Caine's handy guide to digital comics of the future

For this issue of Paper Comics Deathwatch we here at Flashback Universe have decided to step into the future in order to offer you, a handy guide to enjoying digital comics. Here we explain time honored lingo with a "numedia" spin on it for comics on the iTablet and other devices soon to come.

One Shot
A single screen [comic page] free preview of a comic that can be purchased if you so desire.



beyond by *duss005 on deviantART

Panel
A comic book viewed as a new page each day. Black and white "sketch pages", with and or without lettering [it depends], are free to everyone. You pay a small fee for finished pages.



BAtman Sample Page 04 by ~RodGallery on deviantART

Comic Box
This is a folder on your device's hard drive where the "Panel" comics [see above]are stored. After you've received thirty two of them you have an entire comic book to read all at once if you prefer.

The Annual
A subscription that updates your comics directly to your device much like floppies being thrown in your comic book box at a comic book shop. You never mis and issue and only require time to read it.

Prestige Format
A comic book that comes in "omniformat" which can be experienced a number of ways: single "page by page" issues, an animated slide show, and an updated super "motion comics" format that can come with an audio track with an extra file included in the download if you wish.

Free comic book day
A new "fan boy/girl" holiday when thousands of comic book publishers/creators offer free comics for your device with software like the Cowon SDK.

Graphic Novel
An entire story downloadable and stored on the hard drive to be viewed at your convenience.

If you're not into apple products then what about these fine alternatives now regularly used to view comics on?

The Tracy
One of the coolest product categories we'll get to see at CES this week will be wrist mounted touch screen displays. ~WIRED

The M-Report
The era of handheld flexible displays just got a little closer when HP rolled out this prototype it developed with the Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University. Said to be unbreakable, the plastic scrolling screens use HP's self-aligned imprint lithography (SAIL) technology, a low-cost process that's a whole lot like printing on a sheet of plastic. ~DVICE

The Frame Up
Most digital picture frames just sit there and show you pictures, but not iGala. This one hits all the right features, and at the top of the list is its Wi-Fi connectivity. Yes, this wireless magic is available in a few other picture frames, but this one goes beyond merely snagging pics from the Internet. ~DVICE

Have a great weekend

~Caine

Mockingbird question

Warning - Secret Invasion Spoiler for those of you waiting on the trade. If you haven't read Secret Invasion and plan on doing so - skip this post. Thank you.

Question: It's not my fashion to post current comic commentary on this blog (unless it's part of Paper Comic Death Watch), but somone told me that Mockingbird comes back at the end of Secret Invasion. Has this been explained? Didn't the West Coast Avengers go down to Hell to save her soul or something.

End Spoiler.

Pierre Speaks - Comic Book Deja Vu

I mentioned in an earlier post about how life is a cycle.

But for an old Warhorse..... as time goes by, you actually "SEE" the cycle. After a few decades, you "see" history repeat itself.

Many who saw the "House of M" "saga" remembered that there was the "Age of Apocalypse" before it.

"Civil War" and "Secret Invasion" took 2 to 5 years, depending on who you ask, and countless issues to repeat what was masterfully done in 6 issues in the "Astro City Confession" storyline.

And now we have "Acts of Vengeance 2".... hum... I mean "Dark Reign."

When I saw this...

It was impossible for an old Warhorse like me not to think of this....

Although unlike the "Age of Apocalypse" and "Astro City; Confession" which were pretty good, "Acts of Vengeance" was..... not awful.... but not much about it was very good/memorable.

So unlike it's predecessors, "Dark Reign" could..... I repeat.... could... end up being better then the original tale that it is emulating.

I guess we could wait and see.

But I won't.

Why??

The story starts with a major flaw..... Norman Osborn.

The story starts with the reader needing to swallow the fact that Norman Osborn is appointed to replace Tony Stark.

Really???

Swallowing an elephant would be easier.

