CBR: One Fan's Opinion - Feb 5, 2010

[CBR News]

This week, Erik looks at the ramifications of Apple's recently-announced iPad for the worlds of both print and digital comics, and tries to put the divide between the two media into perspective.


Full article here.

[apoehler]

On this, Erik is wrong, either deliberately so or just misinformed:

"The big difference for those who care is that these are scans out of comics--and they simply don’t look as good as real comics do."

Actually the fact of the matter is scans can and often do look better than printed comics, due to the shoddy quality control often given to printed bound matter and the detail possible with a screen that is invariably wider than a comics page.

In fact, the only thing preventing more scans from looking better is their illicit, scanned-from-printed origins. Were scans created from original digital files--the way most comic book art begins now, rather than from printed pages--there would be nothing holding them back from far surpassing the printed versions, particularly given the lousy paper most books are printed on.

I do love physical (what Erik calls "real") comics but the fact is I have bought a lot of books that were just badly done, and nowhere near the quality of a good scan. The medium is just that, and while there will always be fetishists who prefer one to another, the content is what drives the whole thing.

Also, RE: "Sites like iTunes have made it so that songs can’t be easily passed from one computer or device to the next whereas illegal ones can be easily copied and passed around."

No, they haven't. All songs sold from itunes and most other online download sites are DRM-free and have been for awhile because DRM was a miserable failure. Erik should have contacted itunes customer support and they would have most likely allowed him to redownload everything without paying twice, including that precious Aimee Mann exclusive.

[Thad]

What the industry is looking for is a way to deliver digital comics that can’t be hacked or copied so that people can get paid for their work. That hasn’t really materialized yet and the continued existence of print will prevent there from ever being a truly reliable way of preventing people from illegally copying and distributing comic books.

It hasn't materialized yet, and it never will.

Copy protection is ALWAYS broken. As long as a hacker can see what data's being put into the memory of a device, he can reverse engineer how it's decrypted. And even a black box like the iPad can be hacked to monitor memory.

DRM does not deter piracy. That's not simply because nobody's come up with a sufficiently advanced mechanism yet, it's because IT CAN'T BE DONE. All copy protection does is inconvenience the legitimate customers who actually pay money for the product -- in the most extreme case, the poor saps who purchased Sony music CD's which carried a copy protection scheme which actually introduced serious vulnerabilities to their computers. (This did not, of course, prevent anyone from downloading the albums illegally.) Amazon's remote deletion of 1984, people complaining that their CD drives quit working after using games with StarForce copy protection, Windows XP refusing to function if you take too many pieces of hardware out of your computer...the list goes on. And in none of these cases were the products in question protected against piracy -- the pirates kept their copies of 1984, their working CD drives, and their working operating systems.

Your article nails the crux here: publishers shouldn't focus on copy protection, they need to create convenient, easy-to-use digital products that people will want to buy. Piracy can never be completely stopped, but you CAN compete with free; iTunes does a pretty good damn business -- even now that it's started releasing songs without DRM.

[EMTonner]

Yes, hopefully the iTablet will get digital comics moving. DRM be damned. How do you protect against a screen shot?

The big money maker for the publishers will be back issues. Those hundreds of thousands of issues they already own, ready to be digitized. And Erik's right, there will always be paper. I like paper, but I'd also like to be able some of the comics I read 20 years ago without paying $20 on eBay. The local comic shop only carries so many back issues...

[Erik Larsen]

On this, Erik is wrong, either deliberately so or just misinformed:

Of course. Because i could never be the case of me having firsthand knowledge of any of this stuff. After all--I've never worked in comics or had to deal with iTunes after having a computer crash.

"The big difference for those who care is that these are scans out of comics--and they simply don’t look as good as real comics do."

Actually the fact of the matter is scans can and often do look better than printed comics, due to the shoddy quality control often given to printed bound matter and the detail possible with a screen that is invariably wider than a comics page.

In fact, the only thing preventing more scans from looking better is their illicit, scanned-from-printed origins.

Wait--let me get this straight--you counter my point that files scanned from printed comics look worse than printed comics by agreeing with me that files scanned from printed comics look worse than printed comics? How does that work?

