Digital bags and boards sold separately.

If you haven’t heard the news plastered over every major comic book news outlet, DC Comics has released their foray into digital comics this week. This means that Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, BOOM! Studios, Image, and all of their subsidiaries have now formed some sort of digital distribution strategy, whether it’s through Comixology’s own web interface, iPhone/iPad app, a specially branded iPhone/iPad app, or the PlayStation Network.

The industry press is now starting to weigh in on how this will affect the brick and mortar comic shops, while others are opining that the publishers shouldn’t care. While speculation and debate about what publisher is paying artists royalties or what is the appropriate price point is all academically very interesting, we at Ret-Conned are more interested in what this means for the average reader.

Kris believes that collecting and reading a printed comic is part of the overall comic reading experience. He tried reading some of DC’s free samples online and found the experience lacking. While he liked getting the early peek at Superman #700, he found reading the same issue in print later that evening a much more enjoyable experience. Plus, nothing is more satisfying then finishing a good comic, slipping it into its bag, and filing it away.

Being the early-adopter techie of the two, I’m really excited about digital comics. This does not mean that I’m going rush off and remove everything from my pull list and only purchase my comics digitally. However, I am now more inclined to digitally experiment with an issue or two of a series that I wouldn’t normally buy in the store. If I like it, then I’ll either continue getting it digitally or go back later and pick it up at Bedrock City. If I don’t like it, I don’t have to store something I’ll never get farther into nor have the awkward queasiness in the pit of my stomach I get when thinking about throwing away a comic no matter in how bad shape or poor quality it is.

I definitely don’t like the panel to panel reading experience that you get from the iPhone applications. One of the things that makes a comic such an art form is the creative page layouts and transitions from one panel to another. On the iPad, you can read the whole page (or two page spreads in landscape mode), so I would think the reading experience would be a little bit closer to reading a paper comic. Whenever I get an iPad, I’ll have to try it out and see for sure.

I think the biggest opportunity in digital comics distribution is going to be in back issues. While some people would want to read the latest comics digitally, anybody who likes comics would love the opportunity to read old comics they can no longer get in print. Personally, I really want to read Crisis on Infinite Earths. Bedrock City even has the original back issues as well as some fancy hard bound trade copies. The back issues for Crisis sell for $10-15 a piece, definitely more then I’m willing to pay for the opportunity. Even if I did buy them, DC would not receive any of that money. If they sold the issues digitally, or put them in a digital trade, for a reasonable price, I’d snap them up rather quickly. I can think of countless examples of old back issues that I’d love to buy, but can’t find anywhere and so have to make do with story synopses on Wikipedia.

The best part of being on the forefront of technology is getting to see where we end up.