of worms again, I did want to note one thing that struck me about the argument that blew up all over the internet.
Without weighing in on either side, I just want to suggest something about the way I saw that fight play out here and all over other comics news sites. The piracy/not-piracy argument seemed to be based in a fundamental disagreement about what the actual comics reading experience consists of. There are those people who consider that getting a Cliff’s Notes, online version of a comic story is close enough to having the actual book that it’s detrimental to persuading an audience to purchase and read the comic… and then there are the people who think that’s a ridiculous position, the two experiences are in no way comparable; looking at a partial scan is no substitute for reading the real comic book.
What this got me thinking about, in a roundabout way, is what the reading experience itself is morphing into as we get further into the computer age.
The way people read is changing, and publishing is being faced with change-or-die choices to make as a result. Newspapers and magazines are failing right and left, supplanted by blogs and web sites. Many ‘brick-and-mortar’ bookstores are going out of business, unable to keep up with the ease and convenience offered by online dealers. No longer is it necessary to purchase a book or a magazine if you want something new to read, not with the entire internet at your disposal. More and more, the act of reading is becoming something that’s ephemeral, an activity you can do on your laptop or your iPhone whenever you have a couple of minutes to kill.
This is a concept in direct opposition to the origins of comics fandom as a collector’s hobby, something that for many years placed so much emphasis on mint condition and unbroken runs and key issues and so on. That’s why I think there’s a certain disconnect for so many fans with the idea of a digital scan being the same as a real comic.
Here at CSBG we get our review copies digitally, as PDF downloads or as links to scans, for the most part. So I am routinely getting books full-on spoiled for me all the way through, let alone just by seeing a partial scan of a given issue of something. But it’s difficult for me to think of these books — and they often are full books, we get PDF files of entire trade paperbacks sent to us for review — as the equivalent of actual, printed, paper books. It doesn’t affect my purchasing habits in any real way. Except (as many scans_daily supporters pointed out was the case for them) I probably end up buying more stuff than I would otherwise.
I just got one e-mailed to me not too long ago that I rather liked, as a matter of fact. The Pen, scripted by British writer Rob Bray, and illustrated by Randy Valiente, who hails from the Philippines.
It’s a nice piece of work, maybe covering overly-familiar ground… it’s very much in the tradition of Gotham Central, except instead of regular beat cops having to deal with superpeople, this is set in a penitentiary and shows how a regular warden and guards deal with superpeople. The first four issues are available here, either to read online or as a PDF download.
Now, I don’t really want to get into a big review of this particular comic, though I enjoyed it well enough. You don’t need me to review it, anyway, it’s free. You can just click through the link and see for yourself. The first four-issue arc is available for anyone to download. And to be honest that was what struck me about it.
Think about it. Here are two guys, literally a hemisphere apart, who have put together a nice little graphic novel and got it in front of an audience without having to spend a nickel on printing, or find a publisher to subsidize them. More, I would bet that if either of those things had been necessary — if Bray and Valiente had chosen to do The Pen as a self-published book and tried to get it in stores, or waited to get a big publisher interested — then probably the project wouldn’t have happened.
Consider for a minute how incredibly difficult it is to get a printed comic book in front of an audience.
I’ve worked in printing for a number of years and I can tell you that the production costs, even for a little photocopy 5×7 ‘zine, get very high very quickly. To even approach getting to a competitive price in today’s marketplace — let’s say you’re planning to charge $3.50 for a standard-sized 32-page black-and-white booklet comic with a full-color cover, which I’d think would be the bare production minimum for an indie comics startup project — you’d have to sell upwards of three thousand of them just to make it possible to break even. (You’re selling them wholesale, remember.) And how many buyers do you have?
One. Diamond.
If everything breaks your way, if you can manage the printing and the shipping and everything else… realistically, in today’s comics marketplace you still only have one shot with one buyer. Sell Diamond and maybe they’ll list you in the back of the book. If you can’t get Diamond on board you’re done before you start.
If Diamond agrees to list you, then if you want to spend more money you can buy some additional advertising space in Previews. So then– after all that — maybe some of the larger retailers will think about ordering a couple of copies of your book, if you catch their eye and if they have some extra capital and if they’re thorough enough that they don’t just order from the big four, throw in some special-order customer requests and stop reading the catalog.
If I’m Rob Bray and Randy Valiente, I’ve got an extra hump to get over– I have to persuade Diamond, and through them the retailers that read Previews, that The Pen is different enough from other superhero stuff that it’s worth taking a chance on, that it’s different and interesting enough to grab readers who are already getting this genre in Astro City and The Boys and so on… and that it’s got a better shot in the marketplace than Gotham Central, a very similar concept (with added Batman name familiarity) that a corporate entity like DC Comics still couldn’t sell enough copies of to keep on the schedule.
