More, More, More on Digital Comics

More, More, More on Digital Comics

Nov 19

Brian Hibbs has a new Tilting At Windmills up at Newsarama, which is forcing my head yet again into thinking about digital comics, and though I have REAL work to do and I’m barely awake on a Monday morning, I gotta get this shit out.

He makes many good points, some of which I agree with, but here’s one bit that’s been irking me since the whole “comics on the computer” conversation began, and I finally figured out why.

There’s no disguising the fact that I’m pretty much an old fogey on this topic – I don’t believe that the computer monitor is the best way to read material that isn’t reasonably short and concise. And while we have an entire generation that’s about to grow up where the monitor is going to be as natural to them as anything else, every study I’ve ever seen suggests that retention and attention is lost from the glowing screen. Will this continue to be true for the next generation? Who really knows, but it seems to me that the brain parses certain types of input in some fairly specific ways, and that few, if any people, are truly enthusiastic about reading long-form work from a monitor.

There’s also questions about formatting, about how the eye “reads” comics, about the use of “gutter” space and so on – one of the things comics have that are unique to the medium is that much of them take place between the panels. The comics page has a very different set of dimensions than a computer monitor, so what flows and reads easily on one may have a completely different aesthetic impact on the other. Particularly among artists who design for the entire page – think of a Neal Adams 70s Batman page, or anything by J.H. Williams today. The individual panel is just a larger component of the page, and the need to scroll around can, and probably will, blunt some of the power of those storytelling choices.

It’s the whole, “But comics aren’t as good on a computer!” argument, and I have to say that actually, MOST of them are just fine on a computer. And they’re fine because…well, let’s just get it out there…they’re not that great.

It gets down to an issue of WHY people read comics. It’s like any art form, or method of communication; you have stuff that ranges from the bad to the grand, and from the mildly interesting to the absolutely fascinating, and from the “I just wanna make you forget your troubles” to the “I want to make you rethink your entire existence” levels.

Most of what the major publishers are putting into the marketplace right now–DC and Marvel–ranges from awful to great. There’s very little transcendence in modern superhero comics, which is what I think we’re all really talking about when we discuss “digital” comics. Smaller publishers may go online with more esoteric “art” comics, but that’s a whole different ball game, and a whole different conversation.

So there’s this whole miasma of awful to pretty good comics out there, and occasional great stuff, and even the good to great stuff is only good to great for specific reasons–a good story, or eye-popping art, or both. The books where art is a draw MAY suffer from computer reading, but story books? Not so much.

And THAT is what the Big Two have been selling us for years now–the STORY. The shared universe, event-driven, “oh SHIT you don’t wanna miss this True Believer” comics. They FLOOD the stands.

Reading these online? Shit, some of them are so lousy that DC and Marvel should feel fortunate anyone wants to read them AT ALL. They should feel lucky if some hapless bastard skims them off a filthy truck stop bathroom wall, let alone spending $3 per issue to purchase them, read them, and then store them in climate-controlled bagged-and-boarded splendor.

So it’s fine to say that comics don’t read well on a computer, because that’s not the storytelling medium they were designed to travel in–but many comics don’t read well period, so big fucking deal. For a comic like Countdown (to Final Crisis), online reading would be a gift–to buyers, at least. I bought eight issues, then torrented a few more, and then I just gave up–I “follow” it, but just through the common osmosis of reading about it online.

Would I read it if it were a buck digitally, or part of a $9.99/month subscription plan? Probably not. But I’d look at it, just as I’d look at all the multitude of titles churned out to capitalize on nostalgia, obsessive-compulsive fandom, or both. Right now, though, I won’t pay $3 or $4 an issue to buy that shit.

It’s like movies–there’s many great films that demand screening in a movie theater, with a full crowd, on a Friday night that includes hot buttered popcorn and fresh diet soda. There’s also many great films that are just fine on my DVD player, and there are even good to great to awful films that do something for me on my iPod screen or my laptop while I sit in an airport waiting for a flight. If a movie isn’t “good” enough to demand theater viewing, putting $10 of my hard-earned cash into Tom Cruise’s pocket, then that’s not MY fault, or the fault of the method of transmission–it’s the fault of the people who MADE it.

If retailers want to worry about digital comics, they should worry about the mainstream of comics and the absolute horseshit festival it has become. Because right now, much of what the Big Two churn out on a weekly basis ain’t even worth reading digitally, let alone buying in the comic shops, and once this latest generation of fanboys shuffles out of comics buying, or off this mortal coil entirely, then there’s REALLY gonna be some problems.

(If this doesn’t make sense, sorry. It made a lot more sense when I formulated the hypothesis on the shitter ten minutes ago.)

BONUS LINK: Amazon prepares to launch its own eBook solution–now THIS is the kind of stuff that could make digital comics REALLY interesting.