I'm gonna sound like an old man but I'm going to say it anyhow.

"It's comics own fault if they can't sell hard copies." When you charge 4 bucks for 16 pages of overdone high gloss flash containing less story and a lower word count than the prologue of your average novel, is it any wonder comics aren't doing better?

Unless they make them free, I'll borrow the trade paperback from my friend if I bother at all. This from a guy who used to buy 30 titles a week.

I think this would be huge!
I for one would love to be able to get my comics on my iPhone. I take it everywhere and use it for most everything (including staying on top of the TR posts)and would actually be more inclined to follow different storylines and books if picking them up were as simple as a click or two on iTunes.
Don't get me wrong, I love the nerdy nuances of the comic shop, but nowadays it's all about convienence and driving across Austin to pick up my books can be a PITA.

Hrm. As someone that only began buying comics recently, I was utterly shocked how quickly they take up space. And frankly, I'd rather buy the graphic novel compilations because they feel less flimsy, like I could throw them at the neighbor's cat should I need to. But on the other hand, I like buying in to something sacred and traditional, that imparts joy and fanciful tales in a fragile shell. I expect they'll mass market the iTunes stuff, and put out more fancy collector-geared editions as hard copies. That's what the record industry is doing right now, at least.

I prefer my comics and books in print form. Same with music, I'm a collector, I like to have the physical product in my hand.

Endroren, I agree. I stopped reading because of the inconsistent stories and sometimes horrendous artists in the 90s. When Marvel started touting the "new writer every three months" as a bonus for X-men, I just ran the other way.

As for digital comics, you can purchase DVD's for $20 with entire 40 year runs of Avengers, X-men, Fantastic Four, and Spider-man from Marvel. So there's already a pretty good precedent out there.

I have the Spider-Man DVD, and I also use CDisplay to have digital copies of all the comics I buy on my computer, and I barely read them in physical form anymore. It's much better to just open a program and surf through the panels on a keyboard.

I'd do as I do now, and simply wait for the trades.

No. As it is I really don't buy individual comics anymore. I used to when I was a kid/teenager, but not anymore. I do buy those compiled versions which I can enjoy reading at my own leisure.

I like having the physical product in my hand as I can admire the piece of art over and over again and if it's a good story I can read it again.

Hell, I still buy an occasional Archie comic digest at my grocery store when I want a quick read for the crapper.

I think a huge part of comic book fandom is the aspect of collecting . And digital files don't have the same allure a comic you can hold in your hands and store in your basement.

And I never have liked reading whole comic book or novels on a screen.

Avocado? That's random.

Hm, an abo would be nice, where you get the monthly title automatically sent to you, but then I usually read comics in the bathroom or in bed, two places I rarely need to make calls from...

Endroren, I am on the same page with you when it comes to comics. With the $4 price increase I am looking at what I can cut (DC's Vigilante hit the discard pile, for example.). The price increase is ridiculous for what the companies are selling me. I don't know about the new technology and whether or not I would be interested; I read some comics online (i.e. Girl Genius and Freak Angels) so using modern technology is not that big a deal to me. But those comics are free. I really do prefer to have comics in hand where I can read them wherever I want, whenever I want.

I'm waiting for e-paper to support color and then I might think about switching to digital copies. I strain my eyes enough every day starting at a computer screen at work and I want to minimize it at home. I still buy single issue comics mostly but I am starting to buy more and more hardback editions. I like it that I can put the hardbacks on a bookshelf where I can see them instead of inside one of the several comic boxes that I have laying around.

The more that I think about it I am against comics going strictly digital. This would no doubt close many comic stores worldwide. I enjoy going into my local shop once a week and bullshitting with the owner while looking for new titles. Also the number of comic conventions would decrease (which it already has, Wizard World anyone?) which are good for nerd to nerd socializing.

Despite what they say cutting costs does not equal progress. Unfortunately it will happen eventually the question is when.

I'm waiting for e-paper to support color and then I might think about switching to digital copies. I strain my eyes enough every day starting at a computer screen at work and I want to minimize it at home. I still buy single issue comics mostly but I am starting to buy more and more hardback editions. I like it that I can put the hardbacks on a bookshelf where I can see them instead of inside one of the several comic boxes that I have laying around.

The more that I think about it I am against comics going strictly digital. This would no doubt close many comic stores worldwide. I enjoy going into my local shop once a week and bullshitting with the owner while looking for new titles. Also the number of comic conventions would decrease (which it already has, Wizard World anyone?) which are good for nerd to nerd socializing.