If I’m doing all that –and remember, I’m already out thousands of dollars just to print one issue — how the hell do I manage to hang in there long enough to get through a four-issue arc without going bankrupt? And remember, you better stay on schedule through all this or there are penalties there too.
The most aggravating thing about the entire process for any first-time comics creators? Almost none of it has anything to do with talent or creativity. It’s all strictly business, market-driven forces you have no control over.
Sit down and do the math and pretty soon you’ll realize that it’s a miracle any indie publishers try to do superhero stuff through Previews at all. (But they do, every month… and God love them all for daring to live their dream. I just hope they don’t end up homeless over it.)
Look at the number of well-funded publishing ventures that collapsed trying to sell superhero/SF/adventure comics in a marketplace saturated with the stuff. Valiant. CrossGen. First. Eclipse. Comico.
No wonder Bray and Valiente put out The Pen as a digital comic. That way they’re just out their labor and the cost of a domain name. There’s no comparison.
Or try it another way. I’m a big fan of Marvel Comics, and Spider-Man in particular. Let’s say I want to get a copy of every Spider-Man story out there. I can buy trade paperback collections, I can haunt eBay and back issue dealers, I can drop hundreds of dollars on a quest that will take months or years… even just sticking to the Essential Spider-Man reprint books I’m out a pretty fair hunk of dough for all eight volumes, and that only takes me through the late 1970′s.
Or I can spend about thirty bucks on the CD-ROM version.
We bought one of these for our nephew a few years ago and he loved it.
Now, I’m not proclaiming this format as being the best way to go. There are a lot of problems with this from where I’m sitting. The standard 7×10 comics page is not really designed to be read on a monitor. There’s something fundamentally unsatisfying about the experience, as far as I’m concerned.
On the other hand, my friend Kurt Mitchell has been writing books about the Golden Age DC heroes for a number of years now and the digital option is the only one available to him for his research materials, most of the time. Moreover, Kurt’s in a wheelchair and tapping a keyboard to bring up a digital file is quite a bit more convenient for him than getting old comics out of a box on a shelf.
Even a crotchety old coot like me has to admit that the standard 32-page comic book is a really poor delivery system for most modern superhero stories, especially if I want to keep and reread them. And I don’t even bag and board my back issues. When you collectors out there want to reread a Batman story from, say, 1983, how many of you are having to deal with something like this?
Let’s be honest. Put aside your fan obsessions and your decades-long collector habit for a second and try to look objectively at how most of us experience comics, at the process itself. We read them, we put them in boxes, we stack the boxes.
This is a colossally stupid way to store a library you want to go back to more than once a year.
And yet this is how most of us organize our comics, if we’re trying to take care of them and keep them around to be enjoyed in the future.
But take a moment to really think about how damned annoying it can be to get the things out again once they’re put away. Honestly now, how many of you are pulling out those back issues to reread? A great many of us put comics in plastic bags and keep them out of the light, so once they’re in their stacked boxes they’re there to stay.
Maybe you’re more about the collecting than the reading. But even as a collection of rarities it’s not on display out where it can be admired, we can’t even enjoy them on that level.
I am convinced that one of the reasons trade paperbacks are such a hit with the modern comics audience is simply because the stories are so much easier to get at. You buy the book, you read the book, you shelve the book. And then you pull the book off the shelf and reread it whenever you feel like it. Simple. No box, no mylar, no freaking out about condition. (Quick poll– how many of you have bought trade paperback collections of stories you already owned in single issues? And did you make that purchase so you’d have a ‘reading’ copy?)
It’s been a pretty tempting and easy leap for a great many of us to follow that progression to its logical end and stop buying 32-page booklet comics altogether, in favor of getting the collected paperback versions.
Why the hell not? I’m a book guy anyway. Nowhere am I happier than spending an afternoon burrowing through the stacks at some musty old bookshop or thrift store.
Seriously. When Julie and I go on road trips that’s what we do. It’s our thing. You don’t have to explain to me about the pleasure of finding that one special rarity, of turning up an amazing find in a ridiculously unlikely venue.
I’m right there with you. I completely understand the allure of tracking down a first printing, of having “the original.” I am at least as much an admirer of books and comics as artifacts as I am of them as a mechanism for delivering stories.
And I know I’m not the only one. (I believe our own Bill Reed has rhapsodized about the way old comics smell, even.)
Still, traditional monthly comics are so goddamned unwieldy to deal with in bulk that it just hasn’t been that traumatic for me to switch to book collections instead of single-issue comics. I’ve even been letting go of back issues in favor of Essential and Showcase volumes.
