The All Things Fun! Blogs

The Digital Comics Revolution

By Allison Eckel

My household is undergoing a digital revolution. My husband and I recently got iPhones, and we added an iPad. At first, we thought they would be just kind of fun, a way to easily check e-mail on the go and give the kids something new to play with. However, after only one month, we have significantly reduced our use of paper lists, printed calendars, and electricity guzzling laptop computers. We are considering a switch to all-digital forms of news (cancelling the printed form of our major metropolitan newspaper). In meetings, all of my notes go into the iPad (my stack of yellow legal pads is beginning to get dusty). We rarely watch movies on DVD anymore, since our Netflix account can stream through all of our mobile devices as well as our Wii. Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future has landed in my suburban living room.

Of course, there are consequences to this digital revolution. As you probably noticed, our decreased consumption of printed goods may be ecologically friendly, but the producing companies will suffer. Have you taken this to its logical, comics-related conclusion? Yep. The days of the printed monthly comic are numbered.

Now, digital comics are not a 2010 innovation. Marvel boasts that its web site has featured digital content for at least three years (according to Dan Buckley, Marvel’s publisher). What is revolutionary is that every major comics publisher has integrated its digital reader with ComiXology and will support multiple digital platforms and virtual archiving.

This issue is available for free from Marvel.com.

Oops, that is, except Marvel. You still have to go to their site for their content. I think this is the first time DC Comics has made a smart, consumer-friendly move before Marvel. Regardless, consumers can now instantly download content to a PC, a smartphone, an iPad, a PSP, or any other “cloud sourcing” device and enjoy their comics on the go.

On the plus side, this enables fans to access back-catalog content like never before. I was able to introduce my son to DC’s 1985 game-changer Crisis on Infinite Earths (for free) without opening my sealed original issues. Being a DC fan, I have never read an Iron Man comic. However, I can read all 33 pages of The Invincible Iron Man #1 by Warren Ellis through Marvel’s site to see if I should give Tony Stark a try.

So, on the minus side, there’s the impending demise of the printed monthly comic. Die-hard fans proclaim, “It will never happen,” but the influence of the All American Dollar is pretty strong. Case in point: Superman and Wonder Woman writer J. Michael Straczynski, together with his DC Comics publishers, just made the controversial decision to end his runs on those monthly titles early in favor of more lucrative graphic novels. His new book Superman: Earth One hit such high sales marks that they “fast-tracked a sequel,” in the words of Co-Publisher Dan Didio. While this is not an example of digital trumping print, it does show how printed monthly comics are underperforming for their publishers. It also shows how projects that reach mainstream audiences will win the day.

The graphic novel that made JMS give up monthly comics

It is these mainstreamers that publishers are courting through digital innovations. At NYCC, the comics publishers (without a representative from DC) discussed this issue. They estimated that the core audience for monthly print titles sold through local comic shops (LCS) is roughly 300,000. The publishers would love to see that number in the millions, more in line with the numbers of readers of manga in Japan. For that to happen, the price point of monthly comics has to decrease dramatically while access has to increase. Aaron Colter, marketing coordinator for Dark Horse, made a great point: If a consumer has $4 to spend on entertainment, would he choose one issue of an ongoing comic that he will read in 10 minutes, or would he choose something that lasts longer like a ticket for a second-run movie house?

The current model of selling archival-quality print through comic shops, they say, is keeping the comics industry from growing beyond the current 300,000. “The future is very bright for digital comics,” according to Chip Mosher, marketing director for Boom!Studios. “In the next five years, we will see a lot of experimentation.”

Most of those experiments will likely revolve around what to do with our beloved LCSs. If you hadn’t noticed, the LCS is absent from the digital model: Launch the digital app, download a comic, read it. No brick-and-mortar store required. For now, publishers are “experimenting” with ways to keep the LCS in the loop. Dark Horse, for example, offers exclusive digital content available only with a code provided by a retailer. Similarly, Top Cow will offer a digital download code with the purchase of Witchblade #144. From a fan’s standpoint, this is not terribly exciting. From the publisher’s standpoint, this seems annoying at best and better if avoided altogether. Rather like giving flowers to a dying man. From a business standpoint, as cold as it is, cutting out the LCS helps offset the cost of the technology the publishers are pushing to innovate. Of course, that’s my analysis of the situation. No publisher on the NYCC panel ever drew that conclusion out loud.

The digital revolution has begun and it is affecting the comics industry. Exactly what this means for fans in the short term is unknown, but in the long term, I would say that the value of that print collection you have in the spare bedroom may soon skyrocket as new, printed titles approach extinction.