Marvel Shacks Up With iTunes; Is the Future of Comics Comic-less?

Geeks of Doom picked up one of the (many) announcements I missed at NYCC, which is that Marvel will be doing motion comics on iTunes. This isn’t particularly Earth-shaking, since DC’s done pretty well with its Watchmen motion comics, but it got me thinking: isn’t this how we’ll all be reading comics in 20 years anyway?

Now, I’m not saying they’ll all be motion comics with voice actors and stuff, nor old classics all tarted up. I just mean that given how tough print is for every kind of serialized product — newspapers, magazines, whatever — can comics really be that far behind? Does it make more sense for Marvel and DC and to just throw their comics up online each week, charge a couple of bucks for ’em, hopefully keep the advertisements, and save on all those printing costs?

Now, I have zero information on the state of the comic industry, so I really don’t know how profitable the single issues are (I would guess they break even, with the real money being in trades). But my question to you is, would you buy comics if you they were only available online? If the only way to stay current with Spidey or Batman was to pay $2 to iTunes every few weeks, would you do it? Would you be happy about it? Would you quit? Would you follow the characters anywhere? Would you just wait for the trades? Do you even like reading comics online? One inquiring mind wants to know.