The situation’s really more like a clothesline carries their stuff which I’m borrowing to my cloud. Then Netflix makes something no longer available. The connection is cut. And all of the sudden, that’s when I want to see it!
A few weeks ago, evanmcbloggin sent me this link above and solitcited my thoughts on digital comics. My initial reaction was that I prefer to read my comic books in print. That’s just my gut feeling about the medium and how I enjoy this particular form of entertainment.
I should note that I’m incredibly curmudgeonly toward new technologies when it comes to personal entertainment. While I’ve long downloaded mp3s, I still don’t own an iPod. Despite buying a HDTV, I refuse to transition to Blu-ray. I hate 3-D movies in theaters. And while I’ve come around to the idea of eBooks and the Kindle, I’ve resisted the temptation (mostly due to pricing).
Granted, all of my reasoning here surrounds the idea of economic utility: I have to have an overwhelming reason to switch to something newer that overrides the cost of doing so. But cost isn’t the only thing factoring in my decision. Physical storage of media continues to be a real problem when I move. At some point, all those books, DVDs, comics, etc., will become prohibitive to keep in physical form and you begin to think, “I’d rather just keep all this in the cloud.”
That technology is only partially there for some mediums. It’s beginning to happen with comic books, but it’s still the very early stage. I think a lot of people would entertain the idea of a Netflix-styled, on-demand solution for accessing the complete archives of a comic book company. I’d love to read early runs of Green Lantern that I’ve only seen sealed in plastic at comic book conventions.
I don’t have a particular problem with digitizing comic books. I think any way for the industry to make money to continue providing writers, illustrators, inkers, colorists, editors, etc., with jobs in the creative field is a good thing. I think that digital comics made available over-the-air on iPads, iPhone or whatever will only help the industry find new readers and also get current readers to try new comics that they might ordinarily shy away from purchasing in print because of the higher cost.
Comics right now cost between $3 to $5 depending on the title. While some local comic book shops offer subscription discounts of up to 35 percent, it’s still a lot of money if you want to read a vast array of titles. Trying new titles can be risky and typically a lot of readers will wait for fan reaction and reviews of the title’s run several issues in before deciding to try it. Often, this means buying trade paperbacks that collect several issues. While convenient for the consumer, this sometimes isn’t beneficial to the original artists on the title whose contract may only include single-issue sales.
This is why I continue to purchase single issues, even though it’d be much easier for me to wait for trade paperbacks to collect titles I like. While most mainstream comics will continue to be published no matter what, it’s the smaller titles from independent lines and new artists that I feel the need to support.
In part, this is why I am hesitant to take up the digital comics banner. How are artists compensated for digital distribution? With almost zero recurring costs of distribution, you’d think that this would mean that artists would get a larger percentage (even if the per-unit price was smaller). There’s a lot of ambiguity there as to how the content creators will get paid. If that was cleared up more, then I’d probably consider digital comics more.
The other side of the coin though is just how much I love reading comics in print. While I’m not particularly sentimental over reading a printed newspaper, comics have this incredible impact in print.
Whenever you look at a two-page splash spread, it’s a visual feast. It’s incredible. Or take what Bryan Hitch did with the Ultimates 2 and the 8-page fold out! Seeing that just blew me away and it’s not something that translates very well on even an iPad or 22-inch monitor. You’d have to scroll, and scroll, and scroll. And that’s not the way a comic book page like that is meant to be “read.” The whole point is impact, and you lose that.
I think comic books have been somewhat insulated from the economic downturn of the publishing industry for a few reasons. One of the larger reasons would be that for some odd reason, people still consider comic books collectible, which I don’t believe for a second, but it seems to be propping them up for now.
I’m pretty sure people don’t see anything digital as collectible. If anything, they view it as disposable. And I can understand why comic publishers would be hesitant to enter that mindset with the consumers they have right now. I don’t have any sort of sentimental or nostalgic bond with a single piece of digital media on my hard drive. I’ve accidentally deleted the only copies of photos I had, but really didn’t feel too broken up about it. If I lost a large portion of my mp3 collection, I know I could probably re-download almost any of it.
But I have issues signed by my favorite writers and artists. I have a stack of books signed by my favorite author. I can’t imagine damaging my bootleg copies of Star Wars ripped off of the LaserDisc re-issue. For some stubborn reason, this means something to me that I have a terrible time letting go of.
If we do move to a digital age, then I wonder if we’ll still have this sentimental feeling toward real objects we own. It means nothing to copy your favorite albums to a Flash drive for a friend, but it means something if you give them your record collection.
I’m not completely sure I want to trade away that human transaction.