Despite what they say cutting costs does not equal progress. Unfortunately it will happen eventually the question is when.

i hate motion comics.

Crap sorry about the double post. (I misspelled avocado and it still posted. Weird.)

If comics go %100 digital I'll just stop collecting, there's plenty of back issues out there looking for a good home.

10 or 15 years ago I would have scoffed at the idea, but now, older and wiser and less desposable income, I would buy comics online, if the price decrease was significant, I'd buyy more titles then I do in hard copy now.

I never read comics digitally until one particularly long business trip (3 weeks in a hotel with not much to do after hours that didn't cost money). I discovered CDisplay and every single issue of GI Joe from Marvel to Devil's Due online, and just got caught up. It was great.

I tend to agree with Endroren; the issues today have too many ads, and the stories are scant on continuity and are hard to follow. My recent purchasing has tended towards TPBs on titles I really care about. Marvel has great titles and fantastic art and stories sometimes, but they have always (back to my childhood) lost me on the insane-crossover summers.

If they were to offer (which they are prototyping on marvel.com) a subscription service where you could log in and download whatever you felt like reading for the month at a flat fee, I would be into it. The key for me though would be the ability to pick a bunch of titles off a menu and download them to a laptop that I could then read while on an airplane or in a hotel that was not internet-equipped.

Considering the huge pile of unread single-issue comics in my basement, this might have a better change of long-term value for my comic dollar.

I prefer trades to regular comics, but I do like keeping up with current developments. I would love a tied product that gave you digital access to current issues and a trade paperback version once those issues were released.

I quit collecting issues years ago simply because I hated waiting so long to finish a story line. I only purchase Trades and GN's now. But I wouldn't switch to online versions because part of what I love about them is physically owning that artwork and story. Getting them online would be horrible. I don't want to sit in front of my computer to read comics. I want to sit in a coffee shop or on my couch. I've known forever that you can download current issues and titles through Bit Torrent sites, but I've never bothered because I have no interest in reading comics that way. Give me books, or give me nothing.

I actually recently stopped buying single issues of comics. Space became a big issue because it's a huge pain in the ass to store a bunch of comics that I rarely, if ever, take out to read again. I'd happily pay a monthly fee to read the latest comics online.

I understand that Marvel has a digital comics service on their site, but it's months behind and their online reader is horrible.

I usually buy about 10 books a week, and while it does get pricey, I can't see dropping that and just reading my titles online. Ebooks have been around for years, but does anyone want to crank out 'Moby Dick' while sitting in front of a monitor for 50 hours?

Plus, if all your comics are digital, what do you read during a power failure?

I'll be at my shop buying REAL comics until the day they pry the last copy of Action Comics from my cold, dead hands.

Coming from someone who use to spend all of his extra money on comics, I'd say hell no, but my reason for buying comics was for the art and collector aspects of it, not the story. I'd buy all the alternate covers and rare stuff like that. For me, buying the comics was a tangible thing, a nice clean glossy piece of artwork you could keep stored in a container and pull out to impress your geeky friends.

The motion comics seem like a good idea and are moving the genre forward, but maybe, just maybe, the concept of monthly comics should just die. I mean, they've been using the same publication model for the last 100 years or so, and like newspapers, seem to be going extinct because they have a near-sighted focus on the next deadline.

I work in the print industry, so I can relate to how difficult it is to release good products on a tight, reoccurring deadline, but monthly comics have altogether become that horrible TV show that's been on for a billion years with characters that never change or grow and sleep walk through their respective storylines.

I just hope that the digital copies become popular just so comics can reach more readers. At the moment the medium is hemoraging readers and those that are left are mostly middle age fanboys who are chocking the limited creativity that either Marvel or DC have been showing lately. Although this is coming from a trade waiter who gave up on floppies ages ago so I couldn't care less about single issues as long as companies still print trades.

I really like surfing on internet but I prefer read the comics on a piece of paper, I can't imagine myself collecting URLs instead magazines comics, I will be nice if we can have both alternatives.

I'm bad. i download comic torrents every week and read it on cbr. I felt bad so i purchased a month of Marvel's digital comics but they came out so late, I didn't bother. However I buy TPB if I love the story. To answer the question, i would buy comics from itunes if they were availible.

They can have my print comic when they pry it from my cold...dead...hands...

