PhantomStranger

The dirty little secret is that the comic book market served by Marvel and DC is in rapid decline, even with their properties enjoying more success than ever at the box office. The companies know this and are just staving off the inevitable. The industry is not attracting new readers. DC had very interesting research that showed the average new buyer for the relaunch were guys in their 30s who last collected comics in the 90s before the bubble burst. That is not a recipe for continued growth.

ytrez

I understand that comics have a lot more competition than they did in their heyday when it was estimated that 90% of American children and adolescents read comics but it is hard to contemplate how significantly their interest has eroded over time. Especially given the success of super-heroes in Hollywood these days. Somehow going to see the Avengers or Spider-Man at the cinema is cool and hip but reading a comic book of the same is still considered uncool. Despite the popular acceptance of "nerd culture" (again, mostly through Hollywood) comic book sales still suffer.

There is no easy answer to the problem. I've read comics since I was 5 years old (and yes, I did read them, not just look at the pictures), have book cases full of hard cover and trade paperback comics, a roomful of long boxes, and assorted piles of comics all over my basement and I have been unable to foster anything more than a passing interest in comics to my three sons. They range from 13 to 19 and have only read a handful of comics between them.

I gave the oldest one a copy of the complete Bone collection a while back and he loved it, put it down and moved on to Facebook or some other web interest. Then I gave him Watchmen and that didn't inspire him to seek out anything else. Finally, I gave him a copy of Blankets and got the same response. I can't complain, the kid reads much more literature than the average kid his age and is always at the top of his class but if I can't get this Star Trek the Next Generation-loving fool into comics I don't know who his age will love them like I do.

Trevor

If you had told me 30 years ago that comic-book movies would soon be the summer movie events almost every year, with TV shows and home video releases coming out in droves; I would have been ecstatic for the future of my hobby.

But instead it's hard not to think of the future of comics to be extremely bleak. The entertainment choices are only growing, and the comic-book fan-base is dying off and not being replaced.

Supermallet

Comics aren't going to go away. The Marvel/DC strangehold might, the companies themselves might even tank (although with Disney and WB backing them they might stick around long after their expiration date), and there may even be a period where published comics go dark. But eventually, creative people will do their creative thing and people will rediscover that comics are worthwhile.

As for digital, I love it. I don't have room for 40 long boxes in my apartment (or my life). I wish they were cheaper, but I'm willing to spend $2 per book (the price of the New 52 titles after you wait a month). I do think that digital is the future of the medium.

The Bus

I would really, really like this to happen. I'd even be OK with an "all-you-can-read" subscription model that's $10 a month but has the books DRM'd so you can't read them if you're not paying.

(The latter is unlikely to happen).

Trevor

I'd pay $20 a month and sign a lifetime contract to be able to read every DC Comic ever printed, even if they were DRM'd and only accessible while logged in to DC's servers.

Paul_SD

Thanks for that link- it blew my mind. I'm ashamed to confess that I really hadn't thought out the more basic and simpler possibilities inherent in Flash.
I was one of the zombies thinking "oh yeah you can now add music and sound effects and limited animation" Such wrong headed thinking I realize now. That's making comic reading a passive experience and surrendering the temporal control of the experience to the device. This guy here however has thought it out. I'm convinced I've now seen the end of the direct market in the seeds of this humble example.

Even I, as someone who who has always loved the aesthetic and physical nature of printed and bound books themselves, can see myself forgoing a bound collected collection for material that was originally conceived and implemented as a set of well made Flash comics only viewable on a desktop pc or pad. Pen and paper are wonderful, near limitless mediums- but for dynamic, and extremely nuanced storytelling, the abilities here are profoundly awesome.

very very interesting.

kodave

Yep, that's the main thing guys like Mark Waid have hammered home about this "Infinite" format - its not a motion comic. Of course, somewhere at some time, someone will add sound effects, music, and limited animation and basically turn it into a motion comic. It will be like all of the bad 3D movies that have come out that really crap all over the idea of what a good 3D movie should be. But at its core its not supposed to be that. Motion comics are like watching a movie, a passive experience as you said. Infinite comics still keep the reader in control of the pace of how they consume the content.

