Digital Comics - not quite there yet
Comics are still poised at the edge of a full blown digital revolution. The problem is they’ve been there for a while, and will probably still be poised at the edge for a while.
I can’t speak to the various Android devices, but I have to tell you - reading comics on an iPad is pretty awesome. Like more awesome than I would have thought. The convenience factor is almost scary - I can be laying on my couch at 11 at night, think “gosh, I’d really like to read the latest issue of Wonder Woman”, and about a minute later, I am reading it. The culture of instant gratification that technology has created is getting a little bit scary…but that’s a topic for a different day.
The two best digital publishers right now are Archie Comics and Viz Manga (the Japanese stuff, kids. Keep up.) Both have a huge number of titles available, and the prices are pretty good, too. For Viz, the cost of one volume of (about 200 pages) of most of their titles is 5 dollars and they add new stuff all the time. And good variety too! Contrast that with 3 or 4 dollars for 22 pages that the big boys are charging for new issues.
Archie Comics does pretty good, too, with a lot of 1.99 and 99-cent comics, and they are also helped along by being a familiar brand that suddenly reinvented itself in some shockingly good ways (also a topic for another day). But the pricing is a big part of what the other guys haven’t quite figured out yet.
I’ve all but stopped getting monthly issues. There are a couple titles I can’t live without, and I’ll occasionally grab something that looks interesting to see what’s going on, but for the most part it’s all about the trades for me. There’s two key reasons for this - money and space. For space, after several decades of comic…accumulating…I just don’t have much space, and frankly can do without anymore “things”. For price, 4 buck and issue is too much and adds up pretty quickly if you read more than one comic. And I do. The space problem could be solved by just leaving the issues at coffee shops or bus stations, but I pay too much to feel like they’re disposable.
Granted, there may be some behind the scenes reasons for the prices to be like this, but something has to give. And it is a bit of a catch 22. In order to get more readers, publishers will have to lower prices, but in order to lower prices they have to get more readers.
There are other factors, too. There seems to be a prevailing thought that everything has to be “download to own”, meaning that you download your comic in whatever format, and you can keep it. I can understand that position, and I think once you pay for something you should have access to it forever, but what about the idea of paying to read something?
The best example of this are newspaper comic strips, which are dying for reasons that have little to do with their quality or people not liking them. For a long time, people would read the strips, and then buy the collected volumes when they came out. Again, I’m comparing comic books to a somewhat dying medium - comic strips do live on via the Internet - but I do think it is a valid comparison.
Part of the fun of comics is following a serialized story. Getting a little bit each week or month can be much more satisfying than a big block all at once. You do take more time to appreciate the nuances, maybe even go back and reread things once or twice. And frankly, you want to hook people, the monthly model is going to be much more effective. I’ve waited in borderline insanity for “next issues”, but with a lot of trades, after 6 months or more I can’t even remember what happened before.
You are going to see comics evolve into a different model, and not just the “digital version of what we already do”. It just may not be as soon as we all would like.