I think they should move to digital, yes. And charge very very little for it. They already have the subscription service--which I believe only offers certain comics--and it's already a tad too expensive.

What the comics companies seem to forget is that one of the main appeals of comics is that they're CHEAP--or supposed to be, anyway. That's one of the main factors that led to the 'Golden Age'--the cheap availability of the comics, not just the escape they offered. When you start charging FOUR DOLLARS a pop, for something that essentially only gives you 10, 15 minutes entertainment tops? That's going way too far.

I think they should offer some tidbits to get people interested--"Elseworld"/"What If"-type scenarios where they get the best and the brightest creators and tell them 'Here's a concept--Spider-Man--go nuts', and see what they come up with. Release that online--for free--to get people interested. Then entice them to either sign up for a subscription--$5 per month TOPS--and offer access to EVERYTHING per-month that is released by the company, WITH banner-and-other-non-skippable-ads to make the money they'll think they're losing.

They don't need to charge as much as they are if they no longer have to print and ship. Simple as that. So make 'em cheap again, make 'em within reach of EVERYONE again, and I truly believe we can see a resurgance, maybe even another Golden Age...

...but it will never happen.

This would kill comics for me personally. I love going to the store. Flipping through the racks. Looking inside and finding a new title. I love organizing my collection and COLLECTING comics. Boarding and bagging them. I like looking at the stacks and stacks of long boxes and feeling pride of what I have built for the last 20 years. I love the smell of the comics and the texture of holding it and reading. The surprise of flipping the page to a great spread. I guess I'm old fashioned and time is passing me by but this is what I like.

Digital might be fine as an addition to, but to replace print altogether would break my heart.

I read most of my comics as downloads nowadays. Of course I prefer the printed version, but let's face it: they're a dying breed. Look how many comic series have been cancelled in the past few months by DC: Robin, Nightwing, Birds of Prey, Batman & Superman, Legion of Superheroes, etc. Comic shops are closing down all over the country. I have a stack of graphic novels I picked up for pennies on the dollar from one such comic shop closing. Most supermarkets don't even carry a comic book rack anymore, except for those Archie Digests you get at the counter, so where are you expected to even find your favourite comics?
When I was a kid, I had to have my mom drive me down to the comic shop every weekened to pick up new issues, and they didn't even carry comics I was interested in like the Avengers. It would have been so much easier for everyone involved if I could just download them onto an iPod, or some other digital device. Then I wouldn't have four Rubbermaid bins filled with X-Men comics and their like.

One other thing: you know those comics with the holographic covers, or some other B.S. that they're trying to pass off for $5-$15? That's a bunch of bullshit. You shouldn't have to pay that much for a new issue to fill in your collection of the Spider-Man Clone Saga, like I did growing up. Plus if you're a kid, how are you supposed to convince your cheap-ass parents to fork over that ammount of cash for 32 pages of hack-writing that costs more than a paperback novel? There's so many better methods of payment available online, like subscription based, or even an iTunes model, where you're paying a flat fee per comic, and perhaps a little more for larger issues, or graphic novels.

I would never, ever trade online for print comics. I can't stand reading online, it gives me a headache. In fact, I'm going to take a couple Motrin and go lie down as soon as I'm done posting this.

If they're going to do more motion comics I hope they will strongly think at least about hiring a woman to voice female characters and preferably look at hiring a full cast of voices for each production.

I'm loving the Watchmen motion comics as they've done some nifty things in there (in particular they've been able to draw my eye to details I originally missed in the static panels) but I do wish there was a woman to voice all the female parts. The narrator tries his best but it still doesn't quite work.

Here's an opinion from a former comic book store owner -

ANY way that they can make the comic book buying process easier and more convenient, I'm all for. This will make it easier to recruit new readers. Where are the new readers coming from? I rarely saw anyone under the age of fifteen walk into my store. All the local grocery and drug stores stopped carrying comics years ago, so where are the future comic readers coming from? Answer - they're not coming from anywhere. the industry has been slowly dying since before the computer age. If anything, this new development, if handled right, may save the comic book industry and make it profitable again. Of course long time collectors and current comic shop retailers will disagree with me, but look at it through the eyes of someone who lives in RealityLand, not LandOfHowThingsUsedToBeAndShouldStillBeIfIHadMyWayDammit.

Thoughout history, man has either adapted or became obsolete. Now the comic biz is trying to adapt, and kudos to them for doing so.

