Rumoured Apple iTablet Is Second Coming For Comic Book Industry

Digital Comics
Rumoured Apple iTablet Is Second Coming For Comic Book Industry
By Hervé St-Louis
October 31, 2009 - 21:50

I told my editors that I would write about the iTablet and the link to Steve Jobs, Marvel and Disney a while back. Some other Web site beat me to it. Sorry guys, grad school imposes a crazy schedule on me. But it’s never too late and in hindsight, I’m glad someone did beat me to the punch. I’ve been doing some thinking about comics iPhone apps and questioning everything we think we know about comic books. A month ago, I would have cheered at the rumoured iTablet. Today, I see it for what it is a religion in the making, and I have lost the faith.

Source: Gizmodo 2009

In the beginning, there was the newsstand. The newsstand was the home turf of the comic book for decades and was nearly banished to hell when Frederic Wertham wrote The Seduction of the Innocent in 1954 and cast a shadow on the comic book. The comic book fell from grace with Middle America and was suspected of diffusing wrongful ideas to children. To exorcise the demons of the comic book, publishers toned down the material and the violence. They highlighted the science fiction and fantasy elements instead approved by the Comics Code Authority censoring board.

But this was not enough to save the comic books and although the 1960s brought a new Silver Age in North American comic books, they continued to sell less. In the 1970s, some new prophets established the direct market. Comic books would now be distributed through specialized networks and sold in specialized stores. The comic book had been saved from total hell and given a godly reprieve.

But the reprieve was not enough and the comic book continued to lose readers to other forms of entertainments. Several enchantments and prayers were performed to revive the comic book after its long slumber. To this day many expect the comic book to rise from the dead and spread the gospel of good visual literature to all four corners of the world. The 1980s saw the rise of the so-called independent publishers. These new prophets would revitalize the comic book industry and save it from certain death once again by offering more diversity. This period also coincided with the push to brand comic books as adult-friendly forms of entertainment. The new prophets alone and the maturation of the industry were not enough and sales gimmicks such as multiple covers and yearly cross-series events were also used to maintain the faith.

A new age came in the form of the book publishing industry. That would for certain save the comic book industry from death. By transforming floppy 22 pages comic books into compilations reprinting many stories, they would gain respectable space in bookstores. The example was simple, all the North American industry had to do was to replicate the album and multipage reprint practices of sister religions from Europe and Japan and that would finally save comic books in North America.

Yet, that wasn’t enough to save the comic book industry from itself. Pagan imports from Japan that attracted a new demographic of younger readers many of which were girls were not sufficient to revive this dying religion either. Movie deals with Hollywood studios, that popularized many comic book properties failed to convert movie viewers to the religion although these viewers had transformed many comic book adaptation into record setting blockbusters.

A glimmer was seen in the Web comics movement but it was a different beast to tackle. It wasn’t organized like the direct market which by then had collapsed under one church, the distribution network owned by Diamond Comics. Instead, the mobile comic book industry with apps targeted at an ill-defined potential market and the rumoured iTablet to be released by the Apple and Pope Steve Jobs became the ultimate saviours that would redeem the comic book industry of any past sins and make it viable again.

No one, outside of Apple, knows for certain if there is even an iTablet in development. An iTablet, according to the gospel of many tech industry insiders would be a bigger iPhone with electronic colour ink, capacitive multitouch interface that would make reading any magazine, book or comic book a breeze. Many comic book publishers are expecting this rumoured iTablet to revolutionize the book publishing industry and at the same time to save the comic book industry. To read articles and blogs about the iTablet, Steve jobs and Apple, one would think the comic book industry will collapse if it does not deliver.

The flock have faith in the iTablet because it’s coming from Apple. To date, I cannot recall any comic book publisher that has tried to make a black and white comic book compatible with Amazon's electronic book reader, the Kindle. I cannot name a single one that has shown interest in the Nook, the electronic book announced by Barnes and Noble a few weeks ago, . And I certainly notice no excitement on Microsoft’s own double spread electronic book, rumoured to ship in 2010. God knows double spreads are popular in comics. Yet, the iTablet which has never been confirmed gets all the adulation and trust, because it is coming from Apple and Messiah Steve jobs. If electronic books are the way of the future to save comic books, why isn’t anyone making comic books for e-readers, even if they are in black and white right now? The knowledge gained there would greatly enhance the skill and delivery capacity of any publisher that stakes its ground there. Why is everyone waiting after Apple?