However…
…we just got notice that our building’s coming down next month and we have to relocate to another apartment in our complex. Nicer place, newly-remodeled, but nevertheless my heart just sank. Because it means packing and moving the books.
Suddenly my library that I’ve spent years amassing has become “All those goddamn boxes of books we have to hump down the street till we end up in traction.”
And that doesn’t even take into account our storage unit at U-Haul that’s filled with another seventeen cases of books. I own a lot of damn books is what I’m saying.
That despairing assessment of my upcoming backache hit me, as it happens, on the same day that Amazon started leaning on me really, really hard to purchase one of these.
A Kindle. That handheld electronic-book thing, a literary iPod.
Yeah, I’m a book person, an antiquarian bibliophile, a collector. I know a Kindle’s just not the same, it doesn’t come close to equaling the pleasure of holding a real book in your hands, soulless computer blah blah. I get it. I do.
But I’m also a middle-aged man who walks with a cane and I couldn’t help thinking, Man, I bet if I had most of my books stored on one of these things moving would be a snap.
Then there’s the cost factor. Kindle books are cheap. On Kindle the complete works of Lovecraft and also of Robert E. Howard retail for a combined total of something like four dollars.
As it happens, I had my first brush with the literary digital age last week. Actor and writer Wil Wheaton, who is something of a Renaissance Man in the world of computer geekdom, self-published a small chapbook of memoirs and excerpts from his other books. This is his custom before going on tour to various comics and SF conventions throughout the summer.
Julie and I saw Mr. Wheaton do a reading at last year’s Emerald City Convention and were instant converts, ordering his book Dancing Barefoot (containing the awesome Star Trek reminiscence about “William Fucking Shatner”) almost as soon as we got home.
So I was interested in the new one and I like supporting small-press efforts in general anyway, but $13 seemed kind of steep. (I was sure that he probably couldn’t feasibly sell it for less, given what I know about the standard printing and bindery costs involved, but… still. That’s a chunk of dough for a paperback book less than a hundred pages long.)
However!
He also has made it available as a download for $5.
That was easy. I fired off $5 via online debit and it was on my computer in a couple of minutes. No muss, no fuss.
I own a lot of books that I love and would never give up. But I also own a lot of books that I just like okay, and a fair number that are just “meh.” (If I’m honest with myself, I have to admit that it’s just stupid for me to hang on to John Gardner’s James Bond novels. I don’t even like them.)
I suspect the day is coming that my library condenses to a digital format, except for the rarest and most beloved editions of my favorite books. Hell, it was good enough for Mr. Spock. (And hey, even Mr. Spock’s library computer wasn’t nearly as easy to use as a Kindle. Talk about backaches… clearly, the Federation didn’t give a damn about ergonomics.)
No, I’m not there yet. But I have to own up to it. The day is coming. I love my books and I am delighted to have a library in my home… but realistically, there aren’t that many books here that I wouldn’t be perfectly okay with reading as just digital text files. There are only a few that I’m in love with to the point where the pleasure of simply holding the book is equal to reading the story.
As for movies and the DVD collection? Hell, I’m already there. For a devotee of old TV adventure like myself, discovering Hulu.com essentially doubled our DVD collection. (Seriously… Land of the Giants? And Time Tunnel? And dear God, Night Gallery? It’s a miracle I ever get up to leave the office.)
And for the really obscure stuff? Like Logan’s Run, the TV series? I can get that as an Amazon download for $1.99 an episode.
Now, would I buy a DVD set of a show like Logan’s Run (which is admittedly not good)? No, probably not. But in a fit of nostalgia I might well download one or two, just for the hell of it. I have the option now.
The point I’m trying to make here is that more and more, today we live in an age where almost everything in pop culture is available as an intangible — as software. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would live in an era where it was possible to own my favorite TV shows and play them on a personal computer. Or that publishers would be e-mailing me books to review.
So what about comics?
Not there yet.
Part of this is simply that the technology’s not quite ready. Graphics are a lot harder to deal with on a computer than text, and by and large everyone trying it is still thinking in terms of a tangible page that then gets converted to a digital piece. As a result, there’s a lot of fumbling around with how to present digital comics. The big publishers have experimented a little here and there, but so far the archival packages aren’t really setting the world on fire, and I don’t think the ‘motion comic’ is the format we’re looking for, either.
So far downloadable comics are largely limited to unwieldy page-at-a-time PDF or JPEG files, and there’s nothing out there yet that a Kindle can really deal with. The real digital comics format, I think, has yet to be invented.
The other problem is less easily defined. It’s us. The fans.
Nowhere is there a group of hobbyists more set in their ways than comics fans, especially superhero fans. We want our comics just the way they are, thank you very much. No demographic is more resistant to change. We are the people that refused to embrace the graphic novel format until publishers made it the same dimensions as a newsstand comic book.
