Digital Comics and the APOCALYPSE!!!

I've been thinking about this crap constantly lately, and I'm writing this little babble-fest mostly just for me, to get my thoughts straight and get any misconceptions that I have cleared up (by you guys hopefully) and to hear your thoughts on the whole thing. I've read just about every article under the sun. I pretty much always keep my mouth shut about shit I don't understand because if I don't know how it works, I can't bitch about it. There's a great Mark Waid interview that cuts down to the heart of the whole thing better than any other I've seen.

Check it out www.comicsalliance.com/2010/12… You don't have to specifically read it to understand what I'm talking about, but if you've gotta few minutes check it out.



Okay so first...I wanna kick the next fucker to use the term "Digital VS Print" right in his frickin head! Saying "Digital VS Print" is setting up the battle from the get-go, by flat out stating that the two can't mutually exist.



I think it comes down to THREE things...



PRICING:

So, this particular rant was punctuated by my trip to the comic shop today. I bought 7 comic books...FOR TWENTY SEVEN DOLLARS!! That's just stupid money. The shop I got to is great. They're nice guys and they do their best to discount books when they can...which is something I've heard a lot of whiners say about how digital comics won't work because they price them too high, because their local shop gives them a price break on floppies. If the companies or Diamond or whoever charged the shops less then they could pass that on. Digital comics seem like the boogie man because they CAN be sold for cheaper than their paper counterparts. But that doesn't mean that they always WILL be.

DC was talking big shit about how they're releasing Batman Beyond digitally, the same day that it's sold in stores...for $2.99. So pay $2.99 for a book on a cloud or $2.99 for a book in your hand. I don't know why they don't see that correlation. I think their "Draw the line at $2.99" campaign is a great idea, but they DO have to carry that line of pricing to lesser products. A digital comic IS a lesser product-- there's no getting around that. They're not paying to print it or to ship it and next to nothing to distribute it. It should cost less, but that doesn't mean it should cost nothing.

With Indy books, you're essentially paying for this issue so that the guy can make the next one. With the Big 2, you can't even argue that you're paying for the book so that it continues to come out. Look at Thor the Mighty Avenger, I paid for it so it would keep coming out...I and 7000 other people paid for it to keep it coming out and they canceled it anyway.

I think if we look at the two as different levels of the same product, instead of two completely separate animals, then we're one step closer. People always equate comics with the music or movie industry (and you can find parallels) but they're incredibly different. Digital comics are similar to MP3 downloads, in that, you can choose to buy all the issues in a series (an entire album) or just the issues that you want (individual songs off an album). But the overheads and productions costs are different for each industry. Different production costs mean different consumer prices are needed to make their costs back and start seeing profit. Prices need to be adjusted accordingly for different end products too. It costs millions of dollars to produce a film and they make millions of dollars from theater sales. Then the slap the (in most cases) already paid for itself product on a disc and sell it for $16-$30. The profit margins involved are insanely different than the cost going into a comic book. But we can still learn something from that industry. They should tryout a comic book version of "digital copy." Maybe a website address and download code are inside each physical copy of the book that is sold, so that people who are buying the floppy book (and paying more money) are getting more for that extra money spent.




OWNERSHIP:

I hate the cloud, I don't want the cloud. Call me old fashioned, but I want to own the shit that I've purchased. If I hand somebody something as payment and then they hand me something else back? That should be mine. It shouldn't sit in a magical digital limbo and be mercy to the whims of others.

I think digital comic's entrance on the market has been seen as an attack on the collector's mentality that still runs pretty high among us comic booking types. A company can't sell one good cover and two shitty variant covers if their book is being purchased digitally. I have to tell you that I'm a little bit anal when it comes to printed material, I don't like crumpled paper, I don't like wrinkled magazines, I don't like dog-eared book pages...I blame comics. But I'm also happy to say that I only felt like a comic COLLECTOR for a short time. I'm a comic READER and there in lies the difference. A comic reader, who doesn't give a shit about the tactile experience of comic book reading, can get more books (hopefully for less) if he or she reads them digitally. Let's allow that true readership to flourish where ever it may. Maybe they'll become a collector, maybe they won't, but the material will still have an audience. Take it from me, a guy who has been collecting comics for over 20 years...THAT SHIT ADDS UP! The physical clutter of this hobby is ridiculous.

Fighting over formats is bullshit.

PDF files. That's it! Fuck it, I'll even say JPEGs should be available. If you paid for it, you should have it in the most readily read file type possible. I know the first thing out of everyone (both for and against) is related to piracy. Piracy is the second oldest profession. People have been stealing shit since man first had shit to steal-- Get over it. I of course can say that because no one is pirating my shit. But my thinking is that if it's easy to get legally, people will go to less lengths to get it illegally...and if they won't? If they'd rather get it illegally, then they were going to do that anyway and me making it easier didn't change that.

  


QUALITY:

I think comics look great on my computer. I obviously think comics look great in print, my ceiling high stack of long boxes will attest to that. It's all about preference and convenience and the delicate balance between the two.

I'm so sick of reading comic book reviews, where non-comic book making nerds rip apart books made by the hard working men and women in comics. They're rancorous little fucks who delight in belittling other people's efforts. Not every book is going to a back issue gem and not every book is going to be an epic profound story that stands the test of time. It's entertainment and when you give shit to a guy for not fully rendering a car in the background of a page that you looked at for 38 seconds, you're missing the fucking point.

I think we need to dial it back on the quality of comic book art. I know that sounds crazy, but allow me to expand on that. We demand precision from our comic book artists. We demand an inappropriate amount of time be spent on something that we don't reciprocate. Everybody works at different speeds, some guys are insanely fast and other take forever...sometimes the time spent shows and sometimes it doesn't. But let's take an estimation of presumption: 1-2 pages per day. Factor in that comic books artists don't have "shifts" (unless they make them themselves). So let's make another assumption: A comic book artist works 10 our days. Boiling that down to into unfair simplicities makes 5 hours spent per page for production. Let's round out an average page-count at 24, so at 5 hours a page, that comic artist is spending 120 hours on that book. That book that you spend maybe 10 minutes reading.

We should allow them some leeway, let them work a little sketchier, a little looser (hell some guys do already). We allow it from some and not from others. If the information is conveyed, then everybody wins. It's sequential storytelling and we're expecting a fine art masterpiece on every page. If we let them loosen up a little bit, then they could fit more pages into their schedule, if they finish more books, then your books come out on time & more often and then they get paid more because they're getting more issues done and the cyclical beast feeds itself and becomes more self sufficient. If we demand books for less, then we need to allow for a waning in precision of quality. It's like Subway: they saw everybody was broke, so they dropped all their prices. Sure, you don't get as much stuff on it as you used to, but you still get a quality product for cheaper.


I'll end with this:

The best Chinese food place in town doesn't deliver. The old lady that runs it is really nice and always recognizes me when I come in and we chat a little while my food's getting cooked. They're also a little pricey. There's another Chinese food place in town, it isn't as good, but they deliver. They're not as expensive either. Now they both have their charms, sometimes we spring for the good stuff and put in a little more effort and other time we just want that shit brought to our doorstep-- we give our business to both...and both survive.



i love you,
-mattcrap



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