The iPad has gotten everyone excited in the comic publishing industry. This is based on predictions that 20% of households in the U.S. will have one in the next two years. These aren’t being purchased as productivity devices, they are for fun. They aren’t just fun for the person who buys them either, they are becoming pass-around devices that get into the hands of everyone in their family. The idea that 62M people in the U.S. will have one of these devices in their home should make anyone producing creative content very excited. Considering that there are going to be a whole pile of other tablets and e-readers adding to those numbers and you’ve got a huge potential market for anything that can be consumed on a tablet.

These devices aren’t going to just be for watching movies and playing games. Any initial speculation about whether or not people will actually read on these devices is now gone. Currently about 25% of adult fiction is being purchased in the form of digital e-books. People are getting to like the idea of a digital library, more than that, they are starting to see digital as a great way to read for enjoyment.

Several comic publishers are thinking that the iPad will cause the same kind of shift in comic reading…

Finish this article on my Blog, Fictional Narratives.

The other digital shoe has finally dropped. Or… digitized?

I need to stop getting hung up on creative figurative language use.

Marvel Comics has announced Same Day Digital comic releases. For those unfamiliar with the term, historically (as far as the short history of digital purchasable comics goes ) there has been a delay between the time that comic issues release in stores and when you can purchase them online.

A significant reason for this is to create a situation where comic book retailers are not directly competing with app stores for new releases. The comic industry, however, has been very aware of the exponentially growing market for comics on mobile devices and the potential for even greater revenue from the digital beast.

The change, which Marvel announced yesterday at their San Diego Comic Con panel on Digital Comics, is not unprecedented – a number of publishers had already adopted this method (DC announced they would make the switch alongside their reboot in September).

I guess this was an inevitable evolution in the industry, but I imagine direct market retailers won’t be happy. Unless comic retail shops find a way to tap into the digital market themselves,  it’s very possible that in the coming years we see the number of direct market stores shrink considerably.

Marvel begins it’s same day digital releases with Amazing Spider-Man next, and with continue switching over through October and November with Wolverine & the X-Men and Uncanny X-Men.

-Posted by Kevin de Vlaming

Over the past few weeks, while the air has grown brisker and the leaves have adjusted hue accordingly, major industry players have dropped some fairly large announcements. Dark Horse, Marvel and DC were among the companies that recently announced new business initiatives – some of which were unveiled at the New York Comic Con this past weekend, while others came to surface in the weeks prior.

One of the larger announcements came from DC on September 21st, when the mega-publisher stated their intention to move a significant chunk of their employees from New York to Burbank, California. This move impacted DC’s multimedia and digital distribution divisions, which  basically means all of their TV, Movie, Videogame, and Digital Media Ventures. This makes sense, since Burbank is the home of DC parent company Warner Bros. Studios.

This, however, wasn’t the most significant piece of news DC dropped that day. In addition to reiterating the end of Zuda, (DC’s webcomic-publishing platform, which officially closed on July 1st) DC Co-Publishers Dan Didio and Jim Lee announced that the Wildstorm Comics imprint would also be shutting down. Wildstorm, which has been around for roughly 18 years, was known for publishing such comics as Ex Machina, Astro City, The Authority, and Gen 13. No lineup to slouch at, clearly.

The last Wildstorm titles will hit comic shelves in December of this year.

Then last week DC dropped another bombshell, when they made an unprecedented move to drop the price of their standard size monthly comics by a full dollar. Beginning January 1st, all DC titles currently priced at $3.99 will go down to $2.99 (US). With the price cut comes a minor adjustment to page count – instead of shipping with 22 pages of story, the $2.99 DC titles will contain 20.

Marvel initiated the price hike to $3.99 in early 2009, with DC following suit shortly thereafter. Apparently the gains did not justify the amount of customers alienated by the steep price point – Jim Lee said that DC’s decision to bring the retail cost back down was made with the “long-term health of the industry” in mind.

In a completely unrelated press release later that same day, Marvel also stated they would be reducing the price tag on ’some’ of their $3.99 titles in January. Specifically, Marvel’s Senior Vice President of Sales and Circulation David Gabriel went on record as saying, “because of the digital comic sales, prices will decrease (in 2011)”.

Vague? Yes. But also telling of the underlying issue at work here – print comics are lagging in sales, and comic publishers are struggling to restructure their business methods to capitalize on the rising popularity of digital distribution.