We pay a higher price per page than any other print format — more than any other magazine, certainly more than any book — simply to keep things the same as they were when we were young. Whenever anyone in the comics press suggests that there’s no real reason comics have to stay at 32-page booklets that measure seven inches by ten inches, a howling mob arrives to scream bloody murder about what an idiot proposal that is and how wonderful it is to get our stories in 22-page installments once a month. (I know this is true because I’ve had them bellowing at me and I fully expect a large contingent of them to arrive here shortly after this column goes up.)
Look, I understand. I can’t emphasize enough that I feel this way too, I’m just as hidebound and resistant to change as the next fan. In fact, my filthy secret is that all these digital books I get, well….
…I usually print a hard copy and bind it at the printshop where I work most mornings, because it doesn’t feel real unless it’s an actual book I hold in my hand. I did it with the Wheaton book and I do it with many of the digital comics I’m sent to review. I did it with The Pen. I’m old-school and set in my ways and I will absolutely confess to that.
But that doesn’t make me right. It probably makes me stupid. In fact, as I look around the room where I’m typing this and see all these books I have to box up for our move, I’m certain of it.
As a comics fan of forty years’ standing, I’ve seen a lot of publishers flailing around trying to find the Next Big Thing. And a great, great many of them are trying to anticipate what that’s going to look like in terms of format. I talked about this in the first column I ever wrote for Comics Should be Good, and it seems we’re still wondering about it.
What’s the graphic novel going to look like? What are comics becoming?
I still don’t know. But I’m more sure than ever before that a great many of them are going to end up as something you download to something that is probably a lot like a Kindle. It’s not here yet. But it’s coming. The guy that makes the handheld ComicPod, or whatever it is, that’s affordable and dependable and easy to use? That guy is going to be rich as Croesus.
And the publishers that figure out how to use that format will dominate the industry. Hell, they might even turn comics into a mass medium again if our hypothetical handheld reader can download comics files interchangeably with regular book files.
What’s more, the creators that learn to design their comics for such a device will be creating the same kind of artistic revolution that Will Eisner did when he pioneered the idea of designing the comics page as a single graphic unit instead of as stacked tiers of comic strips.
The third act of comic books — hell, of all popular entertainment — has already begun. It’d be nice to think that we’re not all so habituated to our longboxes and mylar that we refuse to participate in it.
After all, I started my professional writing career as a magazine columnist in 1992, and it always startles me to realize that after three and a half years at CSBG, the largest single body of work I have in print is right here… at a virtual magazine.
If a hoary old dinosaur like me can be dragged kicking and screaming into the digital revolution, well… anyone can.
See you next week.
32 Comments
logomatic
March 13, 2009 at 12:50 am
Consarnit, I hate the future.
Steven E. McDonald
March 13, 2009 at 1:58 am
The CBR format works well for digital comics, but I have to admit that it works best when either using a very large monitor, or using a monitor that can be popped into portrait mode. And there are limitations, of course, in terms of moving around the page (it’s easy to do, but feels clumsy.) It’s still easier than dealing with PDF, I think, even PDF via FoxIt Reader (rather then Adobe’s bloatware.)
I’m an older guy on a cane too, incidentally. Mind you, I pretty much went straight for the future with jetpack at full throttle (burned all the hair off me bum in the process, but SO worth it.)
Thelonious_Nick
March 13, 2009 at 10:02 am
Yeah, yeah, electronic format. Not interested. Don’t even like cell phones. Would’ve been happier in 1750. What I don’t understand about comics formats is why the giant-sized format never took off in the 1970s. More pages per issue means less cost per page. Square-bound printing is easier to store. Higher-priced items means stores are more willing to stock it. Of course, with TPBs, that’s sort of where we’re moving today.
Stephen Wrighton
March 13, 2009 at 10:08 am
I concur with Steven McDonald. CBR is the format for digital comics.
This PDF/Flash evil atrocities that are put out via Marvel’s digital comic subscription is just evil to use.
I digitized a good number of my comics, and plan to do the rest later on. That means that I’ll have them available on my PC anytime I want, and still maintain my actual issues in a good state.
Dan Felty
March 13, 2009 at 10:10 am
I just went and downloaded The Pen. All it took was for me to read about it here and make one click, and now I have the comic. Incredibly easy, and I’d likely never have found or gotten a print edition. This method doesn’t even require remembering the name of the comic!
Check this out for a good example of what can be done with comics in a digital format, by Matt Kindt of SuperSpy fame:
http://www.supersecretspy.com/flash/treasure.swf
Bill Reed
March 13, 2009 at 10:31 am
Yes, if they made a digital reader that smelled like funky old newsprint, I’d probably buy it. But I also like new plastic smell– sniff those Xbox controllers, everyone. Er. Ahem.
