WIP

: On Digital Comics

A well reasoned take on the current — and near future — state of digital comics from an excellent artist and working pro.

cameron-stewart:

There’s been a lot of hullabaloo about DC Comics’ bold new direction, beginning in September of this year - in what is assumed to be an initiative to expand their audience, they are essentially cancelling their entire line of comics, and simultaneously relaunching them all from scratch in a…

I frankly agree on all points: you can’t reach for a much wider audience while trying to appease the retailers of the current, much smaller one. Digital downloads of music succeeded because they were a fraction of the cost of physical singles/albums, a sense of ownership developed once drm disappeared — and you had a file which had a life beyond the service you bought it from — and Apple removed all the pain of finding, buying, playing and storing digital music. Publishers are fighting an uphill battle just in selling reading material to a world that doesn’t read, let alone want to read something they assume is childish. Making a format that has the potential to break the material through to the world at large more expensive value-wise than material that has captured their attention already seems to be absolutely the wrong thing to do. I get fear of destroying the comic shop market, but when you consider those shoppers consist mostly of people who still own every comic they’ve ever bought, what are the odds that they’ll all abandon a lifelong collecting habit to save a few bucks?