The future and comics

There is an online movement-stroke-group called Digital Comics Preservation - also known as DCP. This is a bunch of guys who scan comics in a high quality in the hopes of preserving them for posterity. These anonymous digital curators do this for the love of the scan (I imagine) and spend countless hours scanning comics, new and old, packaging them up in CBR format and post them up on a usenet newsgroup in the hopes that these will be picked up by other comics aficionado's. Every Thursday the newsgroup would be filled with new CBR posts of the latest comics.

I could go into a fuller explanation as to the what they do and why, but there's an FAQ here that you can check out. This post isn't about that, more about what has happened recently.

The lead poster is a chap (or girl, you never can tell online) that goes by the moniker Oroboros. This chap is the reason why that group was so successful, and through his actions of posting CBR's every Thursday helped a lot of people get back into comics easily. This has been going on for years (as far as I can tell) - at least for the past 4. In that time, most comics publications - Batman, Superman, The Walking Dead, etc - have all made their way online through this newsgroup. People then consume them and share them using bittorrent or IRC.

Now this is another form of digital piracy, and something that has gotten overlooked for quite sometime. Until now, that is. Last week Oroboros was served with a DMCA notice by someone and has since had to retire, or step down. His usenet provider was informed, as was his ISP and they've snipped his digital lifeline by cutting him off. A notice was posted on the group announcing this, also stating that Oroboros will not be fighting this. The shock of this low-blow has shaken not only the leader of the community but those around him. No one is quite sure who - observers in the group speculate that it's another rival group that wants to harm DCP by taking down their top player by grassing him up to the feds. There is outrage in the group, many crying out for blood, others looking for another solution. It's as if a junky has been cut off from his supply of crack and looking for an alternative.

How the group will survive is anyone's guess. The likely culprit behind this Marvel comics, as they're the ones who have power and clout to enact a coup such as this. Marvel have ventured into the digital comics arena in the past, but didn't really succeed. The uptake wasn't that widespread, it wasn't marketed well, the format wasn't standardised - the list goes one. So, why would Marvel do this? Well, at the end of the day Oroboros and those in DCP were engaging in piracy. Big business will always fight against that as it cuts into their profits. I'm not going to debate on the rights on wrongs on this, as I'm most certainly one of those people that appreciates the value behind trying before you buy (make of that what you will).

What I will point out is that there is definitely a market out there for digital comics. This has already been proven due to the popularity of the DCP comics scene (which is something like a members club, it seems). People are willing to download and read comics via their PC - there's even a reader for the iPhone! Since Oroboros's retirement people have posted that if it wasn't for digital comics they wouldn't have gotten back into the whole comics world again. I would agree with them on that front.

The market for comics is dwindling. There are many reasons why sales are dipping, but the combination of expensive books and complex storylines has shifted the reader demographic from young kid to young adult is really the main cause. Adults can't constantly buy comics throughout their life. They're expensive: buying one's weekly stash would amount to at least £50 - working out to be £200 a month. That's a lot of moolah, especially if you have a mortgage to pay. Added to the fact that they're not kiddie friendly anymore - Sue Dibney's rape wouldn't have gone down to well in my mind if I'd have read that JLA story when I was 10 - ensure that new readers are those that are older. There are kid friendly comics, but they're just as boring and pointless as kid friendly scissors - they do the job, but kids would rather play with the real thing. At the moment, it seems as if there is comics does have a finite life expectancy. It'll still be around, but the market will become incredibly niche. Again, there are many reports and blog postings that posit the same sentiment and do it better than I would, so I'm not going to delve to deep into the who's, why's and woe's onto the dwindling comics market - but you've got to give me some props for using the word "posit" though!

So what does this all mean? Well, another way has to be found: a manner in which people can be introduced to comics and store them safetly, cheaply and easily. The obvious way has to be via some online distribution method. If comics are to have a future, they have to embrace this new medium.

Apple made this really work for the music industry. They changed it, reinvigorated it and pretty much turned it on its head. They've turned the music industry around - download's are on the up, physical purchasing of CD's are going down. Imagine if DC (through Warner) were to create an iComics platform similar to iTunes, allowing users to manage their comics and buy comics easily - well, the opportunites are endless. The digital comics will most likely be DRM'd, and cheaper than their physical counter parts - but this will give the industry the shot in the arm it desperately needs. People who read comics online do it as a passing hobby. It's something that isn't the centre of their life and they do it because it's easy to do. If they get hooked on a comic, they do buy. I can ates to that as I'm one of these hobbyist's - Miss P is starting to get annoyed that my wants list is forever growing. She always asks "but how do you know it's good?" I always answer - because I've tried before I bought.

Other opportunies will be born from this - imagine a comics podcast: we already have countless web comics, some of which have made the crossover from online to offline (PVP anyone?). Now imagine there was a central way of getting the latest strips and reading them on your PC. Then transfer these onto you iPhone or UIQ mobile device, like the Motorola Z8 (chosen as an example as the screen is pretty sharp). Comics on the go. That's something that kids would get into, and adults. True, you'll still have die hards that want to own a book for it's value - but those that want to read comics will go for this.

So what does this mean? Oroboros and others of DCP - even though they are currently hailed as pirates will be seen in the future as pioneers for what should be. They laid the foundation. Now if only someone would continue their good work and create a legitimate framework around that. It's a tricky investment, frought with risk - but if someone follows the Apple model of content distribution then this will change the comics industry.

In the meantime, I've got to change my standing orders at Gosh. Miss P isn't going to like my new spending habits...