Were scans created from original digital files--the way most comic book art begins now, rather than from printed pages--there would be nothing holding them back from far surpassing the printed versions, particularly given the lousy paper most books are printed on.

Well, maybe--but the resolution on even the best computer screen will never be as sharp as the printed page--and my point was that files scanned from printed comics look worse than printed comics--and that's true. When anything is scanned--you lose something in the process. No photograph can be clearer than the reality it's photographing--every time you make a copy of something it loses something in the translation. Now if we start sending out full size tiffs and Photoshop documents pages can look as sharp as what we send to the printers but until that happens it's not going to look as crisp and sharp as the printed page. It can look very good once we're sending out digital files but my point was about the illegal files available now and those do not look as good as the printed comics nor can they.

I don't know what comics you're looking at--but most comics I see are printed on great paper. This isn't the '70s.

Also, RE: "Sites like iTunes have made it so that songs can’t be easily passed from one computer or device to the next whereas illegal ones can be easily copied and passed around."

No, they haven't. All songs sold from itunes and most other online download sites are DRM-free and have been for awhile because DRM was a miserable failure. Erik should have contacted itunes customer support and they would have most likely allowed him to redownload everything without
paying twice, including that precious Aimee Mann exclusive.

I did contact iTunes and I was initially told that I was out of luck.

After that, I contacted them again and was able to talk them into letting me get back some of the music I had purchased from them.

Again--I was speaking from experience here--I even said:

"getting everything back in place was a real hassle (and I lost that iTunes exclusive Aimee Mann download-only album forever since it’s no longer available)"

If you illegally download music it's easily recoverable. You simply go back to where you got it and get it again--free of charge. I was able to get back some of what I lost from iTunes and had to repurchase what they wouldn't send me and that one album was no longer available--period. When I'm at the office we have a connected system where we can listen to music from other people's iPods. If somebody uploaded a CD I can listen to it. If they downloaded music from iTunes I'm unauthorized to listen to it.

So--while iTunes may indeed be DRM-free at this point, from what I have encountered--illegally downloaded music (or, in my case, music I have uploaded from CDs that I've purchased) is more versatile than legally downloaded music. While you can do some things--burn songs to a CD or whatever--it's not the same animal--not completely.

That does not mean that I don't continue to buy iTunes--I absolutely do--but a CD, like a printed comic, has its advantages in that you can upload it and have it on your shelf and available to enjoy anytime you feel the urge to enjoy it.

But clearly you are the authority here. Please tell me more about how wrong I am and how I'm either misinformed or lying.

Yes, hopefully the iTablet will get digital comics moving. DRM be damned. How do you protect against a screen shot?

You really can't but from what I've seen, screenshots aren't as crisp as the originals. They look the same at that size, yes, but when you zoom in it gets blurry.

The big money maker for the publishers will be back issues. Those hundreds of thousands of issues they already own, ready to be digitized. And Erik's right, there will always be paper. I like paper, but I'd also like to be able some of the comics I read 20 years ago without paying $20 on eBay. The local comic shop only carries so many back issues...

That's true and for a lot of comics--printed comics really aren't that necessary. If I'm going to be looking at Adam Hughes art--yeah--I'd rather see the printed comic book--but if I'm looking at an issue of Spectacular Spider-Man from 1983--who gives a shit? I'll look at scans. What's really cool will be able to follow footnotes--to click on that box that says "*See issue #156" and be able to go to issue #156 and immediately see what they were referring to.

[dupont2005]

Ralph Snart Adventures is digital only. Is it a real comic? I hope so, it's my favorite comic out there. It only costs $1.49 an issue too

[Donald M.]

Ralph Snart Adventures is digital only. Is it a real comic? I hope so, it's my favorite comic out there. It only costs $1.49 an issue too

It is? Then why do I remember reading it as a kid?

[MacQuarrie]

Were scans created from original digital files--the way most comic book art begins now, rather than from printed pages--....

...they wouldn't be scans. Scans are made on a scanner. Converting high-res digital files into screen-res digital files involves no scanning.