I am going to try to force myself to switch to trades this year. Maybe a slow transition…. Not like I have any room to store those, either. Lo, what will become of my comics punditry? Oh, right, I have never been a go-to-the-shop-every-week guy. Hurm.
Teebore
March 13, 2009 at 10:49 am
First of all, I feel your pain regarding moving. I always say I hate moving, because it makes me resent my stuff, and usually my stuff and I get along swimmingly.
That said, I don’t think I could ever get behind a complete substitution of print media for digital. I can certainly think of plenty of times when the digital alternative is better. Travel, for example, would be much easier with a Kindle instead of lugging three or four books along (even for a weekend trip, I never know Friday which way my tastes may run Sunday). Similarly, I purchased one of those Marvel “40 years” CD-ROMs for a project I’m doing on my blog because it’s easier to take screen caps of that than to scan the issues.
But at the same time, I WANT physical books in my house, on bookcases. I mean, I wouldn’t know how to decorate a house without bookcases stuffed with books filling some space. And 90% of my comics reading is done in my bed before I go to sleep…frankly, holding a laptop in my lap while I read comics digitally isn’t the same. Or very comfortable. Even a thick hardcover is tough to manage.
So I don’t think I could ever get behind a complete 1 for 1 swap of print-for-digital. As an alternative, another choice, I think digital formats are great. But I’d hate to see them become the only way to enjoy printed material (or music and movies, for that matter). Hell, even Picard had an actual book of Shakespeare.
Another reason I couldn’t get behind 100% digital comics is that for me, a portion of my enjoyment regarding comics comes from the act of organizing/sorting/alphabetizing/purging my collection. I like comics for the stories they contain, and I also like them as a collection. As much as I enjoy curling up with a stack of comics on a rainy weekend afternoon, I also enjoy poring through my long boxes on rainy afternoon. Put everything on a computer file somewhere, and I’ve been robbed of that singular enjoyment.
It’s weird, I know, and by no means do I think that my odd enjoyment of ORGANIZING comics as well as reading them means I never want to see comics embrace the digital medium…it just means I don’t want to see comics embrace a digital medium EXCLUSIVELY.
Rob R.
March 13, 2009 at 11:35 am
“Newspapers and magazines are failing right and left, supplanted by blogs and web sites.”
I may be a bit biased here, since I happen to write for a newspaper. But I’d argue that as newspapers continue to fall right and left, there’s going to be less and less content for blogs and web sites to post. Newspapers aren’t going to “go online”… they’re just going to go, period.
Carlos Futino
March 13, 2009 at 12:08 pm
The thing I like most about “going digital” is that, although there may be an “industry standard”, there’s possibility to choose between lots of formats. Like with music: Most music is distributed as MP3, but you will find some WMA and FLAC files around.
As for comics, CBR/CBZ files are my favorites. Sometimes I get some PDF files. But I think the format isn’t the main point. It’s all about the content.
Chris Jones
March 13, 2009 at 12:08 pm
As somebody who wants to get published in the industry pretty soon…there are some things I’m willing to sacrifice in this area and some things I really, really don’t want to.
I’m working on a bunch of comics right now. I’d be fine if a couple of them ended up on a website, because it would sure as hell be better than not getting them published at all.
But “Into The Mystic”(click on my name to read it/see art from it)? No. That comic is my CHILD. It is my PRIDE AND JOY. I don’t want anyone to have to hop on their computers to read it. I don’t even want to THINK about it as a PDF file. I want it in PRINT. I want people to hold it in their hands and I want it to be published by a “real” publisher because otherwise it just won’t seem real to me. It won’t feel like I’ve really accomplished anything if I can’t get it in the format that I want people to read it in. I’m 18 years old and I can assure you, you’ll have to drag me kicking and screaming into the digital age.
Patrick Rennie
March 13, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Nonsense, Rob. The audience for news is still there. The business model just fell apart, that’s all. Ten years from now, the model everyone will be using to make money on news will seem obvious and inevitable.
Course, a lot of companies won’t be around because they ran out of money and vision first.
Webcomics successes, Big Two dragging their feet and not being the whole friggin artform, blah blah blah. Let’s just assume I put a whole long rant about how the new kids make their living on the digital side of the street and how the revolution is already here, okay. Although the Kindle end of the money hasn’t fully matured yet.
wil
March 13, 2009 at 1:03 pm
One problem that no one’s mentioned that I’ve suffered from this week: On Sunday night the hard drive on my laptop died. Now forgetting the the scripts I wrtitten and the short film that I was editing that I’ve lost, I’ve also lost a massive portion of my music collection. Thank christ I didn’t have my comic books on there. Yeah, I should have had it backed up (and the horrible irony was that I’d ordered a 1TB external hard drive off ebay that day) but who actually has EVERYTHING backed up?
