A New Downloadable Venture Forward?

iFanboy announced this week that Graphic.ly will begin offering Marvel's comics, not just for viewing, but for download and not just to mobile devices, but to desktops as well.

Could this be another step toward the fabled 'iTunes of comics'?

An application is now available for download to both Windows and Mac computers on Graphic.ly which can access a database of comics files available for permanent download to a personal computer upon successful payment of a set amount for each individual comic.

That does sound a LOT like iTunes' model of: permanent download of a music file, with paying per song.

According to iFanboy co-founder Conor Kilpatrick (@cskilpatrick), these comics files will be automatically available on your iPhone or iPad's Graphic.ly app... you know, if you have all that jazz too. This means that the files are compatible in at least some sense, but I suspect I wouldn't be able to read my old CD-ROM-store-bought-PDF-files in the program. -sad face-

HOWEVER, much BETTER and MORE IMPORTANT are the community features the service claims to have which I assume are designed to put people enjoying similar comics in touch with eachother as well as allow a user to recommend comics to their 'Friends', either personal or digital, i.e. comics social networking. Of which there is very little. This would effectively be a kind of 'Ping for comics'. Making the service, in at least one way, up to date with what iTunes offers its users.

[via Newsarama]

However, nothing has been said about day-and-date release, but nor has the announcement said anything about exclusivity.

In other words, you may see Marvel (and then perhaps DC at a later date) opening digital desktop publishing of their comics to other services such as Longbox and Panelfly, but you are still going to be making those weekly trips to your local comics shop unless you want to be limited to six-month-old comics.

~ @JonGorga

Digital Comics Part 3: Threat or Menace?

Okay. So I've talked about comics made FOR the internet put on the internet, i.e. webcomics, and the creativity they display in Part 1.

I've talked about comics made for print delivered THROUGH the internet by official channels: Digital Comics Unlimited, Wowio, Eagle Media and so on as well as the aesthetics of their presentation in Part 2.

But let's talk about pirates. (Arrr.) Then we'll talk about the positive implications of all this.

For quite a few years, people all over the world have been spending some of their free time scanning printed comics page-by-page into their computers with an optical scanner and then combining those image files into one 'zipped' file which merely retains the images and their correct reading order. Those files can in turn be read by specially designed programs that present two images at a time to imitate the recto-verso page-turn of printed comic-books and graphic novels. If you access any large P2P sharing network with one of the programs designed to do so like DC++ or Shakespeer and do a search for any popular comic-book series by name, you will most likely find a surprising number of these files. Then if you download one of the programs designed to read them like ComicBookLover or CDisplay all you've got to do is drag one of those zipped CBR files into one of these reader programs and you are bada-bing reading what is probably an illegally scanned-and-uploaded print comic for free. Nothing about the program is illegal, it functions just like iTunes used to (i.e. with no internet-ready iTunes Store function).

There is also a legal source of scanned print comics files. Marvel Comics and a few other companies (including Archie Comics!) released CD-ROM and DVD-ROM packages with a company called Graphic Imaging Technology INC. with tons and tons of scanned comics in PDF format. (Wikipedia has a list of these CD-ROMs.)

The most exciting of those, to me, were the ones which collected all the comics in a particular crossover 'event'. If you've read my old rant about the way these stories are collected, you'd understand. Marvel produced a "House of M" The Complete Collection Collector's Edition CD-ROM as well as "Civil War" The Complete Collection DVD-ROM. I'd try these out if they weren't so bloody expensive. Especially since Marvel unveiled Digital Comics Unlimited and discontinued these sets in 2007. This might actually be the best way to experience these highly splintered stories. Buying something in the neighborhood of 100+ comics to fully understand one big story is a pain in the neck!

This is why we most need an 'iTunes for comics.' I did receive one of these type of sets as a Christmas present. I'd like to be able to read those files on whatever I'm reading my comics on.

(The question that leaves is: Where the hell is DC Comics in all of this? Archie Comics can be bought digitally in two formats and DC/Warner Bros. does nothing? Perhaps the company that brought us the first comic-book with new material, the first superhero, and the first corporate webcomics site is biding its time to wait for the right solution to the entire digital conundrum and slap all the competition upside the head. Who knows?)

Of course like I said in Part 2, Marvel doesn't put out its brand new comics in digital form either in their old boxed DVD-ROM sets or on Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited or on Panelfly/the Marvel Comics app. They seem to have an unwritten six-months-or-older-only rule. They're protecting their interests. But that will only last as long as there is a sizable interest to protect. And the digital pirates get an entire new-comics-Wednesday's material worth of comics on the net for illegal download in a matter of hours anyway. Anyone in the world can read pretty nearly every single comic ever published for free. Illegally.