I understand that to get their "Dark Reign" story going, Marvel needed to have Osborn and his "Dark Illuminati" be in charge at the end of "Secret Invasion". But the way this was acheived was very clunky/unbelievable.

When the writer makes leaps in logic that make no sense just to get the story to a certain point.... just to move the story to where HE wants it to be as oppose to where it would logically go..... well.... that is at best poor storytelling if you ask me.

Surely there are some records of Osborn being the Green Goblin?? That he is mentally unstable??

Heck Spider-man knows that Osborn is a wacko. It should be at the very least in the Avengers data base...... and by extension SHIELD's and the White House's data base as well.

How could the White House appoint him as head of the Thunderbolts.... and now even worse.... head of Shield, the Avengers and the Fifty States Initiative???

Makes no bit of sense.

But it was made for shock value, and to set up the "Dark Illuminati".

I am sure that many are thinking that DC did the same thing with "President Luthor" some years ago. But Luthor got elected but using the fact that the general populace was ignorant of his true nature and voted for him.

But here we are expected to believe that the authorities are ignorant of Osborn's true nature?? or that they know but are ignoring it on purpose??

Ouch.

The one story that comes to mind (not that there could not be other stories used as an example, but this is the most obvious example I can think of) where the writer needed something that made no sense to happen to move the story forward to where the writer wanted it to be was this...

What made this tale flawed from the start?? What elephant did the writer expect us to swallow??

Just this...

Batman falling off a building...... really??

I gave up on Hush right there and then.

Why??

First it had already been establish in countless Batman comics that Batman does NOT just fall off a building. Although there would be many examples, THE best example of that has to be this....

And later as a friend did lend me his copy of Hush to read because it was "really good" and I "should read it", I found out that the writer needed Batman to crack his skull so that he could introduce a "long lost friend" of Bruce that so happen to be a brain surgeon.

Not break his legs...... or his back....... or one arm and one leg........ Batman WOULD crack his skull.

Why???

So that he would need his friend Tommy who is a brain surgeon.

That makes so little sense that MY brain hurts just thinking about it.

So as I gave up on Hush right as Batman fell from a building......... I gave up on "Dark Reign" with Osborn replacing Stark.

Unless my friend ask me to read his "Dark Reign" comics.....? ;)

We shall see.

Mister Crimson Episode 20

Mister Crimson Episode 20
In which our hero engages some robots...

Check it out! .:

Free Comics Monday: Wonder Comics

Before I introduce today's golden age comics, I'd like to let everybody know about the great rundown of the 2008 Golden Age Revivial by Tony Z over at the goldenageheroes

If you haven't checked out Tony's blog, and you are a fan of Golden Age comics, man you are in for a treat!

I'd also like to point readers to the newly established: My Opinion Doesn't Matter, where you can find a nice write up of Malibu's use of the Public Domain characters in the 90's in The Protectors.

Okay, about today's free comics... I was looking for the golden age Wonder Man and found these instead, which apparently Wikipedia never heard of, so I'm sort of at a loss to tell you what the connection is here. Anybody want to help a brother out today?

I will say this, these comics contain The Grim Reaper (who is featured on the cover) and a great robot character called Makano! Check 'em out!

[ Download Wonder Comics 1 ]

[ Download Wonder Comics 3 ]

Paper Comic DeathWatch - Start the DethKlok

So Congratulations Paper Comics - you survived 2008 - however not without people questioning your Recession Proofness...

From Comic Book Resources...

Year In Review: The Business of Comics

...Look at all the difficulty publishers have launching new books nowadays – even Marvel and DC. Granted, sales are up at the Big Two, but take away the events we discussed earlier and the picture isn’t as pretty...

Meanwhile Kurt Busiek looks askance at the notion that Comics are recession proof at all

From the Tom Spurgeon's Comics Reporter...

BUSIEK: I'm worried about the economy in general terms, but I don't really know what it means for comics. I keep hearing people talk about how in troubled time, comics do great, but I don't know why they're saying that.

