Digital Comics...

[chromium]

Sites like these are what scares me when I hear all the talk about digital comics being the wave of the future...

 

Selling Comics on CDs

[blowout]

I don't think that digital comics are the wave of the future at all.

For the same reasons why digital books will never catch on, the computer screen is just not a good medium for long term reading. The comfort factor is just not there, and it is just plain bad news for your eyes.

Besides that, how can you read comics books on the can with a computer.

[Ares]

Only digital comics companies say they are the wave of the future so they will have jobs.

[joe_collector]

Actually, they're right, I've got one here: Spider-man: The Movie on DVD.

 

And another hint: Another form of digital comics are... CARTOONS!

 

What are these guys, dinosaurs?

[chromium]

Take a look at the link....

 

This guy is selling SCANS of Marvel comics, full runs of almost every series on Cdrom...

Can't believe this is good for the industry, not to mention legal.

[blowout]

The legality of such a thing is a real grey area.

Look at how much money is made off the back issue market, how much money are Marvel seing from that?

[comicwiz]

Besides that, how can you read comics books on the can with a computer.

 

buy a laptop and go wireless

[dam60]

Regarding the legality, I think what we have here would be a copyright violation. When you buy a back issue, you do not violate the copyright as you are not reproducing an electronic or print version to be distributed. I think that in addition to the copyright the publishers have a claim to the intellectual property and the names and what not, but I 'm not 100% sure. I'm not a lawyer, but that's my hunch.

 

And personally after staring at a computer screen all day at work, the last thing I would want to do is to sit at home and read comics on the net or disk or computer. Definitely a no go for the eyes . . .

 

DAM

[ArnoldTBlumberg]

There is no grey here. The man is a criminal. He is reproducing copyrighted material en masse and redistributing said material in another medium for money.

 

You'd think I'd be used to this by now, but every time I see somebody doing this kind of thing, it just sickens me.

 

 

[Aman619]

Definitely copyright infringement...DC will definitely take action. They always do for even the most minimal usage of Superman, etc.

 

But back to digital comics...you gotta take a step back and look wider at what we love about comics and separate the essence of 'comics' form the form. That is, how much of what we love about comics is the characters, how much the story, and how much the artwork? And how closely tied are these elements to the physical delivery device we currently (for 60 years now) have been receiving these stories characters and images on? Lines and dots on PAPER.

 

Im not saying that paper is dead! Thats such an elitest 90s statement!!

 

But---imagine if it were currently possible (technologically) for a new live-action Spider-man movie to be released every month. Would you still buy the $2.95 pamphlet (or as they are now called "Official Movie Adaption") every month too?

 

And what if it were a beautifully rendered and colored CGI movie from layouts and pencils from Romita Jr or your favorite Spidey artist written by your favorite Spidey writer? See where Im going? Same monthly dose in a diffferent media.

I love comics, the characters the stories and especially the artwork. But I wouldn't be surprised if , in this someday reality I described, given the choice between watching and listening, or turning pages, if I stopped buying the staid print versions altogether and downloaded /tuned in (whatever) to these monthly animated thingamabobs instead. This leaves the whole collector aspect out of the equation...but I think many of us see the probability of that coming anyway!

 

And--someone mentioned the bathroom issue. A few years ago, Wired magazine had an article about research to develop a roll-up paper thin (well cardboard thin) video screen device. It could display images like a computer screen and be as light as a 12" wooden stick. And it would by then be wireless, etc and relatively cheap so that we would all have as many of them as we do TVs now. You could take it into the stall with you like a magazine and LEAVE it in your bathroom if you wanted to!

 

We might be very old or dead by the time this comes to pass, but similar stuff will arrive, By then, it wont be digital comics that are scoffed at, but rather our old fashioned smelly piles of old paper.

 

So far all the digital comics solutions suck..just doing what they can with available tech....but so did our first computers.

[Altas_Fan-migration]

Marvel, DC, etc are not entitled to any profits made in the secondary market. They made their money off the comics when it was sold new at the newsstand. Can you imagine having to pay a fee to Marvel everytime an issue of MARVEL MYSTERY (or any other Marvel comic) changed hands!

 

Getting back to digital, this is the future of comics. I have seen quite a few collections of golden age comics on CD, they are interesting, but kind of leave me cold.

Now if Marvel were to "publish" a digital comic (probably web-based), they would have to enhance the experience by providing not only visuals but also voice, sound effects, music and animation of some kind to their digital comics. This would be a clear advantage over those old-fasion paper comics that get yellow and folded!

 

With high-speed access like DSL and cable becomming commonplace, this will become a reality within the next 2-3 years.

 

Something to think about!

 

 

[OldGuy]

they would have to enhance the experience by providing not only visuals but also voice, sound effects, music and animation of some kind to their digital comics

 

Crossgen is doing this right now. There's a good article in CBG 1532 that talks all about it.

 

Here's a tease:

 

What blew me away at CrossGen was that Mark had never intended for the printed version of his comics to be the final stage of production. From the beginning, his goal was to transform static printed comics into electronic form and then to utilize the magic of electronics to enhance his static stories into versions that would appeal, not only to existing comics fans, but also to the millions of potential comics readers who exist around the world.

[Aman619]

Ive got a cable modem and checked out Crossgen's site. Theyve got a fluid interface and some of the comics are jazzed up with sound effects and spoken dialogue by actors. And it was kinda cool "reading" the comics this way. BUT---over all, they're somewhere in-between well-drawn and colored, but static, bad cartoons....and advertising animatics without zooming and panning in the panels. Actually--- think 60's Marvel cartoons shot from actual comics (Kirby) panels with voiceovers but no moving parts.

 

If this is the future of comics we're spinning down into a black hole in space and the future is hiding somewhere 40 years in the past!!! The future of comics in THIS direction is ...cartoons. Comics, as Scott Mccloud took hundreds of pages to illustrate, are lines in panels with (or without) words, where our minds create the action by figuring out what happens between the panels.

 

To me, when people talk about the future of comics, they are really guessing the future of super-heroes. And what medium their stories will be told in. Comics will continue forever, but I think they will be more like the poetry 'business': small press, very personal subject matter...with a very small loyal audience.

 

Gary Groth will have finally won and be mayor of a tiny island of honest, hard-working creators.