Digital Comics Preservation
January 2nd, 2006 by Jose
Comic books are dying. 42 year old men living in the basement of their parent’s house isn’t enough to keep them going. I remember years ago it was easy to find a comic book store right around the corner. Now they have either closed or diversified, selling other geek related things.
The obsolete format is to blame for this impending death. Most people prefer a digital format rather than paper. This is the same reason why newspaper sales are slowly going down. People don’t want to have “stuff” laying around anymore, taking up space. You now go online, check the news, go do something else. No need to recycle or throw out a newspaper with 800 flyers. I know quite a few people would like to have a large collection of comics to remember “the good old days” but no one likes having their house look like a comic book store.
The solution for this? Digital comics. All comic book companies should start offering all their comics in a digital format. In fact, they should convert all the old comics into digital format for their preservation in the future. Marvel Comics started experimenting with this recently. This is a step in the right direction but more needs to be done if they expect the comic book business to keep making any money. Some fans have taken on this task on their own, scanning all the comics they have and offering them to the comic community. This is, of course, illegal but it’s the direction where all comic book companies should go.
True, people like digital.
But honestly, I read my physical book comics way more often than I do my ….scanlated digital comics.
Reason? The idea of curling up with a book isnt dead.
Volumes of comics still sell, but issues? Not so much.
While the digital medium is definately moving up there, graphic novels won’t die out.
If only for the reason that they are accessable at all times. In the bathroom, in class, on the bus, walking down the street, there are many places where you can’t take the computer.
Plus….the digital glare of extremely white backgrounds can give you really bad headaches.
I do not see the future of comics being held up by old men in their mothers basements. I believe it shall be carried on by the younger generations, more specifically – the anime/manga fans.
The problem is not whether or not to go digital, the problem is the price.
Most of todays comic fans are broke. Like I read on a bumper sticker the other day ‘I shoulda done crack; its cheaper than being an otaku’ (FYI: an otaku is an anime/manga fan)
Being a fan in todays world is very hard, the prices of everything going up, the product often disappointing to die hard fans, and the mass media murdering ones favorite characters.
If the comic companies want success, they need to go straight back to the source of their wealth, they need to go talk to the fans. Most companies in todays world would really benefit from that. But the comic companies especially.
So in conclusion, I dont believe the comic industry is dying. I do agree that comic stores are becoming harder to find, but today, comics are only as far as the nearest book store chain (read: Books Inc, Borders, Barnes and Noble). I also agree that old comics, rare comics, and first editions, should really be backed up on computers. However, I see more and more young people buying comics. I’m a seventeen year old female otaku currently the president of my schools anime club, and from what I’ve seen, its far from it. Go to a convention, comics aren’t dying, they’re evolving.
Good luck to you,
~Sin Nefinite Revolus
Nonsense, people like paper. But paper costs money while the formats on the internet are ‘free’. Money is and will be the issue with comics. Who wants to spend 3 bucks for a 24-page comic, especially in non-eventfull comics like those of Marvel and DC?
For the price of 8 comics I can (and do) download hundreds for free using Bittorrent. Reading the comics is another thing. Staring for hours at a computer screen? Can you say Stevie Wonder? Paper doesn’t give me a cornea shutdown.
People who cry out that ‘this or that’ won’t excist in 5 years should get their heads out of their ass. Most people aren’t adapting that fast, only a small group does.
I often download comics through such programs like Bittorrent or Limewire, but I only do this when I cannot afford an issue or a graphic novel. In my opinion, I cannot compare reading it on a screen to holding the book itself. Knowing that this book is physically in my hands and that it is completely accessable, that i cannot buy another book and have all my books destroyed, like downloading a fake comic and getting a virus. To actually have it in front of you, rather than a digital representation of the real thing, cannot compare. I know some will disagree, but that is there opinion. As long as the stories remain as good as they are (and I don’t find the latest DC books boring, infinite crisis, 52, etc) then people will buy them. I am 17. I have many friends who read these books. And many friends I have introduced. The reason they are not becoming a ‘craze’ is not their format, but stereotypical attitudes towards comics. That will probably remain the case for a very long time, but I think there will always be fans. And through those fans, the comics will live, whether on paper or not. I think scanned images should remain back-ups or alternatives to the real thing, because thats what the paper ones are, The Real Thing.
It´s just one more point to think about changing medias and ways to do things…
In my country I can´t buy comics like in the U.S., an regular comic have a U$12 cost and a Graphic Novel… wow… Other problem its the number of issues and titles that don´t come to here (how can anyone read something like Civil War without the 90 chapters…). We have some titles translated, but it sucks have to read some adaptation with language troubles…
Now, working with torrents, this fantastic culture can arrive in any part of the world like they ware created… in all details…
Now I´m looking for digital archives for all comics that i have the originals and will donate for a library or something else. It´s a big problem have all that stuff! And now, a simple disk and a notebook can give you a chance to take with you all your comics to a trip, car, bus, plane, bathroom…
Another discusion about digital version of graphics and comics books…
If you can afford the price can you be satisfy of a picture of a painting of a famous Artist ????
Graphics and comics books are not literature they are Art.
