There has been a lot said about digital comic by people within the industry. I’m sure that there will be more to come as we get closer to New York Comic Con!
Gerry Alanguilan – Creator of Elmer was going to be making a speech at a conference, but had to bow out. Although he posted his speech online:
My other book ELMER was published through my own Komikero Publishing in 4 issues from 2006 to 2008. The first issue very quickly sold out. And when it did, I digitized it and uploaded it online as both as one HTML file where you can read it in one go, and as a downloadable Comic Book
Reader file. FOR FREE. My purpose for doing so was to encourage people to buy the rest of the series in print, and the compiled edition which came out in 2009.
To further entice people to buy the printed comics, I collaborated with my wife’s paper crafting company to create a limited edition ELMER Box Sets which included a hardbound hand crafted copy of Elmer 1-4, photographs, facsimile of some of the objects found in the story, one piece of original artwork, and a certificate of authenticity. These are things that cannot be reproduced digitally, but can be created simply by hand. The minute I made the announcement on my blog about the existence of these box sets, I never had the opportunity to sell them at our local conventions because reservations for it came pouring in through email and quickly sold out.
Warren Ellis on his website has a random thought or two…
When creators who matter to me start really thinking about the in-app or cliented digital comics form of Comixology or graphic.ly, and start doing, say, 10 or 12 page comics (with whatever notational stuff shoved in the back that they feel like adding) and releasing them for 99 US cents every two weeks or so, I’m going to get interested really fast. And so will you. Particularly when these services perfect series-specific subscriptions that sideload the books automagically into your client locker or push an alert to your device.
That could even loosen up to, say, buying a subscription to a graphic novel, and having the discrete chapters pushing to you as they’re completed, on an entirely irregular schedule that builds up to something of not fewer pages than you signed on for, within an acceptable plus-or-minus of a previously announced timeframe.
(Small print, it say “if the artist gets the Mongolian Terror Trout Flu the whole thing could end up two months late, we’ll keep you posted with alerts and send you twitpics of the artist’s pustulesâ€)
(random thought ends)
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