RE: Comics! #32 [Digital Comics]

Gregg Schigiel: So, Stephen, will digital comics and the iPad change everything? Are digital downloads and motion-comics the future…and the future is NOW!?!

Stephen Mayer: Man, a loaded question if I’ve ever heard one! And I can’t help but be biased! I mean, I work in the brick-and-mortar side of the industry!

OK, so digital comics…

My first experience with portable digital comics was probably almost 2 years ago. I was waiting for a lunch pick-up order at a local sushi joint and did a random search for “Comics” in the App store on my iPod Touch. One of the first results was the Atomic Robo #1 “app,” and I use quotes because this is back before ComiXology Comics when you downloaded each issue as a separate application rather than having a third party app to do the sorting for you. I knew of Atomic Robo at that point, but hadn’t checked it out yet and I had time to kill, so I thought, what the heck.

The actual reading of the comic took place in a full screen mode that cropped the panels so that the dialogue was the most prominent aspect. If you wanted to jump around, I believe there was a way to access thumbnails of all of the pages, or maybe it was just panels. I don’t remember. I DO remember that I came back to the store and picked up the printed Robo issues and paid $2.99 each rather than spend $.99 each for the rest of them in the App store. 

Gregg: I think my first experience with digital comics would be your basic web comics, typically in strip form. But I never much found myself going back to read them on the daily/weekly/monthly. Maybe because I was already getting my comics “fix” in print form? I also remember in the earlier going (to me that means the early 2000s, though I’m sure I wasn’t on the ground floor) that there were web strip subscription sites. I knew people who joined some of those and were real proponents. I was even approached/asked if I’d be interested in collaborating on one…but as I wasn’t a consumer and I wasn’t all that interested in the daily/weekly strip format, I didn’t get involved.

Beyond that, I’ve certainly read my fair share of comics on my computer as PDFs (for example, Chris G. would send me a PDF of the issues of G-MAN: CAPE CRISIS to look over. And I didn’t mind that. But I also have a pretty decent sized screen, so I got to see the whole page as a page…and then if I needed to, zoom in to read in half-page chunks or tier-by-tier.

But I can appreciate the frustration of a comic being reformatted for a device like an iPhone and the like. In theory, a comic is composed and designed with the format in mind…so when that’s compromised, it certainly can affect the reading experience.

I don’t have an iPhone or PSP or other handheld device that supports those things, but just conceptually, I find myself less interested in reading “full-size” comics on a screen a fraction of that size. 

Stephen: I read Transmetropolitan and the Authority for the first time on my computer using CBreader, but honestly not much from either series stuck until I started working at the store and read them again in print.

People have been saying that the Apple tablet device will change everything, and now that we know it’s going to take the form of the iPad I haven’t really seen anyone coming through yet. Granted the product hasn’t even hit the market yet, but there are demos out there, like this one from ComiXology.  

Gregg: I think people just like saying the words “game changer” and “tipping point” about stuff, and with Apple building up the now named iPad, it’s time for it to live up to the hype. It seems if anything ComiXology and the as yet unrevealed LongBox seem most positioned/poised to seize on the potential.

But the iPad at the very least presents a larger surface area, meaning you may well be able to see a “full page” of a traditional comic. But that’s the real question: how will people adapt or modify or adjust to best take advantage of the new format, if there’s something to take advantage of there. The matter of double-page spreads and such could become and issue…or triple or quadruple page spreads if you’re a comic book from the mid to late ‘90s.

I’d not seen that demo. Thanks for the heads up. I agree that I’m not into the panel-by-panel legibility option. A simple zoom and scroll does the same job but offers more control. But the full-spread looked like a fine way to read…and size-wise it’d likely comparable to a digest or the size of the Bone trades, maybe? 

Stephen: My issue with the technology is the same as when I checked some stuff out on the iPhone. Part of reading comics, as Scott McCloud goes into a ton of detail about in Understanding Comics, is the way your eye transfers information to your brain and your brain interprets the story. The last page of the ComiXology demo is probably the best example. On the last page you have a blacked out panel with narration, then a letterbox panel of doctors standing over someone, then another letterboxed, blacked out panel, then a letterboxed panel of a hand, then the payoff last panel. When I read it in the full page, I can tell that this is a guy blacking out and coming to and getting a glimpse of what he’s seeing and then blacking out again. But when they demo it in the optimal panel by panel view, you’re getting a block of narration and no panel for Panel 1, a shot of Panel 2, a blank screen for Panel 3, and then the last 2 panels. It doesn’t read the same to me. The other pages that they demo are modified 8 panel page layouts, so everything they show you is roughly proportionate to the size of the screen and fits the dimensions of the iPad pretty perfectly. I’d like to see what they’d do with a splash page or more creative panel layout like what J.H. Williams III has been doing on DETECTIVE COMICS.

