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.