Three year ago I was in an accident. I broke my neck and am now paralyzed. I can use my arms but my fingers don’t work. I hadn’t read a comic since because of this until a couple months ago. It was a digital comic. Through the wonders of technology I can use a computer quite easily, but turning pages in a real book of any kind is out of the question. True it can never compare to the boxes and boxes of old comics I have, but at least with groups like DCP I can still enjoy a good comic when I get the chance.
If you aren’t someone who likes digital comics because you prefer the original books, fine, but you can’t discount the product. I don’t like any song in the Top 40, but it’s the Top 40 for a reason.
love that you made the point on here. Marc Hansen, a great artist but quite goofy in his actual work, started doing this a few years back…check out marchansenstuff.com. Ralph Snart was by far his best creation and was published for years; now he’s retained the copyright and is doing it all himself. He’ll release some books but he’s told me he’ll definitely go back to publishing stuff online. Until now you could read every single episode of Ralph Snart Adventures digitally; he only took them off so the publisher/distrubitor of his new book series wouldn’t get all pissy.
Then there are the webcomics like http://www.drunkduck.com/Innocent/ Creators can keep control, readers get free comics, and no one is getting screwed unless they want to be.
I dont think it should be one way or another, easily comic books could be selled in both ways, of course, both have fails.
Paper get messy and decolored with time (and reads).
Digital, well that its a little bit more difficult to see but lets analise. Digital comics spread easily, and could be send easily in a massive ways (megaupload, torrent, emule, forums, mail lists, etc). So less people would bought’em and the anouncers pay less for the publicity spots, and the editorials should have to reduce or cancel soon or later this way of selling. And dont tell me that it could be distribuited with some print limit, copy limit, or some system that doesnt allows to people to send or read a comic that doesnt be bought by him, becouse nowadays EVERYTHING is hackable, i dont everyone will agree with me in that point.
Now, if comic companies keep pubishing paper versions along with digital versions, that could be something to re-think. Personaly, i think this is the best ways, becouse people like to HAVE somtheing in exchange for the money, and dont just the right to read something, thats why comics are frequently collectionable items.
Also, compare comics with newspaper it will be a little tricky, becouse, unlike newspapers, comics ARE COLLETIONABLE, and young people, and more frequently in the last decades, mature people probe it.
And for me its obvious, that if comic companies keep editing only paper versions they will get behind technology. Now, how companies will take that chance, how they will get advangate of it and how tey will compensate to keep selling comic of a good quality in a good price, that depend of them, on the people in charge.
ERRATA
And dont tell me that it could be distribuited with some print limit, copy limit, or some system that doesnt allows to people to send or read a comic that doesnt be bought by him, becouse nowadays EVERYTHING is hackable, i think everyone will agree with me in that point.
Just wanted to offer a few thoughts here, and please forgive me for going on at some length. It’s just that I think digital scanning of comic books really is the future — and it’s the only way the medium is going to hook the new readers that it needs in order to survive. Of course, I’m looking at things from the perspective of someone who grew up in the “middle years” of comicdom, the seventies. Let me explain.
In my teen-age years we didn’t have comic-book shops, but comics were still pretty easy to find. There were price guides, but few people knew about them — hardly anyone over the age of thirty understood that comic books were “collectible” — and so the prices were within reason. You could haunt used bookstores, thrift shops and yard sales and amass a pretty decent collection. A young comics fan might have been able to assemble an extensive run of, say, the Fantastic Four or Superman after two or three years of dedicated searching. Mow lawns for a few summers, wash a few dishes, and if you didn’t blow your money on booze or drugs, fast cars or women, you might have been able to assemble an outstanding Silver Age comic-book collection. Not so today. To assemble the kind of collection I amassed with my paper-route money in the seventies, a kid today would probably have to spend as much as he would on a new Mustang.
I suppose this is true for any item that becomes a “collectible.” Twenty years after it hits the market, the prices begin to shoot up — particularly if the item was marketed originally for children. Once the children become adults, they try to find the things that once gave them pleasure. Certainly in the seventies it would not have been possible for me to amass a Golden Age collection — those comics were already more than twenty years old, and some of the really early Superman and Captain America comics of the forties were selling for as much as fifteen and twenty dollars apiece. But the Silver Age had just ended — we didn’t even call it the Silver Age in those days — and a post-1961 collection was still affordable.
You could pick up ten and fifteen-year-old comics for a quarter, and even the really key issues weren’t horribly expensive. I remember buying Flash 105 for $10, and X-Men 1 for $11. I picked up a ten-year run of Mad Magazine for $15. I found the first appearance of the Legion of Superheroes for a buck-and-a-half, and the first appearance of Supergirl cost me something like three dollars and fifty cents. I amassed a run of the Hulk issues of Tales to Astonish for a little under twenty bucks, and I found most of the Jack Kirby issues of Journey into Mystery and Thor for about thirty. This was three decades ago, all right? I know how unthinkable this sort of thing might sound today, and that’s why I’m telling the story here. Back when comic collecting was still relatively new and disorganized, this was how it was done. It’s the way the hobby was born.
