Somehow I missed the most important part of the announcement of Diamond Digital, the digital comic arm of Diamond Distributors (in partnership with iVerse) that’ll launch in July: That day-and-date releases will be available for $1.99. This feels like one of the missing steps that will allow everyone to gauge the health and potential of the digital market, although I wonder how much it’ll be undercut by the publishers who aren’t taking part in the program (Pretty much the bigger names in the direct market, with the exception of IDW who are participating: Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Image, Boom Studios and Dynamite Entertainment, most of whom have exclusive digital deals with ComiXology). There’s actually a wealth of information about the DD initiative in the comments section of this post at the Beat, where iVerse’s Michael Murphey shows up repeatedly to answer questions about the program, including issues of pricing, format and why DD is better for retailers than other digital formats. Go read.

Brian Hibbs has all manner of interesting information from talking to DC executives at the recent ComicsPro meeting:

The redemption rate on the combo pack for the digital codes in JUSTICE LEAGUE? It was just 20% on issue #1, and it has dropped to just 10% (on #4 or #5, I don’t think was 100% clear) — it appears that DM consumers bought those AS COLLECTIBLE VARIANT COVERS, rather than because they wanted a digital copy… The single best sales day for day-and-date DC digital comics has been and continues to be the first Wednesday of release; when the price drops by a dollar there’s a teeny spike in velocity  — evidently it is the 10th best sales day (Is that “on average” or for a specific title? I don’t think that was clarified) — but not any kind of a huge surge; this would seem to indicate that digital buyers are just fine paying the full print price, so that they can be “part of the conversation” at initial release.

There’s more in the post, including DC’s John Rood apparently explaining DC’s digital strategy as being “about aiding physical (format) growth, NOT managing physical decline,” which is more than a little surprising, especially as it’s at odds with almost all other media experiences with the digital market. We keep hearing that digital is an additive market for comics, not one that’s expected to replace print sales, and I can’t help but wonder if that speaks to an overall greater health for the print comic market than many had thought, or an overall greater irrelevance for comics than anyone thought that efforts to discover a digital market haven’t caught on the way publishers would’ve hoped…?

The TV series ended last year, but DC Comics has decided that Smallville will live on – in our hearts. Wait, no, I mean “as a weekly digital comic, with chapters collected into print later.” The DCU blog The Source unveiled the creative team for what they’re calling Smallville Season 11 today: Bryan Q. Miller and Pere Perez, who’ll launch the weekly digital series on April 13, with the print edition following a month later on May 16 (Cat Staggs provides covers for the digital editions, with Gary Frank doing the same for the print version, interestingly enough).

It’s DC’s fourth series to debut digitally, behind Beyond The Fringe, Justice League Beyond and Batman: Arkham City; apparently, the publisher believes that the format is best served as some level of media tie-in. It’ll be interesting to see whether or not it proves popular enough to see a comic-only series at any time – as well as what amount of publicity DC manages to get out of continuing Smallville as a comic, considering the devoted core audience that the show still managed to keep even after ten years on the air.

The good: Marvel is now offering digital versions of their collected editions through ComiXology. The bad: Pricing on the collections is all over the place, ranging from $6.99 for the 105 pages of Avengers Disassembled to $10.99 for the 135 pages of Daredevil: Yellow, with some collections as much as $24.99 (the 330 page Planet Hulk). The potentially ugly: The prices are nonetheless cheaper than the print editions of each book, which could mean that we’re about to see another protest from direct market retailers (understandably) upset about being undercut on what may be a core part of their business. On the upside, a lot of the material being offered by ComiXology isn’t necessarily in print anymore – yes, I know, that’s an odd choice of “upside” – so it’s not direct competition as such, but nonetheless, it’ll be interesting to see (if any) fallout could follow this product launch.

