Comic book collectors have more reasons to hang on to their mint copies of Uncanny X-men #1 with a viselike grip. It seems that the comics industry is slowly, yet inevitably marching on towards going digital. It’s been half a year since Marvel made the move by publishing 2,500 issues from its archives into a digital format, available for online viewing (by subscription of course). The fees are luring – 10 dollars per month, 60 dollars per year, but you can’t download the copy on your computer, much less touch the crisp images with you fingers. DC and Dark Horse Comics followed suit not long after; DC put up digital copies on massive networking site MySpace, and launched Zuda Comics, a format which allows users to comment and evaluate each other’s work. Dark Horse showcased anthologies on the same site, featuring large, scrollable pages in hyper-real color (dubbed as “Dark Horse Presents”).
So where’s the comic industry now? The days when you could buy an eighty-cent copy while picking up your stash of toilet paper at the local 7/11 are long gone. The target niche has moved on from the spinner rack and into the wide world of the web. P2P sharing and torrent downloads hasn’t helped the industry either, and sometimes an issue leaks out to the web days before it reaches the corner newsstand. You couldn’t fault the heavyweights of the comics industry for rolling with the punches.
The move is probably the best they’ve made, and in the nick of time as well. The younger generations know only of Spiderman as he is portrayed on the celluloid screen, not as the Amazing Spiderman in all its newsprint glory. The generation gap is widening, and they must do something to catch up with the internet generation. Besides, many titles have been ported over by freesharers on the net, and if you can’t beat them, you might as well get ahead of them.
The adult-audience wing of DC Comics has used the best of both worlds, by using the internet for what it truly is – a very efficient mass-marketing tool. Case in point: on its initial issues, “Y: the Last Man”, a post-apocalyptic title of a lone male in the midst of a female society, was released on the web in piecemeal. A sneak peak of the next issue’s first few pages is offered to online visitors of its website in downloadable PDF format, serving as a teaser of sorts. Sales soared within the following weeks.
Marvel, on the other hand, is branching out into more familiar terrain, with massive movie franchise deals, as well as related merchandise like toys and video games. But in an effort to bleed out into current pop culture, Marvel is in danger of overstepping its limits, alienating die-hard comic fans in the process. Movies like “300” and “Sin City” (both from Dark Horse) only entered the mainstream through films, and many thought that the comic itself was a spin-off instead of the inspiration for the films. It’s an egg-chicken scenario which bodes ill for printed comics, and the publishers will bear the brunt of the burden for sure.