The "troubled times" that comics have been through include the Great Depression, during which comics flourished and grew, but grew from nothing, and the recession of the 1970s, during which sales dropped and dropped and dropped, and comics lost thousands of retail outlets, and freelancers were talking about how there'd be no comics industry at all in a few years and everyone should find something else to do. And newsstand sales never recovered from that -- what saved the industry was the Direct Market, and the ability to sell more efficiently and profitably to a dedicated fan base.

And while Paper Comics may have escaped the Grim Reaper this year, I think 2009 is going to be much rougher, with perhaps 2010 being the last year Paper Comics make any money for anybody but the big two. Why do I say this? Because this week, TechCrunch dropped this bomb on the tech world...

Large Form Ipod To Launch in Fall 2009

...We’ve got this from three independent sources close to Apple: expect a large screen iPod touch device to be released in the Fall of ‘09, with a 7 or 9 inch screen. Prototypes have been seen and handled by one of our sources, and Apple is talking to OEMs in Asia now about mass production....

Here's an idea of how much bigger we are talking about - roughly twice the size of the current iPod Touch / iPhone - or with a possible Screen width of 960 or 1200 pixels.

As I've said many times before, if Apple brings out such an iTablet/iReader device, that will pretty much be the deathknell for Paper Comics. Do the math:

$3.99 cover costs + Non-Green medium* + iTablet in every home = Paper comics gone

And I do think you are going to see more than just the Me Buy Shiney Now! Crowd going for this iTablet thingie. If it's as half as cool as the iPod Touch I've grown addicted too, it will become all the rage among Gen Txt. - At that point, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple didn't pitch it as some sort of replacement for schoolbooks as well - remember, during the 90's, the place Apple managed to keep a foothold in the pc market was the Education sector. They KNOW how to work that angle.

It's coming folks. Start the DethKlok now!
Hm...set it for sometime in the Fall, with a 1 month snooze.

PCDW Points: 1,000,000

*An Aside - Now, I've never been one to make a big deal about the Non-Green element of comics, but at some point, we're gonna have to face the fact, that as a entertainment medium, comics are probably the most Non-Green one in existence. And while you may not care about that, there is a certain portion of the public who will, and they are gonna bitch about it, because that's what that portion of the public does best. Then I think there will be some pressure by the comic companies to either justify their tree killing floppie editions (as Paul Levitz did on Newsarama a while back) or just drop them altogether.

This may be why Marvel is investing $10 million dollars in their Digital Media initiatives? - I think they are eventually just going to stop publishing the floppy editions. Currently they seem to be making a lot of nice money in the publishing division, but I bet they are executing an paper comic exit strategy behind the scenes. Let's face it - they could still print TRADES of their Online versions of Marvel comics just as easily as they do now (if not easier.)

By the way, I just stuck a Marvel DCU icon on my iPod Image because I think they actually will make something for the iPod this year - no idea what, but I bet their working on it. There isn't such an app for the iPod Touch that I'm aware of as of now. Nor can you read their Marvel DCU comics no the iPod currently because Flash on the iPhone isn't a slam dunk yet...

However, Marvel is definitely on the right track, so I'm willing to give them the benefit of a doubt and say that they will probably be able to higher some smart Apple developer to build such an app for them.

I think Marvel made a good move making their DCU subscription $4.99 a month. At that price point - it's basically $1.00 more than the price of a single comic each month. As we see things like this new iPod Touch come out, it will be much harder to justify spending, what...$15?, $20?, more? on paper comics each week.

Will DC do the same? Hard to say. Last year saw zero moves by DC to create a digital comic book, unless you count their Motion Comics, an experience I would say more akin to the old Power Records Comics than an actual Digital Comic.

Anyway, end of my rambling Aside.
Hope you enjoy the weekend!

- Jim

Slight delay this morning

I without a pc this morning but will have a new paper comic deathwatch post ready later today.
- jim from my iPod in a kinkos.