Fun fact, Mark Waid said they've done studies and the average digital reader is most comfortable sitting through 8 panels at a time, so that's how long each issue should be.

But 8 panels could easily be just one page of a traditional comic book (at a minimum, probably more like a handful of pages), but obviously a lot more clicking is involved to make all of the elements of each panel appear. If Waid thinks we should pay 99 cents for that, that adds up to an expensive 22 page comic or whatever. And that's also seriously going to affect how compressed or decompressed storytelling becomes in this Infinite format. But I don't think the 8 panel thing is an absolute, yet. Just an idea.

You can get a free digital comic in "Infinite" format from Mark Waid here, an adaptation of his LUTHER title: http://markwaid.com/?p=695
Just open the PDF in a CBR reader.

Paul_SD

To be honest, I'd always known there was a fine line that shouldn't be crossed if you incorporated sound and motion into the experience.

My previous thinking of how to maximize the experience for the medium was something like this- when you get to certain panels (such as when the location in the story shifts)- you get subtle ambient noise that is evocative of the setting. This would last until the scene shifts to a new location. Occasionally you would flip the page to a what amounts to a 'jump scare' type effect- any kind of sudden audible noise necessitated by the story would get triggered with the page turn/panel click.
It would be set up on a slight delay, so you would turn the page and see the panel and then the panel art would change a second or two later, and the audible effect would hit and the panel art/dialogue would follow that narrative point.
Not really a motion comic per se, but pointing in that direction- certainly not a very thoughtful or creative exploitation of the possibilities inherent either.

And this is why I'm very chagrined. Toth, Crane, Kurtzman, Kreigstein and others have always been huge heroes of mine. For the last 25 years or so, and for all my feeble amateur attempts at making my own comics, I've been far more about the effects of panel to panel sequencing, and composing the panels to lead the eye in such a way as to manipulate the sense of time and motion over simple pretty drawings- that I really should have figured out that a digital comic would let you, for instance, layer information (sparsely or densely) )within the same single panel or show a progression of panels as the frame slowly fills. The manipulation of time and pacing is far more significant than any gimmicky exterior effects. After seeing that now, I want (implemented) sound kept as far as away from the experience as possible. What I just clicked through is still pure comics- words and pictures- and it didn't need anything else to elicit various emotional responses.

Trevor

I admit that I'm naturally resistant to change, but the amount of clicking in that first example was beyond ridiculous. No way I'd be interested in something with even a quarter amount of clicks.

Haven't tried the Waid one yet.

dishpan

i recently posted this in a different thread before i realized that there was this one just for marvel infinite comics.

at the moment i am a physical only reader -- collections on amazon and #1s at my lcs (to try out new titles for cheap rather than blind buy a whole volume). i look up a lot of reviews before ordering if its not a character i love or a creator i trust, but i do buy a bunch of things per week. ive tried comixology and graphicly (not the marvel unlimited sub though), and thought it was ok but not great enough for me to switch.

i recently read the hd AvX infinite version on an ipad3. its the first time ive ever seen anything awesome enough to make me want it more than the physical comic. it really is something impossible on paper. if you havent seen it in that resolution youve got to try it. if more comics do it (and if the collected edition prices arent too bad) i would be pretty tempted to buy an ipad4 someday (need something thinner and lighter and so on) and switch to digital. i cant believe i'm saying that!

in addition to all the storytelling effects, i really liked having something drawn for the same dimensions instead of squeezed or zoomed to fit. of course i would prefer if the next ipad had a larger option (since its already big compared to a kindle) too. especially since a lot of physical issues come with the download code now too, which seems like a good step.

take a look at this if you havent seen the marvel infinite tech yet
http://youtu.be/kUheAFT7XL4?hd=1&t=23s

update based on others comments above: i didnt feel like this was just a motion comic, and i also didnt feel like there were an inordinate amount of clicks. of course this was just one short issue, so i am not sure how i would feel after reading a hardcover equivalent, but then again right now i am not used to any clicking at all so who knows.

Supermallet

That's cool, and it's nice to see a big publisher make an overture to digital like that.