At least the comic book art form is not going to die. It may not be a "book" any more but at least it will survive in another format.

I myself, love to read comic books in printed form but the cost of going to the store and other priorities are definitely must be considered.

For trades I hit my local used bookstore for dirt cheap prices.

Personally, I don't buy singles anymore. Well, except for Rest, Marvels: Eye of the Camera, Thor and Spawn(Starting with 185). I don't buy DC anymore. I stopped buying it when 52 came. It's not practical anymore.

Regular comics will be like Vinyl LP; It will be around but only for purists.

I also wanted to add--print comics shouldn't go away completely. Sure, keep printing comics, keep comic stores open, and OF COURSE, once stories online are all set up, release the collections/trades for people who want access to them whenever, wherever (smart phones be damned).

The collectors will keep collecting--that's why they're collectors--but to keep the INDUSTRY alive, to get new readers, as Neal Snow points out, something needs to be done. Get them where they already are (for the most part, gone are the days when a bored kid shopping with his mom will be able to wander over to the comics rack and get absorbed, get hooked on comics), make it cheap and accessible, and you'll have readers for life. Most of those readers won't be collectors, lots of them will, and you'll have a healthy, thriving, GROWING industry, instead of the wheezing, lurching dinosaur it might turn into.

This is a great effing topic, I could go on and on.

I've been thinking about this long and hard. There are some books, I still need in book form. There are some that I wait for trades for. But there are about twenty books a months that I would read and collect if they were cheaper.

If there was a device, think Amazon reader meets iTouch, something that feels nice in the hand, and is sensitive to the touch, I would read all these books. There could be a download system, probably from Diamond, where we could download digital books like on iTunes. upload them to our "ebox" system and read all the books we wanted. Not only would it save money for the bigs, but it would be better for the independents and even beginners.

There's a business model called the long tail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail

This shows how having a larger variety of items helps make money in the long run. People will come to the site for Spider-man and Batman, but it's the samller presses that will benefit the most. The future is now.

Who buys anything online?
If it's online, you can find a way to get it for free. Besides, the new comics are already immediately available online as a scan anyway. If you live somewhere in Europe for example, where you only get the most popular titles from Marvel and DC you can still download everything else if you're interested and just read them in a scan.

I would like to buy comics on-line. However, only if there is a download available. I´m the kind of geek who actually like having original stuff for a change. So, if they start selling the scans instead of me having to wait for a selfless soul to scan it for me, I would do it. Speacially living where I live (Brazil) where it is impossible to keep up to date with comics without the internet.
Hwoever, I hate reading "online only" stuff if it's bigger than a comic strip.

Floppies will survive. There's a collector's market for them, and people will collect all sorts of crap. There is a small market for comics on iPhones - but most comics are not formatted in a way that the iPhone makes a great reader.

Motion comics are as stupid now as they were a decade ago. If I want to watch a crappy cartoon, I'll watch an episode of Spider-Man from the sixties. Putting gutters on the screen doesn't make it a friggin comic.

I'll read comics I can't download that are supported by ads. I only pay cash money for DRM-free downloads to a good reading device which doesn't exist yet so I can move and reformat the downloads when the standards change and my reader becomes obsolete.

I'm an avid comic collector, I get 10-15 a week. Which is starting to get a little difficult. I've pretty much cut off Marvel completely, I'm not spending 4 bucks for the 3 Avengers comics because of Bendis. And I'm dropping Ultimate Spider-Man, because Loeb pretty much destroyed the Universe.

I just don't think I can do the online route of buying comics. It just feels... wrong? I love collecting trades, they look cool, sturdy, and I don't freak out when people touch them. Do you guys think selling only trades would be better for the companies?

This medium is a bit different from other mediums such as music since this market can be heavily driven by the collector just look at the recend spidy issue with Obama.
Its on reprint 5 now! And you can be damn sure its not because people are reading it. Same thing with the Variant cover craze, People buy them just for collections sake. So hopefully, the printed comic will be around for a long time. So future generations on kid geeks can fall in love with the charactors on the printed page like we did when we were kids.

LOVE IT. If the Watchmen motion comics are any indication, then YES! I want all of my favorite back issues done up that way as well!

I'm fine with digital versions, but not motion comics. I read some comics in CDisplay, and it's fine. I don't get why people get all flash happy and want to make comics with motion and moving panels. It's making a cartoon but getting lazy in the process.