See, now I can’t put anything new on my ipod. And Ipods have a habbit of dying. And thats what puts me off getting a Kindle (or a Sony eReader, which is doing better business here in the UK) No electronics effect the Gotham Central trade and the Irine Welsh book I’m reading at the moment. Provided there’s light, it works. Simple as. No batteries, no software, no virsuses, no updates. If I lose one of them, I’ll just shell out another £10 on amazon for another copy. Technology has so many benefits, but I can ever see it competing with the simplicity of a book.
mrclam
March 13, 2009 at 1:15 pm
For those of you who are really interested in the future of comics (digital and otherwise) I would recommend Reinventing Comics by Scott McCloud. It’s not even in the same league as Understanding Comics, but it does go pretty in-depth on its subject.
Rhod
March 13, 2009 at 2:57 pm
And further to what Wil said, there’s the possibility that when fossil fuels run out, in fifty years or so (or a hundred or two hundred, whatever) you won’t be able to run a computer anyway.
Greg Hatcher
March 13, 2009 at 3:26 pm
You all are having so much fun with this back-and-forth I hesitate to step in, but let me clarify one point. I’m not exactly ADVOCATING for the digital revolution. I’m saying that it’s already here and we might as well acknowledge it.
I think comics generally — and monthly superhero comics, especially — are in the same place now that vinyl record albums were in the mid-to-late 80′s, or pulp magazines were in the early 1950′s, or VHS cassettes were five years ago, or… pick your own pop culture dinosaur. Everyone but the most hardcore collectors are going to get priced out of the monthly habit within the next couple of years. Trade collections only work if there’s some sort of loss leader advance version. What might that be?
I’m betting it’s going to be digital.
SanctumSanctorumComix
March 13, 2009 at 3:42 pm
As an “older” 40+ guy (who really, really COULD use a cane now and again), I’m right there at the crossroads on this.
I CAN tell you that one of the BEST things that I ever did for my humongous comic collection is to plunk down the extra money on DRAWERBOXES (because I just got too damned tired to continuously heft longboxes around to get to what was in the bottom of the stack).
Seriously, for ANYONE who goes back to their collection every so often (or heck… just for the ease of FILING THEM AWAY) I can’t recommend them highly enough.
PLUS, you can stack the damned things really high without worry about crushing the bottom boxes.
Anyway, THAT said, I AM at the crux of accepting a digital comics future.
I DO read digital copies.
I’ll freely admit it.
However, I ALSO spend TONS of cash buying the same issues many times over (multiple copies for multiple collections, TPB’s, HC’,s Essentials, Masterworks, etc…).
And I’ve also spent a bit on those DVD collections (40+ years of entire runs for like $30! How could you NOT buy that?)…
SO, while I know that digital “piracy” is a problem, I only get the digital files now as back-ups – for my research and as my new GO-TO resource for quickly looking up something for an article or discussion.
Hell… having thousands of comics on a laptop is AWESOME (although, like Wil cautioned, I AM backing them up onto DVD’s – just not fast as I’d like).
I’d be ready to buy into a digital comics future.
A “kindle-like” item would also be fantastic – BUT – only if I can back-up the data.
If it’s ANYTHING like Marvel’s current Digital Comics “Unlimited”, where I’m only paying to peep into their servers, and once I stop subscribing, all that stuff is lost to me…? I don’t want anything to do with it.
I’m still a creature of collector mentality (hell – my blog was started primarily as a means to showcase my INSANE collection of comics and related stuff).
I’ve always been a pack-rat, hoarder, collector-monkey.
It’s hardwired into me – and one of the reasons, I think, that COMICS latched itself as my drug-of-choice when I first started reading them – more than 30 years ago.
I’ve moved too many times to think that all of my books and collectibles are anything more than a broken back just WAITING to happen the next time I relocate.
Still…the collection grows every month.
Like Greg Hatcher, the author of this piece, I also come from a book-loving history and used to be, nothing would make me happier than sitting in an old, musty antiquarian bookstore (hell, I’ve WORKED in more than a few of them) and hunt for goodies and rarities.
I have more books than many Libraries! No hypoerbole. I haven’t had a chance to READ them all yet – but I was hoping “retirement” (whatever the hell THAT myth will look like) would allow me the pleasure of cracking open many of the old dusty tomes (and yes, the SMELL of old books and comics IS part of their charm and allure)…
Still, as time and technology rush up to slap me in my greying-bearded face… I find myself wondering… if I wouldn’t mind just hitting the “ON” button to a Kindle-like item and reading (or watching) whatever the hell I fancy.
