Broken Frontier

For many of us, going digital with our comic books is not something we’re looking forward to.  Nostalgia states that walking into your local shop, purchasing your weekly pull list, and sorting through that pile of printed goodies to see which title you’ll read first is as much of the lifelong draw as the comics themselves.

For those of us who enjoy bagging and boarding our books and then housing them in long boxes (and I assume that’s most of us), the thought of removing the tangible product, the book itself, from the equation is just not an option, but I’m here to say that given publishers’ recent economic struggles, it may be the only option.

One of the biggest costs incurred by comic book publishers is printing, and with prices continuing to rise on both paper and shipping, there will come a day (and that day is not far away), where publishers, particularly of the “independent” variety, will be priced out from printing books.  And of course, as fans of the medium, we will all be unhappy with this decision, but it will be an unavoidable head-on collision because the math doesn’t lie. 

If the cost of manufacturing the books outweighs the publisher’s return, eventually they’ll have no choice but to stop printing.

And when that happens, what options will they have?   They can either close their doors and stop producing books altogether, or they can trim their overhead and embrace digital distribution.  I believe the forefather of digital, Max Headroom, would choose the latter, and I’m here to suggest that maybe we should too.

No, I currently don’t own a smart phone, so even if I wanted to download comics to my mobile device, I couldn’t right now.  I am a tech idiot, the last buffalo on the Great Plains stubbornly refusing to follow the rest of the herd into the horizon.  That being said though, I’m ready to change.  I’m ready to embrace technology, at least where my comic books are concerned.

If publishers begin to transition to a digital heavy production slate (and I’m not suggesting they should throw out printing altogether, because I don’t think that’s necessary), then it would free up LOTS of money for other titles to be put into production.  By having the companies trim their printing costs, we the readers could, in theory, benefit by having more content at our disposal.

And not only would there be more content, but the books themselves (or in this case, the downloads), would be… Ready for this… CHEAPER!

That’s right.  By removing the printing overhead from the publishers’ budget, we could get back to a day where single issues… Single NEW issues… Only cost a dollar.  And because the “store” we’d be buying these “books” from is literally in our hands, the benefit of instant gratification comes into play as well.  Let’s say you decide to try out a first issue of a new title for a dollar, end up loving it, and then choose to jump right back online to download the remaining issues… Also all for a dollar.  It’s the perfect scenario for becoming even more reclusive!

Don’t get me wrong, there will be downsides to going digital, namely putting our favorite mom and pop shops out of business.  (But then again, most of the major chains like Borders and Barnes & Noble already did that.)  And I’m not saying it’s a perfect situation by any means, but given the choice between comics and no comics, I’ll take my chances at learning how to operate an iPhone so that I can still get my fix.

Now if they could only bottle up that fantastic new comic smell!