Much like the Kindle, I feel it’s marketed towards a more urban consumer with less room in their home and a more on-the-go lifestyle. When I travel, I’ll bring an extra suitcase full of books, but as someone that lives in the most bustling urban environment in the world, from a purely aesthetical and reader standpoint, is this something that appeals to you? 

Gregg: Without you realizing it, you hit upon an idea I’ve had swimming around in my noggin for a little while now…and that being that there are three kinds of comics fans: there’s the collector/hobbyist, who’s very attached to the format of comics as a serialized periodical; there’s the universe enthusiast, who cares mostly about the characters and their treatment be it in comics or TV or films, etc; and there’s the appreciator of the medium, who’s interested in comics as a tool for storytelling…the combination of words and pictures to communicate an idea, regardless of genre or final format. And not everyone is necessarily all of one thing, but there are leanings.

I tend to think of myself as 60% medium, 30% universe, and 10% hobbyist. I’ll let you ponder your breakdown. And again, this is a very young idea I’m exploring, so it’s not bulletproof.

But to that end, I think Hobbyists would be the most resistant to digital comics (as it most directly threatens the hobby aspect) and Mediums, let’s call them, might be most interested as it could provide a greater audience/outlet to make comics. Universe types, meanwhile, in my simplified breakdown, will go where the stories and characters take them.

All of that said, the point you make here is very much from the Medium side of things, and it’s very valid. And it’s up to creative cartoonists and comics storytellers to figure out the best use of the new technology.

And you’re right, the elaborate, distinct layouts of J.H. Williams…or a kinetic layout with lots of panel border breaking…or the opening spreads Jacob and I used in X-BABIES…those might not translate. But, again, it’s up to us creative folks to figure out how, if we choose, to use the tools in the toolbox…or develop new tools.

As to portability, I’m not gonna lie: I’m intrigued as a reader who’s grown a bit tired of acquiring more and more physical “stuff”. And I’m interested in the possibilities that exist insofar as price points go. When you take out the costs for printing, shipping, the various discounts in the chain of command…it’s something to think about.

And in comparing the Kindle (and other eReaders/digital books) to the iPad (or whatever other tablets join the party), a Kindle’s specifically for readers. The iPad is an alleged “everything machine”, which means if people have the disposable scratch to buy one and get into that mix, then they’re potential audience for comics. A hopeful idea…maybe a pipe dream, but still, conceptually the iPad has a wider reach than the Kindle.

And before I come off as a total “digitize me, now!” guy…I do love print and the portability of comics and the smell of comics and the share-ability of comics…but do I love that stuff more than the prospect of having more people read comics because they’re more readily acquired and cheaper? Yeah, I don’t know. 

Stephen: Your theory has thrown me into a quandary…a quandary! An existential trance over what I’m doing with my life from the shop to the workplace!

If I really examine myself I’d say that I’m 35% a hobbyist, 55% about the medium, and 10% about the universe. As has probably become pretty clear in previous columns, I don’t feel particularly loyal to any team or character (except Kitty and the Umbrella Academy). I don’t feel like as a fan I have a huge stake in what happens in any universe or to any character. I enjoy the war between wanting more and more stuff every week, wanting to fill more minutes and more hours with more books and the fear that eventually I won’t have enough room for all of it. And I love a good comic no matter what it is.

Have you seen the Spider-woman or Astonishing X-Men motion comics that have been released so far? They’re free on Hulu if you haven’t. 

Gregg: I saw the INVINCIBLE motion-comic/cartoon that was on iTunes…which I’m pretty sure pre-dates the Watchmen motion-comic and certainly those you mention. And I watched a tiny bit of the Watchmen one.

Going back to my premise above, I’m not so interested in “motion-comics”, which I put in quotes because to me, and this comes from reading plenty of McCloud and Eisner, etc, they’re not comics. Once the pace of the storytelling is taken out of the hands of the creators of the comic (which in theory they’re respecting the medium in their original product) and the reader, it’s a different thing. Just because the word balloons are still there while the art moves around doesn’t make it a comic. A subtitled movie isn’t suddenly a “motion-magazine” or a “motion-flikr set with captions”.

I’d just as soon say “hey, lose the word balloons and call them limited-animation cartoons, which is what they are…or animatics, which in animation is what they call it when the soundtrack is put in time with the storyboards. I’d rather read a comic as a PDF with music playing on iTunes (or the jukebox software of your choosing). 

Stephen: The newer motion comics like Spider-woman and Astonishing have lost the word balloon and actually have several actors for each episode, a big step away from the singularly narrated Watchmen moco. But you’re right, that makes them even less and less like comics. In fact, under the direction of Neal Adams, they took Cassaday’s 2-D original art and added 3-D models to it and stuff.

