The Comics Crew has part 3 of their series on the digital distribution of comics; to get caught up, you can take a look at part 1 and part 2 first. For part 3, they focused on independent companies and creators who are ahead of the big two in this area. Which, if you’ve been paying attention, means they naturally talked to SLG’s Dan Vado about EyeMelt.com.
They also talked to Jim Shelley, who created the Flashback Universe. His description of how he became fed up with the big two in the 1980s and 1990s is interesting reading:
“I submit 3 plots to Silverhawks.
One gets approved.
Silverhawks gets cancelled.
Don suggests I submit to the Punisher War Journal.
He okays one of my Punisher plots, but says another guy is now the editor.
The new editor says he’s going to write Punisher War Journal (Editors and Assistant Editors writing the comics they were editing was not unheard of during this era at Marvel.)
New editor suggests I submit to the new Not Brand Ecch comic that Marvel will be launching.
I submit 3 ideas to this editor.
2 are approved.
The comic is cancelled after only 1 (maybe 2?) issues.
I submit 3 plots to Solo Avengers editor Mark Gruenwald.
Mark hates all 3, but tells me what to fix.
I get a Solo Wasp story approved.
The comic gets a format change and my story gets killed.By now it’s 1989, and I call it a day on writing comics.”
Now Shelley creates his own downloadable comics, including Saturn Knight (pictured below), and he uses digitalwebbing.com to find artists from around the world to work with.
It seems like every time we post about online comics we get a slew of comments from folks wanting Marvel and DC to get on with it. I’m more curious, though, to hear from anyone who has used or is using Eyemelt.com, Direct2Drive or Pullbox. How are these working for you?
(And I’m not even going into that other subject that gets people going on this issue, the BitTorrent stuff … Dirk has some information he’s gathered about “the pulse of the current comics-downloading scene” in today’s Journalista.)
June 22nd, 2007 at 3:13 pm
I believe the reason that DC and Marvel have stayed from Digital Comics is that they are afraid of the digital piracy in the music industry will happen to the comic industry. Although almost all new comics are available for download, the casual reader has not been turned on to getting their weekly fix from an online source. Once the Big Two make that leap, so will many of their readers. When that happens……
Sales on crappy cross-overs will plummet as everyone opts to download them illegally for free instead of buying them.
June 23rd, 2007 at 5:13 am
I think that comics downloading is another instance of a market creating itself. The want and demand of online comics is there and fans are doing it themselves, and the big publishers being so unsure of how to make this transition are dragging their feet on making an “iTunes” for comics (iTunes used as an example even though I still don’t think the music industry has figured their new model out 100 percent either. In the meantime those who feel they are losing money to homespun digital formats are finger wagging at the already active participants.
With the comic publishers locked into the the direct market and unwilling to branch out again into wider distribution circles, the only way they can hope to rise to their long-lost sales prominence once again is embrace the emergent digital marketplace. But that will take a few bold steps and leaps of faith before it can happen successfully.
June 23rd, 2007 at 6:25 am
So far, I’ve used EyeMelt, Pullbox and Wowio. Of the three, I prefer EyeMelt (cheapest) then Pullbox, then Wowio. They comics on EyeMelt and Pullbox are available in cbr format (which I prefer.) Wowio only provides them in pdf format, which I find very clunky.
btw JK, Heidi McDonald (at the Beat) and Todd Allen (at comicbookresources) have both in the last week had articles saying that DC is working fast and furious on some major digital distribution plan.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens with the DC vs Marvel initiatives because Time Warner is currently under pressure from CEO Dick Parsons to get all of its divisions involved in more Web Sexy projects while most of Marvel’s money is tied up in its Merrill Lynch movie deal.
Thank you for the links btw!
- Jim Shelley
aka CapVsBats on the boards.
June 24th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Marvel and DC will go fulltime to digital comics when the business model allows them to make the same or more profit than the monthly comic books.
In the meantime, if I were Marvel or DC, I’d be suing EVERYBODY who is putting the comics online. They are cutting profits by illegal means.
June 25th, 2007 at 8:18 am
Which has worked SO WELL for the music and film industries. {/sarcasm}
And how exactly will Marvel and DC know they can equal their print sales if they do nothing to enter the market beforehand? This simply sounds like more fear-based lashing out by someone afraid to create a sales market around an existing fan base.
“Don’t get in until you are SURE it will work and in the meantime ATTACK everyone who’s trying!”
Cuh-razy.