I spend waaay too much time on my computer these days.
Made ever more so by the possession of a laptop.
With the push of a button, I can read, see or do almost ANYTHING in an instant – and at a fraction of the time or cost (or required space) than their “real world” counterparts.
Still… I place my orders every month, check in large shipments, buy more books and DVDs and with EACH and EVERY ONE… I wonder… is THIS the last time I do so before I just say “screw it” and jump “Buck Rogers”-like, into the digital “future” and leave the bound-copy past behind.
Great piece – that truly speaks to many of us, I’m sure.
~P~
Greg Burgas
March 13, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Drawer boxes are quite awesome.
Yes, that’s my contribution to the discussion.
Carl
March 13, 2009 at 5:33 pm
I’m glad someone’s pointed out that the format has to change along with going digital. My guess is that the individual panel will supplant the page. Since any reader’s main use will be for books, the screen size will probably around the size of a typical hardcover page. Zooming in and out or pan and scan will not be convient ways to view comic art.
SanctumSanctorumComix
March 13, 2009 at 6:07 pm
With my laptop (as with most “widescreen” viewers) the only comics that have been a treat to read were the “widescreen” sideways rarities – like John Byrne’s beautiful Fantastic Four # 252.
I’d imagine that if comics were drawn in that manner, they’d make the transition a little easier – until the next step – WHATEVER it may be.
Sadly, it makes reading the actual paper ISSUE a bit cumbersome, but…
~P~
Ted
March 13, 2009 at 10:10 pm
To make a somewhat tangential point, it should be pointed out that, despite what some people have said, S_D was a social networking site as well as an (illegal) content delivery system. For members, it was often as interesting to see the comments as the scans, and as anyone here must agree there is a definite joy in commenting. If publishers could somehow, and I not sure how, add a web 2.0 element into content delivery, that would be something I’d like to see.
Tyson
March 14, 2009 at 12:15 am
“Hell, they might even turn comics into a mass medium again…”
This has already happened: it’s called webcomics. When I look at the estimated numbers for the top webcomics sites, look at how many webcomics there are, and then look at sales figures for print comics, I come to the conclusion that more people are reading webcomics.
Do these replace 32-page superhero comics? Mostly, no. But most of the big success on the web have been doing things in a new way, not just digitizing the old way of doing things.
And, on a completely separate note: Greg, is there any chance I could convince you to use “title=” instead of “alt=” for the hover text in your images? Title works with Firefox (and most other browsers), but I believe that Alt is only fully supported in IE. So, to read your text, I have to right-click on every image and select properties. There may be some reason you prefer Alt to Title, but if you have no preference, switching would make it easier for a lot of your readers. Thanks!
Ed Bosnar
March 14, 2009 at 12:27 am
Just another fantastic column – so much food for thought, and a great way to waste a sunny Saturday morning (here in Croatia)…
I just have to say here that I am surprised that so many comic fans are still so in love with the 32-page booklet (or pamphlet, really), especially given how expensive they are now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a veteran of the grocery/drugstore spinner racks of the late 1970s, and understand the joys of the monthly installment, but still, even then I hated the way they stacked up so quickly (needless to say, as a little grade schooler and then high schooler, I did not bag and board them – I just stacked them in big cardboard boxes) and often ended up giving away any of the stuff I didn’t read as much to friends or whoever wanted them. All this to say that once I got back into comics a few years ago, pretty much all I get are TPBs, which is an ideal format – at whole bunch of stories in single volume, sturdy, easy to shelve. So I have to say, I agree that if some new format can be found to turn it into a mass medium again, and simpler to obtain and store, I’d welcome it.
p.s. by the way Greg, where is that thrift/bookshop in the photo just above the shot of Bob Beerbohm? It looks like how I would picture heaven…
SanctumSanctorumComix
March 14, 2009 at 5:47 am
What’s funny is that when I FIRST saw that pic of the old bookshoppe, I immediately thought it was one of the ones I used to work in (BonMark Books in East Meadow, Long Island, New York).
It looked SO MUCH like the back part of the store (with the bending corner of shelves).
Sadly, they’ve been out of business for almost 13 years now though…
I was one of the last employees to lock the door for good.
:’-(
~P~
Greg Hatcher
March 14, 2009 at 5:59 am
It’s automated, built in to WordPress when you insert the picture; I just type a caption into a blank provided by the ‘insert picture’ drop-down menu box. To exchange that for “title” I have to go in afterwards and insert it in place of “alt” by hand using the source HTML code, which is kind of a pain. And the last time I tried doing that, it didn’t work for anyone. But I might fiddle with it later today, if I get some time, and see if I can get it to work. We are all about customer service here at CSBG!