Brigid Alverson has a great interview up with ComiXology’s David Steinberger at Robot 6, talking about the successes in 2011, and what lies ahead for digital comics as a whole and ComiXology in specific:

Who knows what the magic number is, but $1.99 is still an inexpensive purchase. But it says something, the 99 cents vs. 1.99 says OK, this is higher quality. It doesn’t say I’m ripping you off. Some people would argue that the $3.99 books are too expensive [but t]hey are selling quite well… The question is, would you sell more than twice as much if you drop the price in half? That is an experiment that hasn’t happened yet. DC has a public policy of dropping their day and date prices a by dollar a month after the comic comes out.

After 2011 being the year that everyone started taking digital comics seriously, 2012 is the year people will start working out where that magic number actually is, and we’ll see the business change as a result, I suspect…

There’s a really interesting discussion going on over at Millarworld about digital comics and the impact they have on the direct market, with Mark Millar and San Francisco retailer Brian Hibbs both chiming in (along with Brian Wood) on the subject (It spins out of this piece at CBR by Hibbs). There’s the usual extremism and strawman arguing that tends to show up in this kind of conversation online, sure, but there’s also some good points made that aren’t often considered. Go check it out.

Artist Robbi Rodriguez has been making a name for himself as of late. Aside from independent hits such as Tek Jansen, Moon Lake, and the upcoming Polly and the Pirates 2, he’s also joining Rick Remender on Uncanny X-Force and Vertigo title, The Unexpected. Rodriguez has been promoting the sequel to his creator-owned Frankie Get Your Gun. Blog@ talked to Rodriguez and discussed “FGYG2″ and his influences behind his storytelling process.

Blog@: Robbi, you’ve been promoting Frankie for a while now. The first part came out last year or so, for those unfamiliar with Frankie and why she has to get her gun, can you fill us in?

Robbi Rodriguez: Yeah FGYG is an acid western. It’s about the subject of revenge and just what are the ramifications from those actions. Its follows the typical hit list formula at the very beginning, but I start it out at the end of the list. It follows Frankie Kansas, a child born with the soul purpose to seek retribution of a gang of land grabbers from years past. The thing is Frankie is autistic and that handicap has been used to her advance on her campaign over the years by her trainer, Jericho Topo, a ex-war vet. And it will be needed as her last target , Bastin Window, an immortal space god trying  to make out of town as he’s doubled-crossed one to many folks. But at its heart it’s also about some Mother-Daughter relations. I grew up in a house of women and seeing first hand a woman finding her identity with a mother’s preset obligations. I found it could be the foundation hell of a story. Especially one with basically two female leads.

Blog@: Interesting that you’d make Frankie autisic, any reason on why?

RR: That’s an aspect I took from the 70′s Hong Kong and Japanese films. The protagonist in those films always have a handicap. The one-armed boxer for example that actually serves as an advantage. And with all the films in the revenge genre they always have this one-tracked mind or presented as a thoughtless killing machine. While she is not thoughtless at all, she is presented to her world as one.

Blog@: Like “The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi“?

RR: Exactly.

Blog@: The art style is very kinetic here. What are some influences on your style and the visuals you used?

RR: This is basically the voice that has been trying to get out for a while. “Polly 2″ was the hill I needed to climb to find it. I alway wanted to do something like this because this was something I was not seeing out there while I was originally working on it. I am a huge Jamie Hewlett fan, and as you can see by the work, a huge Tank Girl fan, too. Thus the nod with Frankie’s look. I wanted to see comics like that again. I mean you see it in most indie books, but I wanted to bring it back to genre comics. Not just a slice of life about nerd pop culture. And I also wanted to bring that energy of the 70′s low budget genre pics. I guess what they call “Grindhouse”. I grew up on that stuff. Dawn of the Dead is the point I wanted to hit.  Its so over the top, but at the same time it’s so down to earth. I wanted to bring the attitude of a Hewlett and [Katsuhiro] Otomo with character interaction of a [Alex] Toth and [Dave] Mazzucchelli.

Blog@: So where are you taking Frankie and company in Part 2?

RR: Issue two recounts the story of the train ride out of town. It’s the beginning of the race for Window. All the parties are showcased and what they have to lose. My wife was looking over the end of the issue and she was shocked by a direction I took. I knew I was on to something here. It’s an issue to show that there are no black and white hats here. They are grey in their own way.

