Digital Comics Preservation
Monday, January 2nd, 2006
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.
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.
