The Migration To Online
Sunday December 28, 2008
Read a great article about the migration of print newspaper comics to the web at the NY Times. It seems that many of the major syndicates of comics like Dilbert, Garfield, and Calvin and Hobbes. Their latest effort...the web. What many of us have know for some time now, that the web is a fine place for comics. It's fairly cheap to maintain, can bring in money with each and every click, and can bee seen by everyone on the planet. The thing that is moving everything forward, the industry, even the world, is technology. The iPhone is a readily available advice that is seeing more play in the comic book market with applications that allow users to read comic strips and even graphic novels on their phones.
Technology seems to be the future for a lot of comic book work. It is so much cheaper to put a comic book on the web than to print them off and sell them individually. There are still hurdles to overcome, but with inventions like the Kindle. It's only a matter of time before there is a device like this and you will be able to go to a comic store and scan in bar codes to receive the comic digitally, or just download them from a website. The future is coming, and although we will probably always have comics in print, digital comcis will be come a viable option for many creators and publishers.
Comments
Electronic Comics! Yeah there kind of cool, I haven’t had a chance to play with apples latest version of the iphone yet but I have the complete Fantastic Four 1st series on CD. For me it’s just not the same as holding a floopy and reading it and just checking out the art work, but the CD is a real space saver I’ll give it that, and the viewer gets to see each comic in ways Jack Kirby and Stan Lee could have never imagined.
I know generations from today well have a different comic viewing experience than what we’ve had but I think it’s up to us to make sure the floopy lives on as an art form.
I fear when it’s cheaper for the companies to just download than print, one of two things are going to happen, either the price will go up and you’ll have to buy direct or the printed comic will become a thing of the past and become something of a museum piece.
I got my son into comics when he was little as I know he will with his children and I have started my grandson of six on comics Hulk and Spider-man and will add titles as he grows in complexities, with my help he too will grow to love the world of reading comics and hopefully will one day pass it to his children.
I can’t yet imagin how children of the next millenium will view comics but I’m sure they’ll love them as we do, so many of the storys are timeless.