Digital Comics

So let me get this straight; comics pirates have been tapping directly into Marvel's servers to get the pristine digital copiesthat they post like clockwork every Wednesday?

Dropped into this little item about BEYOND THE FRINGE, a digital tie-in to the popular TV show, is the news that Jhonen Vasquez, the incredibly popular creator of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, will be doing some digital comics for DC, along with Becky Cloonan. SWEET.

Digital comic downloads are a bit of a strange market. (Note: I'm talking about paid/legal downloads.) The big thrust, thus far, has been the battle of proprietary formats. Comixology has their own format. iVerse has a format. Graphic.ly has a format. Apple has a format. Amazon has a format. If you're from New Jersey, you'll probably want to tell me my mother has a format. Well, as of the ComicsPro meeting, the focus has changed a little, because now Diamond officially has a comics app.

We have a new winner for largest Kickstarter-funded comic... and there's still 22 days to go on the pledge drive. The "Order of the Stick Reprint Drive" is about a webcomic not acting like Marvel. That is to say, a few of the print collections of the Order of the Stick webcomic were out of print and creator Rich Burlew needed to get some cash up to afford the printing bill on some large full color books. $235K worth of pledges in a week? Yeah, I think it's working.

First Amazon tweaked their Kindle Fire file format from some (very basic) navigation to service comics and children's books. Then Apple's slightly controversial self-service app came along, making it even easier (depending on how you view the legal string attached to that app). Now Graphicly's starting to roll out their self-service app. Graphicly has a slightly different twist than what we've seen with the self-serve apps, thus far. They're emphasizing their service as creating a digital comics storefront and branding it yourself (presumably with an eye on the publisher's website and social media like Facebook), as opposed to being listed in the catalog for Amazon / iBooks / Nook / comiXology / Graphicly, etc. De-emphasize the app, emphasize the publisher.

Do you REALLY want to work in comics? Have a got a deal for you. There's a job posted over at eLance (a portal where you bid on jobs, lowest bidder frequently winning) that gets you into digital comics production:

Over the holidays we kept referring to that day in the late '90s when everyone got a modem* for Christmas, and the next day you could barely get AOL on dial-up because it was so busy as everyone tried out their new toy. That was what we predicted for Boxing Day as far as tablets go. And sure enough, ownership has doubled over the last month, to the tune of 1 in 3 Americans now owning some kind of tablet.

by Matt Demers

— [Yesterday's Apple announcement about a self-authoring tool to get books into the iBookstore sounded like a boon to comics creators and part of the whole DIY movement. However, as Matt Demers writes, it's not all as rosy as it looks.] —

In one of their much-hyped press events yesterday, Apple unveiled a new version of their iBooks with a specific focus on educational texts. When viewed on students' iPads, these once-boring textbooks would come alive with video, animations and graphics. There would also be the ability to annotate and create interactive glossaries, possibly bringing a bit of future flair to the medium.

Well now the circle is complete. Former DC online VP Ron Perazza has joined comiXology as Vice-President – General Manager of Publisher and Creator Services. At DC, Perazza was responsible for the ambitious Zuda imprint and behind many other forward-looking initiatives. Since leaving DC last year he's been a bit of a free agent, but presumably his non-compete is over, and comiXology is the perfect place for him and furthers their place as the driver of the digital comics era.

You wanted 99 cent comics? You got 'em. Digital comics, that is. In what's a first for the Transformer series, IDW is making one of it's premiere licensed comics available first as a digital-only 12-part series selling for 99¢ for an 8 page chapter. The chapters will be released every two weeks starting today.

Everyone is figuring out new ways to get their stuff out there. Halo-8 is a multimedia company that just funded the OCCUPY COMICS anthology via Kickstarter -- but it's being released a little differently. People who purchased the book via Kickstarter get a digital subscription until the printed version comes out. They're using a similar system for GODKILLER, a comic written by Halo-8 head Matt Pizzolo and illustrated by Anna Muckcracker Wieszczyk, previously known for LUCID (Archaia) and the OCCUPY COMICS promo image.

Viz Media is running a nice promotion: new users can download their free app for iPad, iPhone or iPod and, after registering for an account, download a free volume 1 manga of your choice.