On DC’s “New 52” and Comic Book Retailer Brian Hibbs’ Enthusiasm for Same

Tags

comics, comixology, day and date, dc, digital, direct, market, new 52, sales

I’ve been buying some of DC Comics’ “new 52” titles via the Comixology app for my iPad. I’ve loved a few of them (Action Comics, OMAC, Animal Man). But that’s just a few. Most are par for the course, it seems to me, for contemporary superhero comics — neither great nor terrible. I haven’t hated any of them, but I also haven’t bought a whole bunch, and specifically have avoided the ones that I’ve seen people really griping about. So that’s my point of view.

Comic book retailer Brian Hibbs, owner of San Francisco’s Comix Experience, one of the most well-known comic book stores in the country (and the place where I used to shop, when I lived there), reports that these books are doing very, very well in his store. He also implies that they’re doing well for retailers generally — and being Brian Hibbs, activist retailer, I think he’s in a position to know this. All good news. I’m glad to hear it.

This relaunch was positioned as the first big push for “day and date” digital distribution of new material from a mainstream publisher. Meaning: every single one of DC’s comic books is being released digitally for sale at exactly the same time as its print release. I heard retailers (Hibbs among them) worrying aloud, in kind of frenzied language, that this was potentially a deathblow to their businesses.

So. Not the case, apparently. Again: good news.

Question time.

Does the success of DC’s “new 52” relaunch in comic book stores mean:

a). Digital and print customers are completely different people, so these two channels don’t interfere with one another at all, or …

b). Digital was a flop, for whatever reason (the pricing on digital comics — which is exactly the same as the print pricing, strikes me personally as way too high)?

c). Or neither?

d). Or both?

e). Something else?

The answer, of course, is, “We don’t know yet.” Or, at least, I don’t think we do. We need for DC to release those digital sales numbers, to have a better understanding. And that’s not something they’re obligated to do. The only reason they’d do it is if they wanted the rest of the industry to learn and grow.

One thing I noticed, which is purely anecdotal and proves little: Comixology is currently listed as the third-highest grossing app of all time* in the iPad version of the App Store.

Since the app itself is free, that has to come from comic book purchases. Note, too, that the DC app, which is just a dressed-up version of the Comixology app with only DC Comics in it, rather than a full selection, is #11. Those two should actually be combined, in terms of sales. Whether that would be enough to push Comixology up to # 2 (or even # 1) is, again, unknown to us.

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* It is unclear to me what period of time the “highest grossing” charts speak for.

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My Digital Comics Buy Pile for October 16, 2010

Tags

Atlas, batman, CBGB, comic, comixology, Elephantmen, Grant Morrison, I Kill Giants, ipad, Joe Kelly

You know the drill. I love reading comics on my iPad. I prefer the Comics by Comixology app. Here’s what I bought this week:

I Kill Giants # 2. I enjoyed the first issue so much that I have decided to stop confusing Joe Kelly with Joe Casey. I will write more about this book when I have read all 7 issues. I could buy them all right now (they’re all available in the store). I am buying them one at a time. I don’t know why.

Batman # 666. Still plowing through all the Grant Morrison Batmans. Same as above: I could buy them all right now. I am preserving the experience of serialization, I guess.

CBGB # 1. I almost went there one time in the early nineties, but ended up at a different bar instead.

Atlas # 1. Why? Dunno.

Elephantmen # 1. Because the series was being featured on the Comixology store front page.

What did you buy?

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My Wednesday Digital Comics Pile for Dec 8

Tags

batman, comic books, comixology, DC Comics, digital downloads, Grant Morrison, Hellblazer, I Kill Giants, Jamie Delano, Jim Zubkavich, Joe Casey, Makeshift Miracle

Here’s what I bought yesterday in the Comixology app:

Hellblazer # 3 — I’m taking advantage of this opportunity to read all of Hellblazer, from the beginning. I was always curious about the feature, but felt like I would be starting too far behind (I had quit reading comics in the early eighties, a couple of years before this series started, and didn’t start back up until 2000 or so). Even though I’ve complained about the way that Comixology packages the books up into “issues,” I’m finding that it works nicely for me, in this one case. I read the first two last month. When I’m sixty I’ll be caught up to the present! In this issue, 80s greed icons (yuppies, junk bond traders), are shown to be, literally, demons from hell (and by literally, I don’t mean metaphorically). Cute.

Skullkickers #s 1&2 — Jim Zubkavich is a personal friend; his Makeshift Miracle was one of the launch features on my very first webcomics site. I bought it because I know I like him and I know he’s awesome.

Batman # 665 — I own the Morrison Batman stories in trade paperback form now, but find that I prefer reading them digitally. It’s my old eyes. They like the zoom-zoom.

I Kill Giants # 1 — I’ve heard tremendous things about this. Haven’t read it yet.

What did you buy?

Digital Comics Random Thoughts

Tags

comics, comixology, digital downloads, fantagraphics, ipad, webcomics

I’m still loving reading comics on my iPad. The Comixology app is still my favorite comics-reading interface.

Here are some random thoughts.

Yeah, still mostly superheroes, for damn sure.

