By ANDY IHNATK - ai@andyi.com - Chicago Sun-Times , December 20, 2011
On behalf of what must be hundreds, or dare I even say thousands, of comic book readers who also own phones, tablets, and even our own home computers, it is my pleasure to finally welcome the comic book industry into the 21st century. Each of the big four comics publishers (DC, Marvel, Image, and Dark Horse) have committed to releasing every issue of every comic for digital download on the same day that the physical comics ship to retailers.
Well, okay: Marvel’s only announced their plans to bring the rest of their titles to same-date-digital by April. But I’ve been eager to write that sentence ever since I got my first iPad.
Why is “same date delivery” important? Particularly when casual readers don’t necessarily rush out every Wednesday to pick up their comics fresh off of the UPS truck?
It’s more symbolic than anything else. The true significance is that the distribution of digital columns is no longer going to be selective or strategic. In music and books, you can freely assume that anything you can buy as a physical object can also be bought digitally. I stand at the intersection of Comic Book and Tech Geekdom and even I couldn’t get myself interested in digital comics before now. The whole concept was like that awful comic book shop that I drive past on my way to my usual shop: the owner orders very small quantities and only orders books that he himself likes. If I’ve no idea what he’ll have, why waste my time there?
Now, the big four are in the game.
It sure took them long enough to come around, didn’t it? Granted, a comic page is probably the least-malleable form of content there is, and thus the hardest to adapt to electronic devices. The page is exactly so high and so wide, and has art panels of no fixed size and shape that can follow practically any sequential path from the top-left to the bottom-right. Each panel is a mixture of words and imagery . . . and a smirk in the corner of a character’s mouth can be more important to the story than the words he’s speaking. The words of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” obligingly reflow to fill any screen. The sinuous and sumptuous artwork of P. Craig Russell in issue #50 of “Sandman” would be horribly diminished by even the slightest adjustment
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