Blog-It Llama!

By Christopher Daley - August 9, 2010

I love comics. They taught me how to read as a young boy and were my constant companion growing up. In my world of despair and powerlessness comics gave me heroes. They gave a code. A sense of right and wrong and everything in between. I am still an active reader of comics and still dream of the day I open up a comic book and see the words, “Written by Christopher Daley”. When the iPad was announced a few months back I knew instantly comics were going to change forever. The digital age is upon us.

I attended the San Diego Comic-Con. There are literally hundreds of panels to choose from but I knew the two I wanted to attend. They were both about digital comics. In particular, I was interested in attending the one on piracy. For those of you who are not aware piracy in comics is fairly heavy. You can find any comic the day it is released on the web. There are people out there who scan every new release and upload it for illegal downloads only hours after they have come out.

Like the music industry, there is no real way to tell how this is affecting sales of comic books. Is it robbing them of people who would be buying them otherwise? Is it just people who prefer to read their comics digitally? Perhaps people without access to a comic book store? Or maybe it really just boils down to the bizarre thinking of many people that the internet and everything on it should be free.

I worry about this because I see the comic book industry coming out of the gate and making some of the same serious mistakes the music and movie industries have made. It is the definition of insanity when you continue to perpetuate the same egregious errors every other company made. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like pirates. People who download comics for free are thieves. This statement alone will cause an amazing amount of controversy and arguments but it is all a self-righteous justification for doing something you know is illegal.

This material doesn’t appear out of thin air. Someone has to make it. There are writers, artists, editors, and a whole swarm of other people who produce the content you enjoy. If you don’t support them by buying their content they
will go away. They have to make a living.

The biggest problems I have with the coming of the digital age in comics is companies treating their honest customers like crooks. Companies that are treating the new business model like the old one. Companies which are failing to educate young people why it is important to support their entertainment (this is an education which must happen right now. Young comic readers are going to consume their media digitally. It is essential the comic companies make a connection between the creators and the fans).

I think it is a huge mistake for the comic companies to ride the “digital rights management” bus. All DRM does is treat your paying customers poorly. When I buy a comic in a comic store I own it. When I buy one on my iPad I am essentially leasing it. What’s worse is I am leasing it from whatever piece of software I am using as my reader. If this company goes out of business my comics go with it. This is not going to go over well with fans the very first time it happens. It didn’t in the music industry either.

The thing I find puzzling is when I asked the panel about this the general feeling was it is going to take time. I don’t know why. It doesn’t seem that hard to see where it went wrong in other media industries, learn from their mistakes and do it better. Don’t penalize those customers who are actually purchasing your comics. Provide them with good service, create new customers, find ways to make the comic industry grow. Don’t throw out road blocks and then pat yourself on the back because you were there first.

I think what struck me the most about the panel was the anger towards the people who illegally download their product. Like I said earlier, I understand it but it seems to me if you make all your business decisions based on it you are going to fail. People who are downloading your products illegally are not going to be customers. If you want to go down the music industry road and start lavishing huge amounts of money and attention on shutting them down be my guest. I can tell you what it will get you, nothing. You won’t be able to stop it. You will likely look bad in the process and you will have wasted valuable time and money you could have spent growing your business.

Make no mistake the digital age of comics is upon us. It won’t take long for it to completely explode and be the number one way comics will be read. Just look at what Amazon did with the Kindle. They now sell more Kindle hardback novels than actual real live hardbacks. The comic book industry needs to think outside of the box and grab ahold of this tiger. Make a connection between your fans and the creators. Make a great product. Give complete access to your comic library (If I want to give you money for a comic you should want to sell it to me) and stop treating us all like illegal downloaders. Get rid of the DRM now and put comics into a standard output which can be read by all software. This is not going to be a slow growth process. I predict it is going to be extremely fast. The quicker comic companies figure this all out, the healthier their companies are going to be. Technology waits for no one.

Categories: Convention
Tags: code, Comic-Con, Comic-Con International, digital comics, digital comics. app, iPad, Marvel Comics, panel, San Dieg Comic-Con Internatinal, San Diego Comic-Con, SDCC, webcomics