We Won’t Know Until Way, Way After



I tried to write a cogent essay this morning on the changing landscape of digital comics, the move from an era of conceptualize and debate to one of making choices and waiting for tipping points. I failed. My inability to write on this matter should not keep you from enjoying writers who can fashion an essay about this exciting time in comics.

* I thought Matt Maxwell's reaction to the launch of the iPad and its obvious ramifications for comics reading was the most reasonable and the best-expressed. For a lot of folks that read comics, there are many comics that read just fine digitally formatted, and there are even comics that for various reasons (storage, the author's intention, price) you'd prefer to read that way. That doesn't mean anyone wants to see an angry crowd to throw iPhones at Peter Maresca's head; it's an admission that there most folks have several appetites for comics, not just an idealized one.

I think this is particularly true of mainstream comics. The first time I wanted easy-to-access on-line comic books is when I wanted to read Ed Brubaker's Death Of Captain America so I could comment on it. The second time is when I moved 15 boxes of comics from storage into my office. The third time is when, slightly tipsy, I thought how it would be nice to read a bunch of Ka-Zar.

* Brian Heater of The Daily Cross Hatch has written two pieces about the iPad as a reading device. One for PCMag.com and one for his own site focusing on independent comics. I like that he gives the reason for the strip format's adaptation to the Internet as "it fits" and stresses that the smaller companies may be the places where we see any remaining innovation in this area. I'm not sure I believe either argument, but I like that Brian's making them.

* There's an interesting idea in just about every paragraph of Paul Gravett's semi-large piece about digital comics. My hunch is that the material on a large group of French-language comics creators freaking out over the way their rights have been interpreted in the light of emerging on-line use of their work is probably more important to the state of things right now than the article's sojourn into comics made with computer-aided elements folded into their presentation. I know there's no better way to empty a virtual -- or actual -- room of North American comics people than to bring up the rights and recompense situation as it exists in North America.
 
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