Post by G on Sept 19, 2009 13:31:03 GMT -5
I have always felt there is a big difference from a comic reader and a comic collector. A comic reader will take their comics in any form and read it and enjoy it however they can have it. Either in original traditional comic form, collected trade paperbacks (which sometimes seems a favorite among "readers") and now even digital comics such as online or on applications like iPods. Generally if it can be read while riding as a passenger in a car, they are all for it.
The collector on the other hand has a hard time dealing with these alternate forms of comics. Trade Paperbacks don't carry the same collectible feeling as traditional comics, but slowly there is a back issue market in trade paperbacks and some even fetch profits. Getting a TPB in NM just doesn't have the same feeling as getting a 20 year old comic in NM.
Then you have digital comics. You cant collect them, trade them, preserve their condition and so far, you can't speculate on them and make profits on them. This form of comics seems totally aimed to the reader and for the most part leaves the collector out in the cold.
Perhaps as little as 5 years ago one may have been able to scoff at the idea that digital comics could ever do enough to compete with traditional comics, but yet here we are years later and they continue to survive and find more and more readers gravitating to them. Is this the future of comics? Are collectors doomed to only collect comics from the past one day? Will their ever come a day when new comics are strictly only released in digital form and not printed form? While that scenario is highly unlikely, it does appear the digital comics are slowly gaining more and more acceptance and continue to be in production room meetings at all the major comic companies trying to find ways to take advantage of the medium and generate revenue.
In one sense, the collector shouldn't mind that digital comics exist. It helps keep comics existing and perhaps may find its way into viewers eyes on a kids iPod than it would have because the kid picked up the comic in the local comic store. If suddenly a kid gets hooked on reading online comics (could it ever happen?), would that make the kid graduate one day into wanting to take ownership and treasure traditional comics? Seems kinda unlikely to me. But I can see it playing out a handful of times. One thing I do think, I dont think the same hypothetical kid would buy the comic the traditional way. If hes been ignoring traditional comics all the way up to 13, chances are, he'll never be interested in comics the normal way. It almost always takes a digital influence these days to help push them towards wanting to learn more about comics now.
Put a comic in front of a kid and he'll put it aside and pick up his joystick on his X-Box. Put a comic in digital form on an iPod while on a long trip in a car and he just might look at it and read it. As long as he can push the buttons and make things happen in digital form, the interest seems a little more likely to me than sheets of paper and you gotta read and turn pages.
Still yet, it seems threatening to the collector as it seems to be slowly taking the form most collectors love and becoming competition to it. Its still not too hard to imagine that if it makes more business sense to just release comics on computer, that one day maybe years and decades down the road, you can see comics going the way of newspapers and deciding its not worth it to print comics anymore and if the legions of readers decide they still want to read, they can just pay their subscription fees and read when they want. It just seems to be another vision of a future without comics as we've always known it.
Is this justified? Are digital comics ever going to make it? Is there a future with them or not? Is this in any way a threat to comics as we know it? Will digital comics flop or is there really a future there?
I ask this because like I said, a few years back it was easy to say "no way!", they cant do anything to tried and true comics. But as time goes by, it seems more and more like the idea and use of digital comics keeps remaining alive and well and in fact growing.
Digital comics......Is resistance futile???
The collector on the other hand has a hard time dealing with these alternate forms of comics. Trade Paperbacks don't carry the same collectible feeling as traditional comics, but slowly there is a back issue market in trade paperbacks and some even fetch profits. Getting a TPB in NM just doesn't have the same feeling as getting a 20 year old comic in NM.
Then you have digital comics. You cant collect them, trade them, preserve their condition and so far, you can't speculate on them and make profits on them. This form of comics seems totally aimed to the reader and for the most part leaves the collector out in the cold.
Perhaps as little as 5 years ago one may have been able to scoff at the idea that digital comics could ever do enough to compete with traditional comics, but yet here we are years later and they continue to survive and find more and more readers gravitating to them. Is this the future of comics? Are collectors doomed to only collect comics from the past one day? Will their ever come a day when new comics are strictly only released in digital form and not printed form? While that scenario is highly unlikely, it does appear the digital comics are slowly gaining more and more acceptance and continue to be in production room meetings at all the major comic companies trying to find ways to take advantage of the medium and generate revenue.
In one sense, the collector shouldn't mind that digital comics exist. It helps keep comics existing and perhaps may find its way into viewers eyes on a kids iPod than it would have because the kid picked up the comic in the local comic store. If suddenly a kid gets hooked on reading online comics (could it ever happen?), would that make the kid graduate one day into wanting to take ownership and treasure traditional comics? Seems kinda unlikely to me. But I can see it playing out a handful of times. One thing I do think, I dont think the same hypothetical kid would buy the comic the traditional way. If hes been ignoring traditional comics all the way up to 13, chances are, he'll never be interested in comics the normal way. It almost always takes a digital influence these days to help push them towards wanting to learn more about comics now.
Put a comic in front of a kid and he'll put it aside and pick up his joystick on his X-Box. Put a comic in digital form on an iPod while on a long trip in a car and he just might look at it and read it. As long as he can push the buttons and make things happen in digital form, the interest seems a little more likely to me than sheets of paper and you gotta read and turn pages.
Still yet, it seems threatening to the collector as it seems to be slowly taking the form most collectors love and becoming competition to it. Its still not too hard to imagine that if it makes more business sense to just release comics on computer, that one day maybe years and decades down the road, you can see comics going the way of newspapers and deciding its not worth it to print comics anymore and if the legions of readers decide they still want to read, they can just pay their subscription fees and read when they want. It just seems to be another vision of a future without comics as we've always known it.
Is this justified? Are digital comics ever going to make it? Is there a future with them or not? Is this in any way a threat to comics as we know it? Will digital comics flop or is there really a future there?
I ask this because like I said, a few years back it was easy to say "no way!", they cant do anything to tried and true comics. But as time goes by, it seems more and more like the idea and use of digital comics keeps remaining alive and well and in fact growing.
Digital comics......Is resistance futile???
