Ownership – Thoughts from the Physical to the Digital

Right now I still go to the comic shop every Wednesday (or Thursday as the case may be.)  I still buy floppies. I like holding a 30 page book in my hands as I read about the exploits of my favorite characters like Darkwing Duck, Starborn, Green Wake and others. 


Going to a comic shop is a great experience. I go to Another Dimension Comics and always am amazed at the general selection.  It’s a huge comic shop in Calgary and if you ever come to this city I recommend checking it out.

Since we’re dealing with digital, I wondered at the experiences of tomorrow.  What will comic shops be like in the next few years?

Digital isn’t a bad thing.  It’s another medium to present content to readers.  The one major advantage for comic companies is that there is virtually no market place that cannot be touched via the world wide web.  Also since this is a (relatively) new medium, as both a reader and a creator, I think the web has a lot of untapped potential in terms of how comics are presented to the marketplace.  That in itself is another column for another time; this column deals with the one downside.

When we go to a comic book store, we buy a physical floppy comic.  Whatever your favorite book is, you walk out with a physical product that is yours to enjoy forever.  Digital changes that.  Instead of buying and owning a particular product, you are instead paying for a service, whether it’s through an app or some other kind of modification we haven’t thought of yet.  This app will present us with our regular reading content of Superman for example or whatever else we desire at the touch of the button.

But we will never own a physical copy again.  Instead we are paying for access to a database.

What does this mean?  Look at the music and video industries to see that future play out.  Blockbuster just went out of business up here.  With services like Netflix in existence, Blockbuster simply cannot compete with the convenience and cost of a movie.  CDs are all but dead in today’s day and age.  Independent record stores are shutting down one by one.

You can still purchase CDs and DVDs on the secondary market, but it is just a matter of time before those medium’s physical presentations dry up.  New products will never ever be released again on DVD.  And it is illegal to download now. Over time, used record stores and video stores will completely dry up.

Does this fate hold true for comics?  I think it’d be foolish to say that this won’t create changes.  DC has finally taken the bold move to release same day and date digital.  Right now, digital sales are a small percentage of what comic companies make.  Over time, that will change, especially when someone comes up with a universal app for all comics to be accessed from.  Some people reading no doubt are saying that something like this is years away from happening.   But everyone can see this coming.

Will floppies exist?  How about the graphic novel?

No one knows for sure.  Comics do have an advantage CDs and DVDs did not.  The same advantage cinemas have when people go to the movies.  The experience of going to a movie theater cannot be duplicated.  The whole ambiance and atmosphere created in a cinema is the biggest reason theaters still exist in the days of huge big screen TVs and Netflix.  Anyone can watch a movie, but no one can just create a cinema environment at home.  You have to go to a theater to get that kind of joy.

There is something special about going to a shop every new Wednesday and picking up new books.  The monthly fix of comics is a unique episodic occurrence that an app just doesn’t seem to quite duplicate just yet.  DC took a huge first step in closing that gap in announcing day and date digital.  Time will tell if it goes the rest of the way.

Joshua Pantalleresco

Ownership – Thoughts from the Physical to the Digital