Geek Girl on the Street Reports: Let’s Do Digital

Kate Kotler writes for Bleeding Cool;

I thought that perhaps this week I’d tread down a path with this column, away from all the controversy my column normally brings to Bleeding Cool, and talk about -wait for it- comics.

Shocking, I know!

Digital comics, to be specific. One of the things which has been bothering me the most about the “Day-and-Date” digital DC Reboot is the thought that DC Comics plans to charge the same full title price for single issues digitally as they do for print.

Does this seem fucked up to anyone other than me?

I have to admit, I’m a total n00b to the digital comic medium — but, recently I’ve been monkeying around with digi comics, as I’ve been road testing the Motorola Xoom on the Verizon Network (I’m reviewing it for another publication.) Part of my “testing” of the Xoom has been to download a bunch of digi comics via Comixology. And, it is true that digital copies of comics are very convenient for when you’re on the go – commuting or traveling – as they economize space, yet allow you to have a large selection of comics to choose from.

Reading a comic digitally is not as satisfactory an experience to me, as a comics fan, as going to my local shop, picking up my weekly titles and going home to hole up with a cup of tea and reading through my stack. When I’m done, I get to decide what I’m going to bag and board, and what I’m going to pass onto someone else to enjoy. This is part of the comic experience for me, something I enjoy greatly.

Digital comics rob me of that experience, somewhat – especially in such that when you PAY to download a comic you have to keep it forever and ever (amen). (This makes sharing your comics with another person impossible.) The only other choice is that you can delete the digital title to make space for another, newer title… And, if you delete it, you kind of wasted the money you spent on the title in the first place, didn’t you? Is one read worth $3.99? As I have comics and graphic novels that I’ve read over and over again since high school, I personally don’t think one read of a title delivers the value of what I paid for it…

It seems that most companies publishing digital comics at this point seem to have, for the most part, recognized the limitations that the digital comic format seems to carry with it. And, they’ve priced their titles accordingly, ranging from free at the bottom, to $.99 in the middle, to $2.99 at the top… $2.99 being a full dollar lower than either Marvel or DC charges for a print title… or a digital title, it would seem.

Yes, Marvel (those bastards) charges full price for digital issues, too. So it’s not just DC I have a problem with… no, not at all. In fact, of the two, DC is the one who is not on my “digital shit list” as they plan to drop digital issue prices a dollar after they’ve been on the shelf for four weeks. (Not that I -or any true comic fan- wants to wait a month to read interesting new titles.)

I get that the big two have to meet bottom lines and make that thing called money so they may continue to publish comics in what is an increasingly digital age. I’m sure much of the pricing considerations have been designed to keep retailers from flipping out about the move to digital. As if the digital copy costs the same as the print copy, it is theoretically an even playing field for the digital store and the physical store to compete on. This is an understandable move on the part of DC and Marvel. We are in a time where the very presence of physical comic books and comic stores are being threatened to be wiped out of existence by the advent of digital reading, and if two of the biggest comic publishers in the world are going to “do the digital,” considerations must be made to keep actual comic retailers happy and at ease. But still, something about their pricing just seems… really f-ed up.

To me, the physical comic book, just like the book book, is something which is forever. If I have the choice of paying $3.99 for a digital copy of a comic which will die when my device does, or a physical copy which I can one day pass onto my nephew and say “Dude, you HAVE to read this, it’s epic!” — I’m gonna choose the physical comic…

Free is another story. Hard to argue with free comics, in any format.

Kate Kotler is the founding editor of Geek Girl on the Street.com, the editor-in-chief of FilmCatcher.com, a freelance writer/editor/marketing hack and full time geek girl who lives in Chicago. She loves Doctor Who, Frank Miller, Wonder Woman, knitting, puppetry and she used to be a professional fire eater. See her full resume on katekotler.com. You can Tweet at her @adorkablegrrl on the Twitters.