This issue was examined at great length in the ICv2 Conference on Comics & Digital at the New York Comic Con on Thursday. For a thorough breakdown of the panel, Comic Book Resources has an excellent write-up.

ICv2 is an organization dedicated to providing in-depth market analysis on pop culture products, and their website, ICv2.com, is a valuable tool for anyone seeking sales information and daily trade news pertaining to related industries.

ICv2 CEO Milton Griepp was on hand to present some early observations concerning comic sales so far in 2010. Comic Book retailers won’t be surprised to hear that graphic novel sales were down 20%, and while comic periodicals didn’t experience such a sharp decline, their sales were still “relatively flat”.

In contrast, Griepp went on to state how the digital market for comics has risen from the 1/2 to 1 million figure they estimated in 2009, to between 6 and 8 million for 2010. He attributed much of this market growth to the rise in popularity of the Tablet, particularly Apple’s iPad.

As the ICv2 conference carried on throughout the day,  it seems that it became clear there is strong contention as to how to handle tapping into that digital market. Subscription-based sales models became a strong topic of discussion, as did the concept of finding a way to let print and digital comics peacefully coexist – hopefully without denting the business of physical comic book retail shops.

So we’ve established that this is officially the current hot button topic of the industry. (And it only took how long?)

What else, then, are comic publishers doing to capitalize on this ever-swelling beast of a digital market?

Dark Horse appears to be riding on the front lines of aggressive expansion into the digital market, announcing a new publishing initiative which their VP Marketing described at NYCC as “the most ambitious e-comics program to date”.

Dark Horse aims to have a cross-platform app ready by January 2011 that can be downloaded for “(any) device that has a web browser”. The Dark Horse digital comics app would allow users to purchase a Dark Horse title, and read it on any device that has their proprietary ‘bookshelf app’ installed.

By making their application proprietary, Dark Horse avoids paying licensing fees to Apple per individual comic issues – thereby allowing them to lower cover prices, while increasing profits for creators. Instead of the $1.99 US price point typical to digital comic downloads on mobile devices, Dark Horse titles will be available for purchase for $1.49.

They also have a plan to allow direct market comic book retailers to sell Dark Horse digital comics in their shops.

Last year Marvel Comics announced the availability of their titles across a number of digital platforms, and earlier this year they launched their own Marvel Comics App (developed by ComiXology) for the iPad.

The Marvel approach seems to entail getting their titles out through as many digital distribution channels as possible – with the most recent being Graphic.ly’s desktop application, which Marvel announced in September.

The Graphic.ly announcement was significant because it marked the first time that Marvel titles could be purchased and downloaded directly to computers, which consequently makes them available for offline viewing. Previously Marvel comics could only be viewed on computers online, through Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited.

DC has approached the realm of digital comics more tentatively by comparison, just making their comics available through ComiXology and a ComiXology-powered DC Comics app this past June.

At NYCC, they had a few more announcements of their own to make on the subject. DC Co-Publisher Jim Lee said they aim to bring DC digital to Android devices in the near future, and a new Senior VP Digital was named.

Hank Kanalz was the Vice President and General Manager of Wildstorm Comics for the past six years – prior to which, he worked for Warner Bros. as their Director for Worldwide Theme Parks. His promotion to Senior VP of DC Digital makes sense, in a roundabout sort of way.

All of this amounts to the creaking joints of an industry experiencing some major growing pains. DC, Marvel and Dark Horse are obviously not the only publishers struggling to find direction as the digital market grows to overlap with print. Their announcements, however, are pretty indicative of the industry’s desire to find some way for both markets to coexist at least somewhat peacefully.

Well, comic book fans – you’ll have to contain your excitement and/or apprehension for now.

This Fall may have been a big season so far for announcements about business changes in the industry, but all signs seem to point to 2011 as being the real trial by fire period for new initiatives in comics.

-Written by Kevin de Vlaming

The digitalization of comics in the Internet Age is a phenomenon that’s both purposeful and totally unsure of itself. Like a blind rat that smells cheese, for instance.

Or, if you’d prefer a simile that’s more appropriate and less cynical, like a young Clark Kent first coming to terms with the awesome power and corresponding destiny that is his birthright. The reality of the digitalization of comics, of course, lies somewhere in between – as its driven by neither the sheer greed of the rat or the transcendental power of destiny. It’s driven merely by a need to adapt as the flow of technology continues to radically reshape the world of the comic-book-buying audience.