I shake my head when I read about the kind of “professionalism” involved in the comic-book hobby today — the professional appraising services, the people who measure rips and tears and worry about whether someone clipped a coupon; the practice of sealing comics in plastic, presumably never to be touched by human hands — what’s the world coming to, anyway? How on earth can the comic-book industry become a part of the lives of pimple-faced fourteen-year-old boys if the hobby has come to this, and the prime material is simply too expensive to access?
One of the things you have to remember is that we really haven’t seen a tectonic shift in comic books the way we did in the sixties. Once Marvel Comics came along, it was as though the industry had been reborn, and from a collector’s standpoint, it seemed as though nothing published before 1961 really mattered. At the point I began collecting, the oldest of the really desirable comics were only fifteen years old. In the mid-seventies, a guy who wanted the run of Spider-Man had to find maybe 150 comic books, and most of them were within the price range of a teen-ager. (I remember when a local bookstore offered the first three issues of Spider-Man for $36 — and I had to take a pass because I didn’t have the money.)
Well, there really hasn’t been a tectonic shift of that kind in the years since then. The comic books of 1961 still matter. If you want to amass a collection of everything that remains relevant today, you still have to start with the earliest Marvel comics. But these days, the collectible pricing has simply put those comics out of reach of your average fourteen-year-old. So what’s he to do?
I think the two major comics publishers have recognized this problem and have tried to address it, by reprinting their earliest books and by periodically trying to “restart” their various long-running superhero series. But neither practice is good enough. Once you get hooked on Superman, you’re not going to want to be limited to the reprints and the latest material. And the comics companies have to depend on the voracious appetites of the young collectors who support them.
The comics industry can’t survive without collectors — the people who will spend $3 for a new comic book, no matter how lame, just to make sure they’re not missing an issue in a series. But the collecting impulse has at its core the desire to acquire every issue of a given series. And a fourteen-year-old kid who decides he likes the Fantastic Four simply can’t afford a copy of FF#1. He’s bound to be frustrated — and you know, there’s plenty of other things he can do with his time and money. In my day, we didn’t have video games, we didn’t have the Internet, so on and so forth. If you make it hard for a teen-ager to get hooked, he’ll move on to something else.
The digital downloading of comic books really is the only way to give today’s teen-age collector access to these early comics. I guess it might take some of the fun out of it — where’s the thrill in finding Captain America 100 at the Goodwill for a dime, as I did, when you can gain access at a keystroke? But practically speaking, you’re not going to find Captain America 100 at the Goodwill anymore anyway.
You have to wonder why the comics companies haven’t tried to crack down on the practice of comic-book scanning and downloading. Perhaps it’s because they don’t want to alienate their devoted fan base, but I like to think it is because they recognize the same realities I have outlined here. There is really no other practical way to make the older material available to the younger readers. And without younger readers, there really is no future for the industry. If I’m right about the industry’s reasoning, I can only salute it for its insight.
I guess others might bring up other issues — the fact that comics degrade and crumble over time, the necessities of preserving an art form, so on and so forth. And these arguments certainly have validity. But really, what we’ve seen in the last few years is a revolution in the distribution of older comic-book material. All the scanning and downloading has probably done more to create and “hook” new comic fans than anything the industry itself has done.
One of the things you have to realize about comics is that for most people, it’s not a lifelong hobby. There’s a natural cycle that makes the comics business a little different than, say, the music industry, or the movie industry. Those industries see downloads as a threat to their business, which is arguable, but in the case of comics, I really don’t think there’s a threat of any sort.
My story probably isn’t any different than that of most comics fans of my age. I started buying comics at age 12 and stopped at age thirty — no doubt the demographic the comic industry hopes to reach. At the time I stopped buying comics, I thought it had something to do with the “Death of Superman” hype. Of course Superman wasn’t dead. Of course they were going to bring him back. Jeez! Didn’t anyone in the news media understand anything about comic books? It all seemed a little silly to me, the special “collector’s issues,” the comics that you were never supposed to remove from their plastic bags, the covers with the holograms, so on and so forth. I had other priorities — things like car payments and house payments — and my storage area was getting a little full. Seemed like I was buying comics mainly to fill up those white storage boxes. I also suppose that the thrill was gone, and in my late twenties I had finally outgrown comics. I suspect it was more a natural progression than anything else.
But now that I have kids, I’m doing my best to introduce them to comics — I mean, I’d much rather have them reading Batman than have them rotting their minds playing a video game. And since I’m not going to let them touch my old (and presumably valuable) comics with their peanut-butter-and-jellied fingers, the next best thing is to let them read the comics I’ve downloaded to my computer. Honestly, it’s been interesting for me as well, re-reading some of those comics I have tucked away somewhere in plastic bags, and I’ve enjoyed getting acquainted with the material that has been published since I stopped buying comics. Some of those graphic novels are pretty darned interesting. Look, I’m probably never going to start buying comics again, so it’s not as though the comics industry is losing any money on me. But by reading, and sharing, I’m probably infecting my youngsters with the same bug I had.
I think the downloading of comics is a terrific thing — and if the industry continues to wink at the practice, as it has so far, the industry may not last forever, but it certainly will last a few years longer.