CBR: Splash Page: Wednesday Comics Week One

[CBR News]

Each week, comic pundits Timothy Callahan and Chad Nevett discuss the style and substance of DC's "Wednesday Comics." The conversation begins here with no-holds-barred commentary on issue #1.


Full article here.

[Janissa]

About Print Dying. I still don't think the economics is there to go full digital. I can't imagine anyone actually BUYING a Digital $4, $3, or even $2 comic. At least with a hardcopy you're buying something that actually exists - it would take a flood or a fire to destroy your collection. But if ALL of your comics are Digital and you aren't in the habit of backing up your Harddrive then all it takes is a defective harddrive, malicious Virus hacker attack, or power-surge to annihilate your expensive collection.

Also, isn't everyone used to everything on the Internet being Free?

If everything does go digital, eventually, it will be several decades from now.

[Aztek18]

To me, it's not so much an issue of whether digital comics would be a physical item that you've purchased - it's your own fault if you're not backing up your files, and saving on print would certainly lower the cost of comics. I mean, that's the reason we're told that prices are not hitting the $3.99 mark right, because of paper?

I think the Longbox format is going to work great - there will be different price points like on iTunes with $.99 and $1.99 comics is my guess.

The real issue is the reader - when we get full color book sized tablet iPods to read our comics on, that will be the way to go and it will rock!

And also, I loved Wednesday comics. Yes, the writers seemed to struggle with the one page comic format and I was hoping more would be one and done (like the Supergirl one, sort of), but I do think it would be a great comic for a new reader to pick up. Loved the nostalgia format, the art and the writing should get tighter as we go on. Good stuff, can't wait for wednesday. This was the first comic to get me back into stores on a weekly basis - I'm a trade waiter normally. It's just an exciting fun comic. Though quite pricey I agree.

[TimothyCallahan]

I don't think print is dying at all. I think serializing comics via expensive printed floppies is a silly way to do business and cannot possibly sustain itself, but I don't think print is dying.

Books and collected editions will live forever! (I hope. I hate reading stuff on a monitor, and the idea of a kindle for comics is not appealing to me at all.)

[kcekada]

When I told a much-younger co-worker that he good get all of the Avengers and X-Men books on DVD he didn't have much interest. He doesn't want to view PDFs to read a comic.

I do think someone is going to have to invent a good, cheap portable PDF viewer before digital takes over.

[Karl O'Neill]

I hate reading comics on the net. Give me the real issues anyday.

[shamus]

Why do comic book people seem to frequently say "price point" when the word "price" would suffice? What am I missing here?

[TimothyCallahan]

"Price point" is an economics term, but in retail jargon it pretty much just means "suggested retail price" which is different than actual price (since most everything is discounted somewhere).

[shamus]

Thanks Tim. It was something that was puzzling me for a while. At last a sensible explanation.