Last week, major Japanese publishing company Shueisha, Inc. announced that it would begin selling manga in e-book format designed for mobile phones in the US next spring. You might be familiar with Shueisha as the publisher of a little-known manga franchise by the name of ‘Dragon Ball’, or alternately by one of their flagship magazines, ‘Weekly Shonen Jump’.

Shueisha is also a parent company to Viz Media, which is recognized by many North Americans as the channel through which the majority of Japanese manga comes to the U.S. and Canada.

Shueisha’s announcement, which was first reported by NHK (Japan’s public broadcasting station), is but the latest in a series of developments prompting the comic industry further along in its digitalization.

On October 30th, Marvel Comics announced a partnership with four separate companies to begin distribution of their comic library on the iPhone. As CBR reported, titles both new and old would be available to fans on the iPhone and iTouch – from classic Spider-Man issues to Joss Whedon’s semi-recent run on Astonishing X-Men.

Marvel had precedent in releasing digital content through a mobile platform. This past summer they rolled out their first very own motion comic, Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev’s Spider-Woman, which was available for download through iTunes.

Just last week, Marvel doubled its motion comic lineup by adding the first episode of Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men to its purchasable downloads on iTunes. For the uninitiated, a motion comic essentially takes the panels from its source material and applies a toolbox of animation effects – a zoom here, some cut-and-paste closing eyelids there, and gratuitous image morphing to make it appear as if a character is turning. Add some enthusiastic voice-acting and overlay a score, and you’ve created a motion comic.

Both Shueisha and Marvel are a little behind on the curve with the whole comics-on-your-phone idea, as DC has had motion comic versions of Watchmen, Batman: Black and White, and Superman: Red Son available on iTunes for over a year now.

Now that the proverbial ice has been broken for comics in the mobile phone market, new motion comic announcements pop up with a frequency that’s increasing all the time. In October, Udon released a motion comic version of Streetfighter: Round One. This past Monday, a Buffy motion comic was confirmed, based on the Dark Horse comic series Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight.

Yes, a new dawn has come for comics in the digital age. Or rather, a dawn is in the process of coming. It’s lumbering on ahead with a gait that could accurately be described as ’shambling’.

If we overlook the vast staggering of each major companies’ break into the mobile digital media market, the fact that the comic industry only just began to get its feet wet a full year after the release of Amazon’s Kindle (first released in 2007) is telling of its uncertainty of the digital marketplace.

In fact, portable e-books were available a year before that on the Sony e-Reader. On top of this fact, many unlicensed scans of comics were available for download (if you knew where to look) for viewing on the e-Reader. An entire market was created solely devoted to scanning, translating, and editing Japanese manga into English. Those are called scanlations, if you’re curious.

Since the bulk of this post has been preoccupied with talking digital comics, it might seem obtuse that I haven’t mentioned webcomics yet.

Let’s do that now.

Webcomics have been around, in one form or another, since the mid-nineties. Several of the individuals I’ve interviewed here on the Fabler Blog have been churning out webcomics since as early as 2003.

Yet the major comic companies didn’t start making efforts in earnest to cater to the webcomic-reading demographic until 2006/2007.

DC launched Zuda, its webcomic imprint, in 2007. That same year, Marvel launched Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited, which is a subscription-based service that grants account holders access to an archive of thousands of Marvel issues.

When I say that the digitalization of comics is ‘purposeful’, I mean that there is a definite path which the comic industry is on. There is a clear progression from point A to point B and through to point C. This progression doesn’t preclude the end of comics as we know them, but it does show that digitalization is happening.

It has to, since a large portion of the market has shifted its method of consumption to the digital world. This is the cheese.

The Clark Kent simile I made at the beginning of this post refers to the potential of these technologies to give comics a greater relevance in today’s society. Not in terms of content; countless brilliant comic writers and artists are already positioned on the cutting edge of creative culture. Motion comics, mobile digital comic libraries, and websites geared to support networks of webcomics are but a few ways that the medium of comics can become more relevant to contemporary trends in society.

Holy preachier sounding paragraph than I intended, comic fans! Not to mention probably obvious to many of you with more than a passive interest in the industry.

I have faith that the comic industry is slowly, stubbornly, beginning to realize what’s up. As is often the case in comics, indie creators and grassroots movements have been paving the way for the larger publishers to hop on the bandwagon. The bigger boys are now taking a more proactive stance towards digitalization, and really, we’re only better for it.

Excelsior, indeed.