2013 was notable in comics for a great many reasons. There were the standard, tried and true reasons of the events that rocked the world of Marvel and DC’s comics, namely Age of Ultron, Infinity, Forever Evil, and comic book movies blowing up at the box office. Then you have the better reasons of Image’s continued ascent to its place as Vertigo 2.0, furthering its publishing list to more titles and more genres while maintaining – and even enhancing – the quality of their product, and Marvel’s indiefication of their second-tier books, with Hawkeye leading a pack of Young Avengers, Deadpool, Superior Foes of Spider-Man and many others bringing decidedly unsuperhero tone and quality to traditionally superhero titles.
You have March, Hellboy: The Midnight Circus, Battling Boy, Gene Luen Yang dominating the world, Godkiller, Godbomb, Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong, Valiant continuing their awesome streak, Fantagraphics Kickstarter, Dark Horse excelling and expanding, Pak and Kuder on Action Comics acting as a beacon of hope for readers…you name it. 2013 was a hell of a year in comics.
But when I look back on the year, 2013 for me will be the year my once passionate claims of “PRINT ONLY FOR LIFE!” slowly but surely were taken down, and replaced with something that works for me.
Towards the beginning of the year, I was confident in saying “I’m a print guy.” I appreciated digital comics for what they were, but I loved the tangible nature of print. I loved being able to go into a long box and rediscover old friends in the form of random books like the original Quantum & Woody, Tom Peyer and Rags Morales’ Hourman, ROM: SPACE KNIGHT, and more.
But throughout the year, thanks to a successful end of 2012 venture with an array of Monkeybrain Comics titles – most notably the completely wonderful The Stars Below – and to the arrival of Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin’s The Private Eye (through Panel Syndicate), I started sampling digital comics.
Monkeybrain for the most part has been my place of business, and their line is something that should be celebrated by comic fans everywhere. This is a publisher that embraces creativity and storytelling, giving creators the chance to tell the stories they absolutely HAVE to tell, and it gives them an incredibly diverse line in terms of genre, and one that quite possibly has something for everyone.
Want a neo-dystopian/maybe-utopian (depending on your perspective) story about a man (robot) suffering an existential crisis in the face of alien invasion? D4VE will be your jam (it certainly is mine).
Looking for pure creativity in comic form, with some amazing original voices in art? Ulises Farinas and Erick Freitas bring the motherfuckin’ ruckus in Amazing Forest.
A crime story with a wee bit of mental trauma? Gabriel Hardman’s noir-ish Kinski could tickle that fancy.
Do you want FUN?! They have that in spades, with books like Bandette, Edison Rex and Knuckleheads.
Monkeybrain really impresses, and on top of their quality, most of their books are 99 cents and effectively full sized comics. Amazing Forest gives you anywhere between two and four complete stories per issue, and you could buy both issues of it and still try out D4VE and Bandette for less than the price of one issue of Avengers.
So I’m clearly all-in on digital-first comics like what Monkeybrain, Panel Syndicate and Thrillbent have to offer, but the biggest part in becoming a digital reader is switching your regular pull list over to digital purchases. It’s one thing to buy The Private Eye digitally, and another entirely to buy Saga. At a certain point, I didn’t know if I’d ever be willing to do that, but now? The idea is growing increasingly more appealing, and there are a number of reasons why.
1. Context Changes
2013 was notable for me personally because it was the year I got married, and when you get married and pair everything you own with this person, you realize a metric ton (hopefully not literally) of longboxes are a bit of an obstacle. Where do you put them? How do you house them in a way that makes them accessible? These are important questions, and they made me start to realize the appeal of digital.
Continued belowIf I had the ability to somehow magically scan all of my old comics bar codes or whatever to convert them to digital files on my iPad, I would do that in a split second. I could have my cake and eat it too, and I’d never have to do any of the abhorrent tasks that take away from me enjoying my comics (like bagging and boarding or organizing) and instead get to focus on reading them.
My good friend (and Multiversity writer) Brandon Burpee is going through a similar life change that requires him to downsize his comic collection, and he’s jumped in even quicker and more thoroughly on digital than me. This week, he’s buying all of his traditionally print comics for the first time digitally. This is after going all-in on digital first titles like Moth City, but now, books like Manhattan Projects and New Avengers are coming home with him…without him even needing to leave his home. When he’s done with them, there will be no need for organization, as ComiXology does that for him.
Someday, my wife and I will move into a new home, and when we do, I can’t even tell you how appealing the idea of moving one iPad would be versus 35 long boxes.
2. Direct Market Blues
Especially when every Wednesday morning I wake up to an email from DC or ComiXology or Marvel saying that right now, right now!, I can download my comics. For me, someone who is perpetually dealing with late comics, that could not be more appealing.
Now, I’m a huge fan of retailers. I’ve traveled a lot in my life, and one of my favorite things to do is check out comic shops. I’ve been to impressive (and not so impressive) shops on four continents and a whole lot of countries, and retailers really are the heart and soul of the industry. But if I can’t buy my comics consistently on the day they’re slated to be released, I start to have a bit of a problem.
3. DRM-Free for you and me
I don’t have a major issue with the great and ominous cloud. The online storage entity that keeps ComiXology’s books in the right places is in theory scary, as if it or ComiXology itself went down, our comics would be gone. Done. Fin.
We’d have nothing to show for our money, as JManga readers found out the very hard way.
In 2013, Image looked at that problem and went the way of Panel Syndicate and opened up their comics for digital download in DRM-free formats rather than purely existing on the cloud. They even recently opened up cloud solutions by giving readers the ability to sync their purchases with their Dropbox account with the click of a button.
Now how cool is that?
I can still access my comics anywhere using Dropbox, but I get all of the DRM-free file types I desire and a real, in theory tangible item in exchange for my purchase.
With all that in mind, I have a New Year’s Resolution to share with you all. 2014 will be the year I start going digital. Probably not exclusively, as I’ll still buy the books that I truly love in print – things like Saga and Hawkeye – but my goal is to start purchasing most of my books digitally and buying print collections going forward instead of individual issues. That really is the best of both worlds, giving me the ability to read individual issues in one place, keeping me in the print game for the books that I love, and conserving space in the process.
Continued belowI’ll be able to support my local comic book shop with my trade and omnibus purchases, while getting comics how I want when I want.
It’s a scary change, especially for one who was as set in his ways as I previously was.
But it’s also very exciting, and something that I think will dramatically improve