Blog@: And you’re planning on making this a web series, correct?

RR: This was always planned as a digital comic from the start. Back in ’05 when I just heard the rumors of an Apple tablet reader. It will be online for free at Frankiegetyourgun.com every Wednesday, 2-5 pages a week. But also a magazine-sized version of the issues as well. Then down the line, a hard cover collection with an EP from this great band called Married with Sea Monsters.I wanna use the Radiohead/NIN model. Value for value. Support it in a way you see fit. If you want to chip a buck or buy a book, rad. If you just wanna just read the book, hey just spread the word. It will also be on Four Studio’s Double Feature with 50 pages at 99 cents.

[Blog@ notes: Robbi even made a "trailer" for FGYG2: click here]

This is an absolutely fascinating – and, seemingly, financially insane – idea on how to drive the “new” digital comics audience into direct market comic stores:

Marvel Comics is launching a Digital Coupon scheme with their digital comics, redeemable for Marvel print comics. Buy a comic through the Marvel App and you will be emailed a link to download a $5 coupon with a link to their nearest comic shop. One per customer.

Retailers can then redeem the coupon code on the phone, and will receive a $5 credit from Marvel.

Yes, that’s right; $5 in print store credit – presumably only for use on Marvel products – in exchange for buying one digital comic, which could cost as little as 99 cents. I’m sure that there are all manner of catches that have yet to be revealed (If nothing else, $5 in credit for 99 cents spent doesn’t feel like it’s a metric that’s really going to stick around for that long before the cost-conscious Marvel decides to change it), but in theory, file it under “It’s just so crazy, it could work.” I really, really would like to see this being put into effect, even for a short trial period, just to see if it bumps up print sales – and then, if it does, watch to see what other publishers follow suit.

Potential read-of-the-day: Mark Millar explaining why he’s against simultaneous day-and-date print and digital releases for comics:

I really think day and date release is a disastrous idea and makes no economic sense at all to comics as a business. It’s potentially ruinous for comic stores, and in the long term it’s not going to do publishers any favors either. I see the attraction on a very superficial level. They think they’re cutting out the middle men and all the guys taking a piece of their gross, but there’s an equivalent number of hidden costs in digital too, and it’s short term thinking to obliterate the life-blood of the medium.

There’s a lot, lot more in the piece itself, which I highly recommend checking out.

I can see where Millar’s coming from, but I think he’s wrong in a number of places; if nothing else, I think the experience of DC’s New 52 launch has pushed back significantly against the idea of simultaneous print/digital releases as “potentially ruinous” for comic stores, considering print sales rose dramatically across the line (in the short-term, at least. Long-term, of course, it remains to be seen what’ll happen), and I think he’s ignoring a sizable new audience by writing off digital as a tertiary market akin to movies playing on television years after release – Haven’t both Marvel and DC indicated that digital audiences seem to be in addition to, and not replacing, the direct market readership in their experience?

That said, I kind of love his commentary about the importance of good direct market retailers:

Retailers are as big a part of comics now as the characters or the creators. They’re not just an outlet. These are carefully crafted communities and owned and staffed by people with a genuine passion for what they’re doing in a way that the ‘Amazon Also Recommends’ box isn’t quite going to match.

Seriously, go read the piece. Agree or disagree with him, I think this might be the kind of thing we need more of to have a real conversation about where digital fits in with the current comic industry, and where it should fit in going forwards.

As if Top Shelf launching not one but two digital comic apps wasn’t good enough news – In addition to the “regular” Top Shelf app, there’s also one dedicated to their all ages books, Top Shelf Kids Club – the publisher is also promoting their digital offerings with a pretty great sale on digital graphic novels. $1.99 for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1910? $1.99 for the first collection of The Surrogates? That’s a really good deal. But I admit, I’m waiting for the great digital deals on the Eddie Campbell books…

From the same Comics Alliance post that announced that the Ultimate line was also going to include download codes in its print editions, here’s Marvel’s VP of sales David Gabriel:

If the digital comics going same day as print had taken off like this monster sales horse and destroyed the in-store comic shop sales of those print books… they wouldn’t have sold out each time we did another one. The retailers wouldn’t have been looking across the board for second prints on those books. Reorders wouldn’t have been coming in on the books. I think people thought at the beginning that everyone was just gonna turn to digital to get the book and not go up to a retail shop, and we watched that not be the case time and time again.

