Digital Comics

[Bill]

Just throwing out an idea.
For titles and characters, that might have trouble supporting their own monthly titles, but have a loyal following (ie Alpha Flight and New Warriors) would anyone be interested in purchasing these titles in a digital format. My thinking is that if they were purchased through some service (al a iTunes) the production cost would be very low. And these "B" titles could survive on a long term monthly basis (or weekly basis).

There could be a whole lot of potential here for the comic industry. I haven't looked at sales numbers of titles for a couple of years. Would it be fair to say that good solid sales for a comic is 50,000 copies? With all the video/ photo iPods and cell phones comics could become relevant again. Relevant might not be what I'm trying to say. But then how many people buy ringtones, and how many buy comics. I realize traditional comic book structure would not work for this format. It would have to be a panel at a time, or some such way.

Also, anyone out there have any digital comics and enjoy it. I have downloaded backup digital comics of all my Alpha Flights. And find it easy to read on my 20 inch iMac. I would rather purchase my comics digitaly for space reasons. I have about 8 comic boxes plus a few hundred comics on book shelves. Starting to run out of room.

[Transmetropolitan]

I hate reading comics on a monitor.

Makes my eyes hurt, and I friggin' hate scrolling hither, thither and yon.

[Snowsquatch]

I have downloaded digital comics, but never bought any. I once found a page that had every Transformers comic ever scanned.

I'd be okay with digital comics, but they really need to be done right.

You should be able to read them with a web browser or Adobe Reader. No special software.

You should be able to read them on your monitor without scrolling left-right, up-down. That means, you've got to be able to see 2 pages side-by-side and still be able to read the text. If that means larger, non-standard text, so be it.

But digital comics really shouldn't follow the paper comics concept.

Instead of pages, the comic should be formatted like a webpage, scrolling downward without page-breaks.

[Bill P]

I use a program called Jomic. No scrolling. Simple keyboard shortcuts for going to next page, previous page, last page etc. Double page spreads show up full screen.

[DelBubs]

I use a package called CDisplay for reading digital comics, but am not really enamoured of them. I prefer paper in my hand.

[Obsidian3d]

I use CDisplay too. On installation it takes some tweaks to get set up well, but it's pretty good. The only reason I even looked into digital comics was due to my location. It's just too expensive to get my books shipped over the Pacific and back again. I am still buying the books I want but they're just being stored for now. It's easier to read them online, but there's no replacement for having the issues or trades to flip through later. I don't think any technology will ever replace the human love for bound materials. There's just something about holding a book in your hands...

[MistressMerr]

I spend about $75 on comics a week, but it's just handy to have pretty much any comic you want to read right there on your hard drive, instead of having to dig through long boxes.

I use a program called PixelComic.

[Obsidian3d]

I don't like digging through the boxes either, which is why I've started buying trades rather than monthly issues for a lot of books. I think it ends up being a little cheaper, and they look better on a book shelf. :)

[Ben]

I'm not a fan of Digital comics. I like having the real deal in my hands. I like trades too, I usually just don't wanna wait for them, as the only books I buy are ones I really want. Also, the thought of downloading a digi comic on dialup makes me think it'll be faster to drive the 20 minutes to town and buy a book

Ben

[Shaman Of The Whills]

I've liked a few digital comics... although admittedly I've been anticipating that those comics would subsequently be published separately... if that happened I'd be all the happier... now taking something from the direct physical edition to digital exclusively would make me itchy... but I guess that an Alpha comic digital would be better than none at all.