[dupont2005]

It is? Then why do I remember reading it as a kid?

starting with Volume 8 number two it's all digital

[MagnusRex]

We're still going to see X-Men, Spider Man, Batman, Superman, Green Lantern and the rest of the big name comics being printed. They will also be in digital format. But comics like SWORD, or Blue Beetle, or Doctor Voodoo... Books where a risk is being taken in publishing them. I like SWORD, others like SWORD too, but after what, 5 issues Marvel is canceling the series. Instead of printing those books, Marvel and DC can just go the digital route. Only thing is, how is the pricing going to be set up between Marvel/DC/and other publishers, and Apple? If I pay $400 for the iPad, and then I end up still having to pay $3.99 for a digital copy of a book, or for a book that doesn't that is digital only and doesn't have a physical counterpart, then I'm calling shenanigans.

[EMTonner]

Did this for fun. All images © their respective owners.
It would be cool though...

[ptsteelers]

Erik, it seems I disagree with you on every article you write. Not that that is a bad thing, just an observation.

I just need to ask this, how can you possibly say, in apparent earnest -

“Sure, if digital comics really take off, SOME stores could close. No doubt about it.”

- I just can’t understand how a man of your obvious intelligence can, first of all, believe that to be true and secondly spread that assumption to the masses as if it were fact when the more likely reality is that ‘SOME stores will survive while MOST will not’.

I concede that comic stores in the major metropolitan areas (NY, Chicago, LA, etc …) could whether the impending storm of digital comics, due to sheer comic buyer population alone, but other areas of the country … most areas of the country, where stores are barely surviving on the customer count they currently have, can not endure losing even a few patrons to digital.

New York has about, what, eight million people? That is a lot of potential comic store shoppers.

You compared digital comics to I-Tunes and that is a great analogy, as I believe comics are much like the music CD. Now I can’t speak of life in “the big city” , but here in the land of only 400,000 people, where there use to be a good selection of music stores, I now see other businesses in those locations. Do you realize how many music stores have closed nationwide over the past 10 years? Is there not a coalition to music going digital and the effect it had on the music store? Can you not perceive the same effect towards comic shops?

Perhaps you being a publisher, and more importantly a fan of print comics, has you looking through rose colored glasses, where as I, as just a buyer of those comics, see my days of driving to the local comic shop numbered, as it will soon be a tanning salon.

[Burning_Pumpkin]

Why hasn't a major publishing house taken the initiative in creating an eComic Reader themselves rather than waiting for someone else to do it?

[TwinPistols]

I don't think an electronic device could ever replace a book store for me. Having those books in my hands or on the bookshelf makes me feel like I own something; it's part of my collection. Digital files are digital files. They're just content...

Yeah, I read comics on my computer from time to time, but it's hard for me to do so for very long. Like you said, eye strain.

I liked the mention about free public domain comics. There is http://goldenagecomics.co.uk/ where you can download free golden age comics in the public domain. It is 100% legal, and you can find comics there from the forties featuring the original Daredevil, Black Terror and other heroes currently being used in Project: Superpowers and the Next Issue Project.

I also want to point out wowio.com, where you can pay for, and download, comics (some as cheap as 0.99), as well as read free comics and comic book previews. There are tons and tons of Indie publishers like Zenescope and Heroic Publishing, with comics on there. Top Cows got a pretty good collection of comics up there too.

[bluebeetle73]

For the most part I agree with most of the article, but I think that comic shops are a dying breed now. I've seen over 10 stores in the closest city close already. Sure the bigger more diverse shops(sell more than magic cards and comics) are chugging along, but they admit to just barely getting by. All of the shops in the surrounding, more rural areas are gone.
I don't like digital comics, but since the direct market is the only way comic companies are willing to currently distribute monthly comics, digital is about the only way to increase readership. The industry has become so dependent on older readers I don't think there are too many years left of print comics.
I personally think they should include more digital comics on the DVD releases of their movies. Then when kids are done watching Iron Man 2 they can read a few issues and the companies can suggest that if they like Iron Man they can buy new issues at their nearest comic shop, book store or subscribe. They could also give websites to find local shops or whatever.