Assembled, Zipped, Transferred And Downloaded: News From Digital

By Tom Spurgeon

* Jeff Parker will write a digital comics effort focused on the Batman from the 1960s television show Batman. That seems like it should be an interesting test of what kind of impact a well-known, accessible comic with some broader marketing muscle behind it can have digitally. Jonathan Case will provide art; Michael Allred will do covers. I like all of those creators, and while I like the idea of 1960s Batman more than I ever like sitting through more than a few minutes of the television show, I think that'd be a fun milieu to explore.

* this site will note elsewhere it's the cartoonist Kevin Huizenga's birthday. He has a lot of the Bona work up on-line and offers up an intriguing digital profile generally if you poke around.

* I'm still sort of totally fascinated by how content-aggressive Marvel's overall digital strategy seems to be, if only glimpsed through things like their regular discounting of serial comics event series and other things that might relate to their ongoing "story." It's sort of like stumbling across some TV show you meant to watch but didn't quite get to, for the price of a couple of coffees.

* I wonder if that's the model, if we're not seeing a model now, for all that there are additional models to come. That would be, roughly: 1) new mainstream comics at prices equivalent to the books on the stands; 2) heavy and aggressive discounting of material in some sort of strategic way if possible to drive people to new material; 3) big chunks of material offered at an even more aggressive price point from the publishers themselves, although that one is still in development. That seems like a working strategy moving forward, at least in the short terms as consumption habits continue to evolve. It's not going to be a really evangelistic strategy if it stays that way, or at least not one with the ability to catch fire. I always sort of suspected that to stay away from 99 cents as a standard comic-book price point, despite the howls that this had to be the way to do it, might end up being a strength for at least the short-term: it allows for discounting strategies, and it doesn't lock the publishers into a lower price point moving forward. I'm sure other disagree with all of that, in strident terms.

* I like the site enough to do a "go look" on it sooner rather than later, but I thought it was interesting how Matt Huynh presented his comics work there.

* finally: Gary Tyrrell, whose blog is like an actually good version of this column posted every single damn day, has a couple of fine posts about webcomics people enjoying massive success through crowdfunding here and here.
 
posted 9:00 pm PST | Permalink
 

---

 
Daily Blog Archives
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
 
Full Archives