My goal is to discuss why the industry needs an iTunes model of distribution that provides cheap and disposable comics to the general public.  This is part one, I’ll discuss the current environment of the comic book industry.

BOOM! Studios (home to one of my favorite comics right now, Heroes Squared - Sloat makes this comic worth the purchase alone) recently put out a tongue in cheek PSA in Talent#4 about comic piracy. A fan scanned it and put it up on his blog and Boom’s Ross Riche chimed in about his studio’s position about scans/piracy:

Actually, let’s clarify BOOM! Studios’ policy on comic book piracy:

What you’ve scanned is a comic strip. It’s two guys having a laugh, making fun of me.

Our official stance shouldn’t surprise anyone: for a company as small as ours, every single comic we sell counts. So we appreciate anyone buying our books, and would really appreciate it if anyone pirating them would buy physical copies instead.

Best,
-Ross Richie

And honestly, there isn’t anyway to argue against this position.  The direct market system makes sure that if no one is purchasing physical copies of a book it will die.  Dan Slott laid this out on Demonoid as simply as he could, and many people get what he is saying but disagree.  These days Diamond Comics Distributors basically makes up the entire direct market.  They have the contracts with the major studios and drive how the industry operates.  If Diamond can’t get enough people to purchase the book from them they drastically cut back on their orders, thus killing off a title.

I won’t bash Diamond.  They are a business that was smart enough to position itself as the lead player in the market and you can’t really fault them for that.  (You can fault them for botching orders, shipping late, etc but those are non-issues in this discussion.)  Nor will I bask the direct market.  It did exactly what it was supposed to do: saved comics from the dying newsstand distribution model, allowed fans to dictate exactly what they wanted, allowed for better paper, allowed for more mature content, and made comics more profitable for comic book stores due to demand. 

That last bit led to rampant speculation, inflated prices, and made comics even more valuable - at least until the market tanked in the ’90s.  I won’t go into details about why the market tanked but I agree with Chuck Rozanski, who has a great article on the Mile High Comics’ site, over how over-marketing led to an uneducated public buying comics specifically for their value, thus causing the market to collapse under its own weight.  He specifically blames the Death of Superman:

Frankly, I view that particular marketing event as being the greatest catastrophe to strike the world of comics since the Kefauver Senate hearings of 1955. While there were certainly a plethora of other reasons why the American comics market began falling apart in 1993 (including higher cover prices, overproduction, and deteriorating art/story quality), in my opinion the “Death of Superman” promotion inadvertently exposed to the general public (many of whom ignorantly bought into the prevailing delusion that all comics were collectibles that infinitely rose in value) the “Ponzi Scheme” reality of the market for recent back issue comics.  

Even after the market tanked the direct market kept comics somewhat profitable and most importantly led to the consolidation/closings of multiple distribution companies and forced Diamond to step up to become the key player.  And they did that.  So much so that now they basically drive how the industry - from titles, comic book stores, etc - operates. If Diamond doesn’t sell enough of a book they drastically cut back on their orders (since they are getting less orders from the stores under them, since the stores are getting less people asking for the issues), thus killing off a title. The next time you wonder why a great series like NextWave died out just remind yourself it is because you made it possible by not buying enough of it. In short: Diamond is practically the only clearing house and basically the only way a studio knows how well a book is doing in sales.

Unfortunately, the direct market fails the casual reader or anyone that wants to simply catch up with a series without a hefty investment.  There is a huge market for people who do not want to walk into a comic book store to stay current (I’m friends with a lot of them, and I’m sure you know many of them also).  There is a demand for quick and disposable issues that allow them to be current without having to spend a few thousand dollars.  What incentive does a casual reader have to read a series month by month if they have no clue what is going on?  What incentive does someone who wants to be current have to pay a few hundred dollars for a few issues of a comic that was put out in the ’80s? 

Purchase a TPB you say?  Why bother when the market has an alternative that makes it possible for you to read those same comics for free without having to leave the comfort of your own home?  Enough demand will eventually yield a supply.  One way or another, the demand will be met - legal or illegal, it doesn’t matter to the market.  Better internet, faster computers, and high demand yielded a solution: comic book scans.  I won’t explain the history behind it, because it best explained in an article over at Comic Book Galaxy and the author lays out the same argument:

Even back then IRC (more on what IRC is later in the article) was the place to hang out, yet, in IRC’s infancy a popular software piracy channel had maybe 300 people hanging out (the internet was new — we were geeks). Right now, IRC channels for comic piracy have those same sort of numbers — around 300+ people in them. When I decided to check out some of my old IRC haunts, a couple months back, as research for this article, I discovered software piracy channels with over 5000 people. What was the cause for this increase? Simple answer — technology and demand. Faster and cheaper computers and more people on the net.

My point?  The industry can blame only itself for the rampant piracy. By not adequately addressing the demands of the market for cheap and disposable comics a black market has been created to address that demand.  Torrents have only made it easier to download a whole volume in a few days.

So why isn’t the industry doing anything to meet this demand?  I’ll go into it in part two.