There’s a line in this report about iVerse raising $4 million in funding that caught my eye:

Among the product offerings iVerse plans to enhance are its PLUS feature, which allows streaming video content for digital comics on iOS.

After getting over my first response of “Streaming video content for digital comics? Oh no, it’s Motion Comics all over again!”, I started wondering what uses streaming video could have for digital comics. Some creators have, in the past, talked about the idea of embedding extra information into digital comics, so that readers could get a more involved reading experience – Could this be a possible use for this kind of thing? Or what about a video (or audio) commentary track, page-by-page?

iVerse has, sadly, somewhat fallen to the wayside as ComiXology and Graphic.ly have become more popular platforms for digital comics, but this kind of innovation could point to a way that they could make a comeback, as well as a way forward for digital comics as a format. It’ll be interesting to see what (if anything) comes of this new round of funding, and experimentation.

There’re a couple of fascinating snippets of information in Vaneta’s latest conversation with DC’s John Rood and Bob Wayne for those of us wondering just what the digital comics market is shaping up to be, in these new day-and-date days (And I’m not talking about the snarky implication that Marvel is offering a “Trojan Horse” to retailers with their Avenging Spider-Man combo-pack promotion). (more…)

This is a great post from the blog Graphic Policy, looking at the demographics of digital comic fans on Facebook:

Interestingly enough, digital fans skew much more male and are more educated than their mass fan brethren.  The average population is 29.12% college grads while digital fans are 54.38% college grads.  Men dominate as well, making up a little over 81% of the population… [D]igital comic book fans are between 26 and 41 and peak in the 34-37 age.  This is over a decade difference compared to the general population.

It’s worth pointing out that this is coming from incomplete data – Those who are Facebook fans of digital distributors like Graphic.ly, comiXology and iVerse on Facebook, as opposed to all digital readers (or even purchasers) – but even bearing that in mind, this is a weirdly fascinating study. Digital fans are older and more male than “general comic fans”? That seems surprising, and somewhat counterintuitive, to be honest; I wonder if it’s also a sign that the digital push isn’t reaching the audiences that everyone was expecting it to just yet…

This feels like it should be being reported as a much bigger deal, but starting in January 2012, Viz Media will be making digital versions of Weekly Shonen Jump available in English two weeks after the original Japanese versions have been released, with editions being made available on all iOS platforms (the iPad, iPod and iPhone) for a month-long 99 cent rental charge, or annual $25.99 subscription fee.

Firstly: That’s a great price point. Secondly: Digital subscriptions! Considering that it looks like western comic companies aren’t quite ready for Apple Newsstand just yet, this, the Walking Dead deal and the Archie Mighty Crusaders announced earlier this week might be the best we’re going to get on that front anytime soon…

If you’re looking for signs that this whole New 52 thing is working out for DC Comics, here’s a good one: They’ve just extended the returnability of the books through April 2012, according to a report on Bleeding Cool. Although the extension comes with a reduction in the number of titles eligible for return, this nonetheless demonstrates the level of confidence DC has in the New 52 as a line – Eight months’ worth of returnability is pretty impressive, and raises the question: If they choose to extend it again, will it be to a year, or to a permanent, ongoing arrangement?

(Bleeding Cool is also reporting that Batman and Action Comics will both start being offered in Digital Combo variants as of #5 of each title, for a dollar above the “regular” price.)