Gregg: Yeah, “motion comic” ain’t the right name for something like that.

Stephen: As an independent creator, have you thought about throwing the PIX mini comics on ComiXology or Long Box Comics when that goes live? Or has Chris thought about doing that with G-MAN or Jacob with SKULLBOY? As I understand it, digital distribution rights are something completely different from print distribution rights.

Gregg: I won’t speak for Chris or Jacob, but I can say it’s certainly something we’ve talked about. From what I’d read about LongBox, for example, I think it’s a very cool idea. I’m curious about it as a cartoonist who tends to make work that, in the existing comic book market, would likely never get seen for all kinds of reasons.

For creators, particularly the independent folks out there, the real prize is digital distribution, which unfortunately rubs up harshly against the brick-and-mortar business we all do love.

Digital distribution could be to the modern day what small-press was in the ‘80s, which is to say we could get a digital equivalent of the B&W Explosion – with all the good and bad that came with that – which means a lot more stuff…a lot of which might not be so great or might not last. BUT, there’ll be the OPPORTUNITY, which is on some level exciting.

Still a lot to learn and see revealed on that front. But that area, digital distribution, might on the flip side be the biggest concern for shops selling physical comics. Or is there a way the two can work side-by-side. I know of some web-comics artists who have readers of their web strips who, despite having read the strips, still buy physical collections of those strips when they’re released. Clearly there’ll be a period of adaptation for all areas of the industry…and the retailer maybe most of all? 

Stephen: The best example I’ve seen for making digital distribution work for you is the also often-mentioned Kelly Yates and his book Amber Atoms. While his series had a lot of success here at the store, I’m not sure exactly how well it did nationwide. And while Image did the print distribution for the book, Kelly went with ComiXology for the digital distribution. He made the first issue free, and it raised enough interest to get Amber Atoms into the top 10 of the top 25 alongside hits like the Stuff of Legend and Atomic Robo.

Gregg: But, and you might not want to get into this, but from the retailer side, how do you start to think about or consider the ramifications of something like digital distribution? Obviously, the meat and potatoes of the retail business appears to be Marvel and DC, so maybe if it’s just the indies going digital it’s not as big a concern, but certainly record/cd stores faced similar circumstances when the MP3 took off. Are there lessons from seeing that go down? Is there any chatter down the chain, from publisher to distributor to retailer about potential strategies facing forward?

I mean, I think of the comic shop I used to go to in Miami…last Thanksgiving I paid a visit and he’s changed the store from a traditional shop to essentially a newsstand selling comics…no back-issues…barely a graphic novel selection…literally four wall racks featuring a month’s worth of books (by week). I can’t help but wonder what happens to a shop like that. 

Stephen: I can't speak for other stores. I can only talk about what we at Acme do every day, which is trying to create an air of fun and belonging, within our walls and in our community, be it our city or our industry. Sending a kid home with their first comic or having that back issue that someone has been searching for literally for years or dropping a whole bag of product into someone's hand during Free Comic Book Day brings an air of wonder and excitement just as intangible as the comics sitting on a hard drive, but nearly impossible to attain from a screen or WiFi connection.

Some people might say that's a delusion of grandure for a retail environment, but that's really how I see it and I think it's how Jermaine sees it, too, and I think customers that read our blogs and e-mails and come to our signings and talk to us about comics or life feel it. It's retail, but it's something more.

Much as I love my iPhone and I’m dying to have an iPad when they come out, when it comes to my comics I’m very much an analog boy in a digital world. I think I’ve said it in the column before, but if I couldn’t go home at the end of a long Wednesday and sit down in my chair with pages to turn in my hand, I probably wouldn’t do comics at all. 

Gregg: Not that I wish this, because I’d like very much to see more of my work in print and on bookshelves, but if I find I’m in a scenario where I can make comics…but they’ll never be physically printed, I think I’d still have to make comics. Medium trumps media with me. I hope you’ll still read my comics if they’re digital.

I can’t argue about the power of community and a sense of belonging that can come from a comic shop that cares. And you guys definitely do the hard work of building and maintaining that kind of community…and you do it well, so good on you. 

Gregg Schigiel is a cartoonist, illustrator, and writer. He's worked as a penciller and editor for Marvel Comics and an illustrator and cartoonist at Nickelodeon in addition to creating his own characters and books. He's recently wrapped up the X-Babies mini series for Marvel with artist Jacob Chabot and writing and drawing Pix: Teenage American Fairy and Safari Junior High, appearing in the back of the G-Man: Cape Crisis mini series from Image. Check out his website at Hatter Entertainment.com.