Don’t get me wrong, being an atheist sucks. I too would like to believe and have an iTablet and do away with the comic books that take too much place in my home. If all this stuff was digitized, it could be stored on a few devices and kept in storage until recalled by a brief search through a simple browser. That would be cool. Unfortunately, as cool as an iTablet would be, it will not save the comic book industry. It would just move comic book readers that go buy their comics in stores to the iTablet, hurting existing comic book retailers in the process. That’s one second coming I am sitting out of. If a comic book publisher cannot figure out how to expand his market without relying on Apple’s iTablet then he deserves to fail.

For the comic book industry to save itself from extinction, it needs to deal once and for all with fundamental issues that keep getting ignored instead of praying for a Messiah like Steve Jobs.

1-The first thing is that publishers need to understand why people buy comic books. Why do people read comic books? This is one question everyone likes to skip. Well, you can’t sell a comic book on an iTablet if you don’t even know why people buy comic books. I’ve written about that last year and I understand it’s a tough question. Once you’ve got someone as a reader, how do you retain that customer?

2-Comic book publishing management needs to become professional. Why comic book publishing firms can’t be managed by people with business degrees or people that understand sales. Oh, I also wrote an article way back called "it’s all about the sale stupid." How many senior executive at current comic book publishers have ever written a business plan?

3-What can be done to grow comic books awareness without having to invest in the latest technology or gadget? Why do comic book publishers feel the need to continually invest in the latest gimmick, like a message board, MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter, Web comics, blogs, iPhone apps and now the iTablet? Why do they waste precious resources on a lot of gimmicks that don’t provide much benefits instead of concentrating their energies on one media platform, their Web sites and make sure they are ready to funnel through new potential comic book readers to books they might like instead? Oh, there’s an article for that!

4-What about your sales network from the direct market? How long can you continue to cannibalize their sales by introducing new contents on unproven networks instead of the local sales network that has invested in your product over the years? How do you make them part of your success instead of just trying to replace them with a digital solution? I know for a fact that large comic book publishers are working hard to drive sales to comic book stores and often contact them directly. But those valiant efforts are useless if another division at the publishing firm is working against the interests of the comic book retailers and sales representatives from the comic book publisher.

There are serious problems with a proposed iTablet. Knowing Apple, it could be a closed format that does not fit existing standards (say Google Books or Adobe Acrobat). It will not play friendly with third parties that try to open up the system. Just ask Palm Pre users about how Apple blocked their access to iTunes for the third time in less than four months. A more pressing issue is what will DC Comics do? I can already guess that Marvel Comics will work with anything made by Apple. It’s the Disney connection with Steve Jobs. But what if Time Warner (owner of DC Comics) and its impressive publishing empire decides to go with say Barnes and Noble, Microsoft or even Sony? Would we have a repeat of the Capital Comics versus Diamond Comics debacle as the main comic book distributor? How easy will it be for smaller publishers to use Apple’s iTablet? Would Apple censor comic books delivered on the iTablet platform the same way the Comics Code Authority once did? We know Apple has questionable ways of rejecting apps in its store right now. Would Apple force everyone to purchase their comic books through its iTunes store creating a new monopoly? Will comics purchased for the iPhone through third party comics app be transferable to the iTablet format? Another fundamental question is whether an iTablet from Apple would offer a comic book experience that is similar to what is available while reading a printed comic book? Reading an electronic book is different than reading a graphic intensive comic book. How would a comic book page look? Would it be anything compelling that would seriously make the average comic book reader switch format? Could aesthetic strengths alone convert non comic book readers to the new religion? I think I’ll remain a non believer and avoid drinking the Kool-Aid.