I keep coming back to this Warren Ellis post about the state of web comics, digital comics, and why they’re different things for different audiences, and feeling like there’s something I’m missing in it. Not that it’s badly written, because it’s not – It’s Ellis, after all – but it feels incomplete, somehow, and I can’t work out why. File under Food For Thought, definitely (Anyone interested in comics that aren’t just print, which should really be anyone interested in comics as a medium at this point, you should go and read it, if you haven’t already), but this part bears repeating:

Also, it’s a hell of a lot easier to take your time telling a story when you’re not charging people.

And, while there’s a smile in that comment, there’s also a degree of truth.  Compressing comics down to twenty pages, nineteen pages, probably eight or ten or twelve pages when people get to producing original material through digital comics services… while it’ll certainly make a nice change for a lot of people, after a decade of spacious and airy commercial comics, I’m compelled to point out that the crushed-in nature of commercial comics in the 1970s was one of the driving forces behind the big changes to the commercial medium that came in the 80s.  People were desperate for longer episodes and arcs that allowed them to tell stories more novelistically – and, in large part, they did that by using the then-new process of selling to the direct sales comics store market.

We’re all looking at compression techniques now, because we need them for commercial comics and we’re going to need them for digital comics.

It’s not just digital comics, I’d argue; with both DC and Marvel essentially formalizing “20 pages” as the length of a comic book now in the same way that 22 pages was the formalized length previously, comics in general are going to become more compressed in future.

Also, Ellis is totally right about American Flagg and how essential and overlooked it is.

The “Red Circle” group of heroes has returned to Archie Comics after a brief run with DC Comics, but they are returning with more than one twist.

Archie announced the return of super hero comics in their line via the New York Times last night. In the announcement, they detailed the return, which features the classic heroes living in retirement in a community called, appropriately enough, “Red Circle.” Most of these retired heroes are killed, and replacements, the New Crusaders are brought in to save the day, led by veteran The Shield. The new stories will be 6-page digital exclusives written by Ian Flynn and drawn by Ben Bates, with no release schedule revealed.

In addition to these shorts however, Archie will be offering an extensive digital archive featuring their superheroes. For a low (not yet determined) monthly fee, only $3 or $4, readers will have access to the new stories plus an archive featuring “thousands and thousands of pages” of older stories. More details as they come, but what do you think of this deal so far?

We mentioned the rumor yesterday, and now it’s official: Barnes & Noble is pulling the print versions of the DC Comics graphic novels that are being offered as digital exclusives through Amazon’s new Kindle Fire device off their shelves. Talking to Publisher’s Weekly, a spokesperson explained “We pulled those 100 DC Comics graphic novels that we were not offered in digital format. Our policy is that unless we receive all formats of a title to make available to our customers, we will not sell those physical titles in our stores.”

The 100 print titles will, however, be available via B&N’s website, as well as to customers who make special orders from the stores themselves.

When contacted for a response, DC released the following statement:

We are disappointed that Barnes & Noble has made the decision to remove these books off their shelves and make them unavailable to their customers.

DC Entertainment will continue to make our content available to our fans and new readers through multiple distribution channels including locally-owned comic book retailers, independent bookstores, other bookstore chains and other widespread means such as online through Amazon and through our apps on iOS and select Android powered devices as well as new and exciting devices going forward.

As one of the largest book publishers in North America, DC Entertainment’s publishing strategy is to give our consumers the choice to read our stories in whichever format they prefer but we also know that nothing will ever take away from the joy and collectability of physical books, comics and graphic novels.

I’m not too surprised to see that Barnes & Noble is considering pushing back in some way against the DC Comics/Amazon Kindle Fire exclusive deal announced last week, although the possibility of the chain taking DC books off the shelves of physical stores seems like the kind of upping of the ante that’ll cause a lot of concern for the publisher.

It’s unlikely that DC would be able to back out of the exclusivity clause with Amazon at this point, so I’m not sure what the solution would be for them if other retailers were to follow this route (Remember, the Amazon Kindle editions also look to be significantly cheaper than the print versions, so a direct market retailer protest isn’t out of the question, either) – unless, of course, the potential gain from the Amazon audience is going to be seen as being worth the risk and loss of business elsewhere. I wonder if this is the start of the much-anticipated print/digital war…?