So will digital comics replace print comics?

The short answer is: Yes they will, but not anytime soon.

It was pointed out that I wasn't very specific in Part 2 of this article series. I should have written: as academics and creators, we should be prepared because comics will be largely digital within our lifetimes. As artforms move into the digital format, the relationship of dependence between the art-concept and the art-object (vinyl/plastic, paper/vellum) changes. A huge amount of music is available for download on iTunes. Prose of all kinds is available on the Kindle. And newspapers are moving digital, of course they really, really should as there's very little about their product that is dependent on visuals and even less that is dependent on layout. But a newspaper has images and a layout. A comic is images and layout. It may be a 'book layout' instead of a 'page layout', but it's still about organizing visuals into a sequence.

Comics = Sequential Art
Sequential Art = Art + Sequence

Comics = Images + Layout

You take away either of those elements? You no longer have comics. Moving comics into digital files is very problematic for this reason, among others. But these are formal concerns and not financial ones.

Let's talk about money.

Clare's father K. J. pointed this out to me: consider music. Only sixty years ago music first became available for affordable mass-consumption on Long Playing records, i.e. LPs. Forty years ago music became available on 8-Track. Wasn't a disaster, but didn't last. Lower quality and slightly higher convenience. Twenty years ago came the Compact Disc, i.e. CDs. Lower quality (compared to LP), but higher convenience. Ten years ago music became illegally available on Napster and the Recording Industry had a conniption in their general direction. Today music is available for download from various sources legally. Again at lower quality (when compared to LP), but with extreme convenience. Now iTunes is the #1 source of music, but CDs are slipping from the #2 spot. Vinyl outsells CDs in some markets, collectors and audiophiles want them more than ever. It's a niche market. I buy very, very little music: but I pretty much buy only vinyl. There are many collector edition LPs. There is an annual Record Store Day. Convenience and quality, right?

I can see a world that wouldn't be so horrible:

My comic arrives in my digital device. Maybe it is a 'comic-book' with multiple 'pages'. Maybe it is a 'comic-strip' with a single 'page' that I scroll smoothly through for a good hour. I read it on the same device I used to buy it with a credit card number, on which I can buy comics made by people from all over the world. I review and discuss it online when I'm done. I have a digital 'subscription' with a list of preferences which can be changed instantaneously. ('Would you like to subscribe to the new upcoming superhero crossover event: only the main title, all the tie-ins, or continue with your subscriptions as they are, sir?' 'Would you like to be alerted about new comics by this artist, sir?') I can read old files. Maybe I have pre-sets as to how I want to see panels, pages, splash-pages, balloons and in what order. Maybe if I really, really loved seven random issues, I follow a few links and pay again to buy a nicely printed trade-paperback collection to MY specifications. Maybe if I really liked a mini-series I wait a few months and then shell out big-bucks for the glossy hardcover at a bi-annual 'Comic-Book Store Day' where I meet some real people and have a nice time.

There is, in fact, already an annual Free Comic Book Day to be held this very Saturday May 1st! Its main goal is to drive people into comic-book stores. Go take advantage of the fact that many, many publishers will be putting out a free non-digital old-school print comic on Saturday!

There will still be people who will buy books and comic-books and vinyl for a long, long time. People will probably buy the things they want to keep forever in physical form. In the words of my friend Aaron LeBow: "a book can't get a virus". But we as a culture read/hear/watch a huge amount of stuff every day! In a complimenting sort of counter-point my friend David Bustlin is planning to go digital with his comics as soon as possible for very practical reasons: freeing-up closet space and reducing paper waste.

If we combine the physical promotion of Free Comic Book Day with: ComicBookLover

(Which is like iTunes, the program. Easy, flexible, and compatible with all kinds of image files.)

and with: Panelfly

(Which is like iTunes, the online store. Simple, inexpensive, and compatible with all kinds of publishers.)

Get it on ALL your digital devices, make it CUSTOMIZABLE...

And maybe we've really got something exciting there.

There is only one thing that can be said with definitiveness: Print comics will continue to be made as long as publishers continue to perceive it as a solvent business and as long as individuals continue to find comics challenging and exciting to work in. And digital comics (of all kinds) will continue to be produced/made available as long as publishers continue to percieve it as a solvent business and as long as individuals continue to find comics challenging and exciting to work in.

Like J. Jonah Jameson, the long-time persecutor of Spider-Man, you can choose to frame the question as: "Threat or Menace?" or you can choose to ask: "What can digital comics do for me?"

Simple as that.