(No promises, though…. because I’m not terribly good at this sort of thing. Despite the subject of this week’s entry, I’m not much of a techie.)
Me too. I don’t actually remember where it came from, I think I found it using a Google image-search for ‘rare book dealer’ and it was too perfect not to use, it reminded me so much of what Powell’s Books in Portland used to look like before they got all upscale and added the coffee shop and everything. (Cameron’s Books in Portland still looks like that, and so does Twice-Sold Tales here in Seattle, which is why I still love them.)
Greg Hatcher
March 14, 2009 at 6:40 am
Okay, I just tried it again and it didn’t work, so I went and looked at the HTML. It’s really weird. WordPress apparently refuses to acknowledge the ‘title’ command at all. It just drops it out of the code when you save it and substitutes “alt” in its place, but it drops the caption so you get something that says alt=” “.
There are other annoying bugs in this new version of WordPress as well that we all are dealing with when it comes to loading images; it really is irritating, I have to load them in IE but I can only see and insert them in Firefox. I asked our Lord and Master about it a while back and he explained that it’s just endemic to this version of WordPress. I assume the alt vs. title business is part of it.
Sorry guys, I tried. I did at least go back and put the ‘alt’ captions back in after WordPress ate them, though.
Ed Bosnar
March 14, 2009 at 8:07 am
“…it reminded me so much of what Powell’s Books in Portland used to look like before they got all upscale and added the coffee shop and everything.”
Funny, I almost added that it reminded me of Powell’s back in the days when I went there a lot (up to the mid-1980s). Ah, those were the days, when you could walk in there with five bucks you scrounged up from somewhere and then walk out with about almost a dozen 60s/70s vintage SF mass market paperbacks…
Sijo
March 14, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Personally, I *never* cared for the comics I bought themselves; it was the *story* that mattered to me, and storing them was always a bitch. Had I had the chance to read them digitally back then, I probably would have taken it.
And I agree with Hatcher- comics WILL get replaced by online versions sooner or later. But then again, I’m old enough to remember how entertainment went from my family’s old black-and-white TV that got at most four channels, to color TV, to home movie players to Cable to the Internet- everything changes with time, whether we want it or not. Thing is, these changes are almost always gradual- by the time comics as we know are gone, we might be so hooked into something else we may not notice at first.
One thing that HAS, curiously, eluded me so far are webcomics. I like them well enough, but somehow I can’t get into them the way I wish. It may because there’s like a zillion to them and no proper guide (that I know of.) Or maybe that so many are amateurish (but I guess that’s the flip side of what Greg was talking about- the Net will make comics easier to produce, but when there is less effort involved, will the *quality* be the same?) I feel like when I go to a bookstore full of books I KNOW I will enjoy… but I don’t know where to START, and I fear I “might do it wrong” reading things out of order or wasting my time with one when another I would have liked better is right next to it… I guess the World of Webcomics needs a “jumping on point” for people like me.
Tyson
March 14, 2009 at 10:48 pm
“Sorry guys, I tried…”
No problem. I enjoy your captions enough that I’ll just keep right-clicking. Thanks for the effort.
FunkyGreenJerusalem
March 15, 2009 at 5:09 pm
What?
Rubbish.
Once they started putting material we wanted to read in them, we started reading them.
Though before my time, I’ve looked through the old Marvel Graphic Novels, and very few are up there with say ‘God Loves, Man Kills’.
I know I switched to Trades the second publishers got reliable about reprinting the material regularly – heck, I had many before that.
But before that, most OGN’s I picked up in sales and such from the 80′s and 90′s are just plain terrible.
They really are.
Once there was quality material, reprint or not, I brought them – and others did to, as it’s now a mainstay of the industry (despite people like Bill thinking this is the year it all changes).
Size didn’t come into it – it’s what they did with it that counted.
FunkyGreenJerusalem
March 15, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Oh, I spent sunday afternoon putting up my second book shelf to house my trades – long overdue.
Greg Hatcher
March 15, 2009 at 5:18 pm
I was there. It WAS my time. And I’m telling you that the OGN did not become viable until it was changed to ‘Dark Knight format,’ as it was referred to for the first year or two it was out. There’s not any real qualitative difference between, say, the first few Marvel Graphic Novels in the series and Mike Grell’s Longbow Hunters, or any of the 7×10 squarebound graphic novels that followed in its wake… but they were HUGE sellers compared to the larger-format ones. After the first couple of years the market settled down but for those first few months… it was an astonishing difference. It took the size change to make casual fans actually take a chance on the books.
Digital Strips: The Webcomics Podcast
March 17, 2009 at 4:18 am
[...] Hatcher has a lengthy but very readable essay up at Comics Should Be Good that considers paper vs. digital comics in terms of both the [...]