Will real paper comics ever disappear and go all computer?

[jugoyan]

Maybe you think comics have already been converted. Like in Orwell's 1984, "Big Brother" has "It" already got them? If yes; to you the reader, is this a good thing, or a horrendously god-awful, apocalyptic, four horsemen, disaster, plagues, floods, locusts, crumbs in the bottom of the milk bottle... really bad thing?
But perhaps you're an optimist...At least in the original comic sense. Do you believe perhaps that comics in a traditional paper form will continue to be printed in meaningful amounts?...If you think they're still in it, do you think they'll still be here thirty years from now?
You can fortunately or unfortunately look at the morning newspaper for some clues. All polls and studies seem to show that the portion of the U.S. population that reads through at least one newspaper a day, is at an all time low...Especially among those under the age of twenty five, the number of folks in that age group that read actual paper to get their news somewhere besides on line is becoming miniscule.
The tie in with comics, for the medium that was key in widely spreading the art form, is obvious...
If you're over forty and you want to try something tragically interesting, ask someone under thirty if they've ever read Mad Magazine. Then ask the question to someone under twenty...Then yes, ask a twelve year old....Each time down, the number of yes responses will dwindle sharply...
Today, the number of twelve year olds who have read Mad Magazine is teensy tiny. Thirty years ago, just hazarding a low guess, one might have found the percentage of twelve year olds in the late seventies who had read Mad at least once would have been probably around fifty or sixty percent ( then, like now, pretty much all males, but none the less ) Mad Magazine, yes in paper, is still going strong, and some of the same artists there in the seventies are still around...but many people, even those in comics, don't know it.
Once you start asking if comics will survive, then newspapers, you inevitably get to books. Is it all generational? Due to the computer age's advent, will today's twelve year old disdain and not care about paper and Guttenberg's old invention in a couple of decades?
Time will tell, and there are good arguments for it going either way...
What do you the reader reading say?

[Spirit fan]

I hope that never happens. If your computer crashes you'd lose all of your comics! Reading comics only on the internet would never be as satisfying and enjoyable as holding them in your hand, putting them on your book self, or comic book box. What is sad is that the comic book audience has shrunk because comic books are not even available at your local grocery stores and newsstand any longer you have to go to specialty stores, comic shops, to find them, and there aren't as many of those around as there were in the '80s and early '90s. Comics need to be available everywhere again in order to gain more interest and thusly more readers again. The comic book shops "direct sales" only market has shrunk the comic book industry and eliminated the casual readers from the Simpsons stereotyped "Comic Book Store Guys", and alienated potential new readers from different walks of life.

[jugoyan]

There may be some readers out there who can't relate to Spirit Fan's worry about their computer crashing, and thus, losing comics they're reading.
Dinosaurs like me are possibly proud to say they nevah evah nevah, or very seldom, read comics on line. Pages advertising where to buy real copies, yeah. But nevah ongoing strips.

If you're hard core old school, and see comic art and art in general as a personal expression with ink and paper, you disdain and avoid computer art like a plague of cockroaches..Okay, that's maybe a little strong, but really?..not really. Not if you see drawing like a martial art. A marriage in real time and three dimensional space, versus the two dimension illusion of the computer. You have to feel the sweat, suck the pen nibs, smell the eraser to do drawing which is real. One man's opinion anyway.

The "machine"...which computer enthusiasts say is just another tool...well, I say...hold on. Not quite. It's not just another eraser, or number two brush. It's become a place where ideas are at the mercy of pre-drawn forms and lay-outs that in the "old days", were done by EIsner's and Schultz's with coffee and deadlines in their hands. Pre nineteen ninety two, a comic illustrator had to incorporate and manufacture their dreams by actually breaking eggs and making their own mojo. And, they actually had to use their own imaginations to accomplish what they wanted.

I know, I know. There are many who may read this that again, will say, you can start from scratch the same way on the computer. Baloney. It's just not the same thing. A computer screen doesn't carry the visual punch of the old E.C. comics. On line, you can't smell the pen and ink that Bill Gaines may have tapped his cigarette ash into on the insides of an old Mad Magazine. How about the texture and fun of feeling a pair of 3-D glasses as your head spins drunkenly and you see double in the old 3-D comic books?

Nope. Can't happen, and shouldn't... on a computer screen. Hey, don't get me wrong. I'm not a Luddite. A lot of purists like me, are very computer savvy. I'm here on line, ain't I? It's just, a few of us still see the computer as having certain limits. Rather than embracing it as an all knowing sham Kama-Sutra...We see it as a naughty magazine you peek at on Saturday night, and don't need to open again...but every once and a while.

The real Kama-Sutra is right over there in the filing cabinet...Real newspaper, real paper...real art. The kind you can touch. The kind you can smell. The kind you can feel.