UPDATE 5/7/2o1o: Apparently the days of the comics scanning pirate may one day come to a close: A press release can be read here about the recent joint effort of the F.B.I., a law firm specializing in intellectual property, the U.S. Department of Justice, and a coalition of comics publishers including Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Dark Horse Comics, Bongo Comics, Archie Comics, Conan Properties LLC, and Mirage Studios Inc. in the seizure of the servers propping up htmlcomics.com, one of the websites hosting scanned-and-uploaded comics.

Be wary pirates. Be wary.

UPDATE 5/8/2o1o: Marvel publicized here a long while ago about the various formats and devices its comics were becoming available on. The problem is all three of these devices use separate formats meaning none of these programs can swap files. Not very convenient.

Digital Comics Part 2: The Death of the Great Prints?

On April 3, 2o1o Apple Computing publicly released their latest... computing thing: the Apple iPad. Technologist Kevin Kelly called it "a portable portal" and said "Don't think of them as tablets. Think of them as windows that you carry." (WIRED, April 2o1o, Vol. 18, #2) Well, through the window of my iPhone's camera (ironies upon ironies) I saw a printed comic-book disintegrating on the wet concrete of New York City in a rainstorm and I fear that it may have been a portent of the world we shall see through this all-hailed 'window computer'.

Two days before the iPad's release (in what many must have thought was an April Fool's joke) Marvel Comics had its own special release. It deployed on the Apple 'App Store' (a web-based program that allows users to purchase 'apps,' i.e. small programs designed with simplicity in mind) its own Marvel Comics app for iPod Touch, iPhone, and, of course, the iPad. [It looks like the screenshot at right, on an iPad.] (IDW released one a long time ago, as did Archie Comics.) One iTunes Store app reviewer named "brianmhite" wrote: "I've looked for a place to buy comics in town. Wasn't sure if I'd enjoy them though. This app solved everything." This was echoed in another user's "No more trips to the comic store for my fix!" One "pixelslinger" went so far as to say: "Wow. Marvel just killed comib [sic] book stores."

The most amazing/inspirational statement was by someone going by "Jakeoster": "This may just get me into comics..."

The most terrifying was: "I'll probably never purchase a paper comic book again."

What a strange frickin' world, right?

Almost a month before the iPad's release, on March 11, Apple announced that they would soon begin to include comics and graphic novels for paid download in their iBookstore as a 'top tier category'. What this really ended up meaning for anyone or anything is still unclear.

Two years earlier, in November of 2oo7, Marvel announced Digital Comics Unlimited, a subscription service with a huge number of comics available for streaming, non-download-able reading on a PC. But that interface was pretty clumsy and slow. Worse, to some people's minds, is the fact that those thousands of streaming comics are inaccessible through the new app portal. Someone would have to pay for the subscription service AND download individual comics for a dollar amount per issue to read the same comic on the iPad and on their personal computer.

But what does this mean for comics? Or for print comics in specific?

A user named 'T. C. Ford' on ComicBookResources's article on Apple's March announcement commented: "From the publishing point of view, it's not Print vs. Digital, it's Print AND Digital."

Yeah, there's undeniably a time when they coexist. Like... now. Will these digital-comics-version of print comics programs kill print comics? Well, probably not. The fact that genuine webcomics and illegal digital scans of print comics have been available for years and the print comics industry hasn't keeled over yet is a good sign. Plus it should be noted that Marvel is not offering their brand-new weekly comics over the internet in either areas they are dipping their toes into. Certainly, having both sources of income simultaneously is what the publishers want! So they are going to be in favor of pushing one with the left hand and one with the right. But for how long? We won't know until we know.

I'd LOVE to tell you what's it like to read a comic on the iPad hands on. But I can't. Because it's a fucking $500 device, right? That's more than two-thirds of my rent, thank you very much. And upon visiting the 14th Street Apple Store here in Manhattan I discovered that the display iPads had absolutely no way to read comics and I was told I could not download new apps to the display devices. (There are video reviews, like this one from BoingBoing.net. Jump to 2:01 if you're just interested in what it really looks like to read a comic on an iPad. But before I would sink $500, I would want to feel it in my hands.) I can tell you that it's a pretty hot mess on the old iPhone. Marvel's app is actually an almost exact clone of Comixology's app "Comics", which has been around for a long time, but with Marvel characters sprinkled into the background. Worse, as it is a clone of Comixology's app it has the same features and defaults. The default setting is something called 'guided view' and I HATE it.

Essentially 'guided view' is a mode in which a virtual camera POV pans from a part of a comics page to another part of a comics page at your controlled pace. It often crops part of the image out and makes awkward choices as to what you should see when. It creates a little frame-by-frame animated movie out of the panels of a comic. I suspect you'll have to try it to really understand it. One of those iTunes Store app reviewers named "SullStyle" wrote: "Finally I can read panel by panel without seeing what's coming on the next page." Yeah, you control the pace of this little animation, but not the exact content. It's like the old pan&scan videotape to film trade-off. You can own the thing digitally, you can control the speed, but you've lost part of the picture.

