Digital comics don’t have to suck.
Close your eyes, and imagine, if you will, the experience of reading a digital comic book. The panels are small, and they don’t quite fit the screen. Every device is just slightly the wrong ratio. You’re using the guided panel-by-panel view, but the story feels disconnected. You’re missing the subtle but all-important storytelling cues that come from seeing the full page. And if you switch to a full page display, you can’t read the word balloons. Your screen isn’t big enough. You soldier on. Pushing through colors optimized for a different medium, optimized for paper, and full bleed art trimmed tighter than the print counterpart. You come across a gut-punch moment. A big double page spread. But there’s no impact. The DPS was too wide so your reader shrunk it down. Or worse, flipped it to landscape so now you’ve got to turn your screen, meanwhile, the moment’s gone. This can’t be the future of comics we were promised.
Digital was meant to give us more. We were meant to have access to the artist’s original page layouts. The pencils and inks. The writer’s original scripts. The editor’s notes. Trivia. Easter eggs. Millions of new colors only digital can display. The ability to zoom in on the tiniest details. Deleted scenes. Alternate endings. Additional story. And so, so, so many brand-new digitally native features. Every other form of entertainment got exactly that. So…what happened?
Amazon.
They fucked us.
They gave up on quality for convenience. “1,000 comics in the palm of your hand.” Don’t mind that the reading experience is watered down. And definitely don’t think about all the things this new format could be adding. In focusing on the short term, they sacrificed the long term opportunity of digital comics. Last year digital comics book sales accounted for approximately 4% of all comic sales. Down from 25% in 2016. At the same time, music, movies, TV, and video games all built thriving digital businesses that have not only added to those mediums, they’ve also reinvented many of them for the better and, in fact, grown the total audience even beyond digital. Thanks to Spotify, Netflix, Steam and many others like them, those industries are living in the promised future we are being denied.
BAD IDEA has had enough. Yes, BAD IDEA. The one publisher who, to date, has been exclusively a printed-on-paper publisher. Also, the one publisher who has no vested interest in protecting the digital status quo. We’re the only publisher not financially tied to digital. So, we’re happy to blow the whistle on what a scam digital comic books are. Because it’s easy to do digital right. Did you know that every publisher is already doing it? Just not for you. When we edit, approve, and send comics to the printer, we do so digitally. And those files the professionals see are magnificent. High definition, full contrast, incredibly vivid and full of art that never sees the printed and bound page. It’s high time we brought the level of quality in digital comic books that we the professionals see to you, the readers. But we need your help to do that.