Well, real life calls...I hear one of my little guys crying and I think, if my nose is right, it's because his diapers need to be changed.
Come to think of it, I do wish the computer screen could do that for me!

[Gary Chaloner]

Great posts jugoyan... and everyone!

I don't think print comics will disappear. I think they'll just become bound books and be available in bookstores instead of comic shops. And comic shops as we know them are becoming more 'pop media' stores that sell posters, t-shirts, DVDs and lots of other stuff besides comics.

The floppy pamphlet format might be on the ropes, but the artform will survive.

As to how the art is created... well... I'm a computer nut, but I can't not draw my stuff on board with pencil and ink. That's most of the fun.

[jugyan]

Hi Gary Chaloner; Well, you kind of said in your reply, that yes indeed, comics are on the way out. If they really do just become bound books, instead of the distinctive thirty to forty page newsprint ( either the fancy coated new white paper or old fashioned telephone book newsprint, take your pick )...then the form will have definitely gone. It's one step away once only in book to being scavanged by the well meaning but lost souls who show up on the news periodically showing their quest to put every book in existence on line.

When you change the look and feel of a real paper comic, it's not a comic anymore. I LOVE graphic novels, at least occasionally, but I never choose them when I can have a real thirty to forty page comic in front of me...I'm not a smoker, but would you rather smoke a pack of cigarettes all at once, or have the pleasure of smoking them one at a time? See what I mean?

I realize that Eisner invented the first Graphic Novel with his "Big City"...Not such a sacrilege by the master when you consider that he saw the actual medium of his story needing the bigger size. But he certainly didn't mean to start the idea some figwits have, that the graphic novel is the perfect and now only true way to tell an illustrated story.

The comic is a specific and identifiable art form. If it survives, it shouldn't have to go chameleon or graphic novel, etc. to do so.

Think of the banana. It's a specific, wonderful, universally worldwide species of fruit, that's virtually impossible to mistake for something else. If you genetically bred and planted it with a mango or pear, would it still be a banana? No. It would be a pearnana, or a banango..but it wouldn't be a banana anymore.

In my opinion, this generation may one day turn on to a part of our collective soul they'll never know they had, if one day, during an electrical storm, natural calamity, or hopefully not something worse...the lights go out.
Then, they might pick up a flashlight, go to the cabinet, and get down that thing called a comic, or a book. They may hopefully then discover and groove onto a time tested centuries old set of wonders.
Electricity proof, but electric indeed; more powerful than the strongest and brightest thunderclap.

[Calum]

the whole paper debate is one i have to sit on the fence about. here's why:

on one hand, can i justify paying good money after bad for products made of wood paper? it's not even hemp paper, which is much more renewable though both kinds are really bad ecologically. Basically, the more we demand our literature, especially disposable literature, like newspapers, pulps and newsstand comic books (do they even still exist?) to be in paper form, the more wood paper is getting used up. On the other hand, if this all gets translated into more computer use, then there's the ecological impact of that as well, although i suspect that those reading comics online might already be running their computers anyway, so that damage might be getting done, even if they were reading paper comic books instead.

Moving on from that, virtually every situation that i like reading comic books in is unweildy for the computer. Really i'd need a laptop and even then, it weighs 5 kilos. sure you can carry the equivalent of six billion libraries of comics on one hard drive, but do you need to carry that out with you onto the bus? into bed? into the bath? there are technical and security issues to think about too, as well as having to lug the damn thing around. also, the screens don't fit the pages, i have never yet had a paper comic book that i had to scroll the entire time just to read it. Plus there's the cost. a computer or laptop cost hundreds, fair enough you may have one already, but nobody else can use it if you are reading comics on it (perhaps that suits you, but it won't be ideal for everyone in the world), and whether you can justify the hundreds, it's still the case that if you spent hundreds on comics in one go, you would get a fair old stack of comics to read (unless you're daft!) and not just a five kilo dead weight to read the comics on.

I recently downloaded the entire MLJ/Archie Adventure line, every golden age issue from the Mighty Crusaders checklist. It was something like 2GB of scans, from the excellent Golden Age Comics archive. That's great, i had about five of those already and at the cost they are at, even if i could buy them all it would be tens or hundreds of thousands in cost. but, do you think i've read them? i have barely touched them. i never think: "i know, i'd really love to hunch up in front of the computer and spend my night scrolling pages up and down and clicking next just so i can read a comic. i mean i have thousands of real comics in the house, and sad though it is, since the MLJ stuff is some of my all time favourite material, the real comics win out every time for enjoyment. It's a good job i actually have some real MLJs to remind me the rest are on the computer or i would literally never have looked at them at all.