I can also tell you that Panelfly, one of the competing programs, doesn't force the reader into any bullshit 'guided view' on the iPhone unless you want it to.
This is something I can get a little more behind. Comics being shown page by page and easily read panel-by-panel OR page-by-page. Best of both worlds. (It's also all done with a nice design sense.)

Using the iPhone and iPad and everyday computers as a delivery system for comics is a great idea. Maybe even 'the future' of sequential art, if such a thing can be said. If new people are getting interested in sequential art storytelling through these programs and devices that's fantastic. That's a win-win. Will it kill print off entirely? Yeah, maybe it will. Well, I think us comicsmiths have to be prepared for that possibility. But there's a much bigger problem:


While this is sequential art. This is not.

Note the lack of sequence. And that's a damn shame. Especially when the original panel in print looks like this:


You'd think this is just someone asleep at the switch, but this is the norm and the default setting! Losing visual information with so little an effort to retain it in digital form is sloppy at best and criminal at worst.

Now someone who's never read comics before may not have much of a problem seeing a comic cut-up to make a bad short movie, but people who read print comics and see this 'guided view' usually react with an immediate: 'Why would I read a comic that way?'

In this writer's opinion, this 'guided view' cannibalizes new and existing comics into a weird user-controlled movie of still drawings. The sequence of 'man's face' and 'awe-inspiring mountain' in visual juxtaposition creates the scene 'man stares at mountain in awe'. Losing that visual juxtaposition loses so much of the concept of 'the comics page' that has been evolving since Winsor fucking McCay!

Over 1oo years ago on July 26th 19o8, Winsor McCay printed this!

Now, if we let comics go from that to this:
...we've lost something huge there.

Scott McCloud was probably pitching a fit somewhere on April 3. And rightly so, as he believed that going digital would allow sequential art an expansion to an 'infinite canvas'. (See his TED Talk video here on YouTube.com. Jump to 12:50 for his demonstration of this concept. Note that he says: "look at the monitor as a window".) Not a regression to a badly animated single-panel-at-a-time!

For years, people spoke of a hypothetical 'iTunes for comics': a single free-to-download program that could allow people easy access to official digital copies of their favorite comics for a price and to read digital copies they already own. For my money, Panelfly is half of that equation. Marvel's stuff is on there, a bunch of the other big print publishers' stuff is on there. The only thing missing is the flexibility of the files themselves: I can't move a comic I bought on my iPhone to my MacBook Pro. Which would be great as it has a much bigger screen, doesn't it? Now the program ComicBookLover allows you to read files you may have already downloaded (more on this in the next part) and move them between your desktop and their app, but it has no system by which you can download new comics. Someone needs to combine these two platforms and develop a better system than the fucking 'guided view'. Then we may have the 'DVD' of comics, iTunes for comics. A digital comics delivery system that works.

Until these problems are solved, and something at least partially like McCloud's 'infinite canvas' is encouraged, I think digital comics on the desktop, on-demand is not much more than a mess. But technology is technology is technology. Paper printing combined with saddle-stapling makes a comic-book. In McCay's day, before saddle-stapling and before the comic-book, comic-strips were in large, folded pages inserted into newspapers. Before that they were woven into fabric or carved in stone or painted on walls. Graphic novels are now made more or less like prose books, with glue and binding and high paper-stock and all that nonsense. A digital delivery system is merely another step in the evolution of media. But for it to be an evolution and not a devolution it has to allow the medium to do more and not less. Print publishers would do well to take a harder look at how the webcomicsmiths do what they do.

Hopefully, the publishers will allow and encourage technological evolution to happen in all areas while striving to keep hold of the stuff that already works... on paper.

________________________________
One more section of this article is planned to wrap things up.

UPDATE 4/16/2o1o: I would be remiss in not mentioning Wowio.com, which works on an entirely different platform. You can download comics, graphic novels and prose books from their website for for very cheap or sometimes for FREE on a rotating basis because they have sold advertising 'sponsorship' to various brand-name corporations. Intelligently, all their files are PDF format allowing you to save them to your computer, move them to ANY mobile reading device.

Their comics main page is here.

Honestly, I forgot about them until they sent me a newsletter today.

UPDATE 4/27/2010: I just discovered ANOTHER one. Eagle One Media's store allows you to use a credit card or Paypal to buy and download PDF files directly from their website. Simple!

UPDATE 5/6/2o1o: Forgot this one. It's called Longbox and it appears to be not quite ready for prime time despite being announced years ago. The beta o.7 version can be downloaded here. I have downloaded one and will try it out and get back to you.