Publishers should give you a free digital copy of every physical comic you buy. You take the comic, scan the barcode (or take a picture of it with your phone) and submit that electronically. Digital copy downloads. You now have the “real thing” for your bookshelf, and the “reading copy” for all your devices. Note: I am aware that the chances of this happening are slim to none. Maybe in the distant future, like, five years from now.

I’m less excited by the ability to read comics on my computer now that I own an iPad. Even on the iPad, webcomics aren’t as pleasurable, from a user-interface perspective, as they could and should be, so I find myself gravitating toward native-app comics.

I’m also less excited by the ability to read comics on paper. I find myself trying to pinch-zoom my graphic novels.

Nice to see Templar, Arizona in the Comixology store. Spike’s a very energetic salesperson and go-getter and hard worker, to be sure, and she always has been, but it seems to me that if she’s able to get in, maybe the stories about Comixology being a “pawn of the Majors” or prejudiced against webcomics, or whatever, are untrue, or at least exaggerated.

I’d still like to see more indie material, though — and more literary/artistic material. Where is MOME? Love & Rockets? Best American Comics of [Year]? Dylan Horrocks? Adrian Tomine? Kate Beaton? Comixology, you could have so much more of my money if you carried these comics and these artists! Publishers and self-publishers, you could have so much more of my money if you worked with Comixology!

So. Those are my fairly innocuous and random thoughts. But, well, let’s face it: they are thoughts about digital comics. Which means there will be a flamewar in five, four, three, two …

Leapfrog: Direct Market Giants Dominate the New Digital Comics Scene

Tags

batman, comics, comixology, dark horse, dc, marvel, webcomics

Ten years ago (give or take a few), webcomics were taking maximum advantage of the new comics distribution opportunities afforded by the web, while Marvel, DC, Dark Horse and all the others completely missed the boat. The only decent comics reading experience, in the early days of the web, came from small, scrappy artists and entrepreneurs. The big companies gave us nothing. What happened as a result? A few huge successes, plus a thousand earnest, often talented creators with dayjobs, have come to define the webcomics scene. The entrenched players stayed away, so new voices had a chance to thrive.

On my iPad, the best comics reading experience, bar none, is not from small, scrappy innovators. It’s from the big companies, via Comixology’s apps (the “Comics” one, which includes DC and a lot of other familiar publishers, and the “Marvel” one, which is exactly the same application, but limited in content to Marvel comics only). The deal is this: you buy “issues” of printed comic books, which have been repurposed and re-engineered to be read more easily on the device. Comixology has done a better job than most in the re-engineering department, with intuitive navigation, a “guided view” that puts other comics readers to shame, and a smart and savvy editorial vibe.

I know that hardcore comics fans have been complaining that the releases are not up to date, are not the same ones that you see in the comic book stores on any given week. And that is true. The comic books you buy in these apps are pretty old, for the most part. I don’t think that that matters to the new, casual reader that these apps are targeting. It doesn’t even matter all that much to me. For example, I know that the Grant Morrison Batman stories I’m buying are a few years out of date. But I skipped them when they came out, and have been interested in reading them all along. I would have bought a trade paperback, but I’m buying them this way instead. A casual reader presumably hasn’t read any of this stuff at all, so it’s all new to him/her.

What does matter to casual readers, though, is that it’s kind of confusing to have all these older periodicals for sale, as “issues,” without a sense of the context in which they were released — especially since there are enormous gaps in the archives. So, for example, if you navigate to “Batman” in the Comixology app, you find issues 404 – 407 (comprising Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One storyline), followed by issue 608 – 619 (Hush), then starting up again with # 655 (the beginning of Grant Morrison’s current run on the character). A casual reader would have been far better served by the option to buy something named “Batman: Year One by Frank Miller” — and would have actually been more excited to do so, I’m guessing, than by being presented with a random-looking set of issue numbers (why would I start with #404, again, hunh?) that have to be explained within the descriptive text as being part of a major storyline by a major talent.

I think this ties into the complaints from hardcore fans about non-up-to-datedness. Nobody expects collections (or trade paperbacks, in the print world) to be up to date. “Issues,” on the other hand, feel like they should be running on a regular schedule. If you’re going to stick to that metaphor, the 24-page serialized chunk, then it needs to feel like it’s coming at me on a regular basis, in an ongoing way, with a storyline that is constantly advancing. It needs to be a serial. Cherry-picking the best of the past, while an awesome strategy for providing great material for people to read, isn’t really compatible with the periodical feeling that buying these in “issues” engenders. This is further compounded by the fact that there’s so much crossover information in contemporary comics; when the “issue” of Batman that was released this week references a Superman story arc as though it is happening right now — but the “issue” of Superman that was released this week comes from two years later, or two years earlier, in comic book continuity — well, my friends, that’s just confusing.

The point I want to underline, though, is that the big publishers, and the old-school properties, are where all the action is in the iPad digital comics scene. Webcomic entrepreneurs have been as clumsy in taking advantage of this new platform, have seemed (to this observer, anyway) to be as stuck in their ways, as entrenched and established and slow-moving, as print comics publishers were back in the early days of webcomics. That’s something I never would have expected. That’s leapfrog.