Maybe if they made an inexpensive comic reading device that eliminated the clicking, scrolling, weight, screen issues, then perhaps i would think about changing sides.

[jugyan]

Yes! RIght on, Calum!
What you said on the non fit computers have for the comic...yes!...can't we still say...comic book?!...I wouldn't change a word!
You know, if there are really comic fans who prefer reading comics on a cold screen, instead of in their lap with the 3-D sensation of real paper, I'd like to hear their reasoning...
I might have used the analogy somewhere, but I still think, though it's somewhat crude, it's very apt....
In my opinion, mind you, choosing to read comics and comic art on line is like preferring to have a relationship with a woman on line, instead of having a relationship with the beautiful flesh and blood ( paper and ink ) in front of you.
A well read comic has a smell, a luxurious touch, a sense of time and place that no computer screen will ever give me.
I guess I'm passionate enough about paper to say that the computer nazis ( no one here of course!) will have to pry the paper out of my col' daid han's afore this ol' boy will give up his papyrus comic art!!

[Calum]

you're right you know. the smell of issues from one decade is different from those of another i've noticed - i wonder if my eighties issues will eventually smell like my sixties issues. i doubt, what with all the paper changes, that the 21st century ones will ever smell like 20th century comics though.

[jugyan]

Well, sure, the old comics newsprint paper could better catch smells of your mom's cooking, the scent of air freshener your grandmother used, the smell of your airplane glue you used nearby your collection to put together plastic masterpieces...but still, every comic, old paper or no, holds a sense of place that can't be duplicated on a computer screen....no way, no how....

[Bustertheclown]

Digital media has been declaring the death of print on a semiannual basis for over a decade now. I'm still not buying it. Even if daily newspapers go away, weeklies are still running strong. As far as comic books go, I think that the best idea ever was the recent shift in focus to collections and graphic novels over single issues. It's more economical, it's more of a reading experience, and it's just nice to have a book to put on your bookshelf. Cheap collections might have saved the comic book as we know it, at least for now.

As far as digital goes, I've tried for a long time to really get into digital format comics, and I just can't. Comics read better on the page, and most comics that are even posted online still take on a for-print formatting. Sure, it's cheap and easy and free for readers (usually), but in the end, it still just doesn't have that right "feel". I might change my tune if ever a digital comic reader that is portable comes out, like a Kindle that can run the CBR format and display color images. I'm sure it's not too far off, really. Still, at the end of the day, I need to be able to sit in my comfy chair, and not at my computer, to really get into a comic.

[jugyan]

Hi B.T.C...
Didn't see this post until well into this summer...you must have wondered if you'd hear back from me...Well...!...I'm back, sweating out August's dog days and barking back to you...
I concur absoulutely with nearly everything you said, but I'd take it one step further...I'd state quite whole heartedly that Kindle's are horrendous, and little more than Big Brother in disguise.

Lest you think I'm too "Fahrenheit 451" or "Animal Farm" paranoid...let me explain. I've indeed seen the unkindly "kindle"...(perhaps it's good for kindling good old wood), and you "would"n't catch me on it EVER!...Why?! Well, simply put...Do you really want to download things that are traceable to your every little taste in literature (if you're like most, you don't just read "Dick and Jane"), while having your reading literally cookied and monitored by a company sending you and telling you what you can read?

From what I've heard, they've unexplainably and unconscionably have deleted some books while subscribers were reading them...offered incomplete or "Reader's Digest" condensed for the dense versions of others...and generally, played Golding's Ralph, to our Piggie...and
while they haven't come back with our head on a stick yet, they're probably working on it!...

Like Nabokov? Kindle doesn't yet have him....Like Dostoevsky?...You'll have your own war and little peace trying to find many of his works complete...and these were just the complaints I was told about!...Who knows what mind games and gaps I'd be under if I was daft enough to own a Kindle and was try to get the entire output of an author...

And how about that Kindle screen? It's the color of a public accountant's eye shade...Light to dark green...and damned near impossible to read in sunlight...It would give me a headache after fifteen minutes.

And what about a real book's personality? Yes, I said personality...!...A copy of James Dickey's "Deliverance" in paperback, feels, smells, and even reads differently than his smooth, cool, deliciously spooky weird covered hardback version....

Yes, books have smells and personalities just like people....Would you like to go to a party with robots all the same, or with individuals with distinct origins, scents and sense, feel and weight(s), and artwork and originality?...!

Well, read books on a computer, a Kindle, a bindle, a spindle, or whatever....and that's what you'll get.

The computer has its uses, but to read books on, should not be one of them.

When you read War and Peace, the vast weight and physical heft of the real book novel is part of the experience and the point.

A computer will NEVER be able to replicate that!