Digital Comics, What We Want

Another follow-up post, this time to what I mentioned at the end of my look at the new Graphic.ly comic reader, and what I’d like to see happen with digital comics. Warren Ellis adds a few more thoughts on what could really make these work for indie creators.

When creators who matter to me start really thinking about the in-app or cliented digital comics form of Comixology or graphic.ly, and start doing, say, 10 or 12 page comics (with whatever notational stuff shoved in the back that they feel like adding) and releasing them for 99 US cents every two weeks or so, I’m going to get interested really fast. And so will you. Particularly when these services perfect series-specific subscriptions that sideload the books automagically into your client locker or push an alert to your device.

I also like his idea of buying a graphic novel, and then receiving it installments, which could go a long way in supporting a creator financially during the process of creation.

That could even loosen up to, say, buying a subscription to a graphic novel, and having the discrete chapters pushing to you as they’re completed, on an entirely irregular schedule that builds up to something of not fewer pages than you signed on for, within an acceptable plus-or-minus of a previously announced timeframe.

I’ve also been contacted by someone at Graphic.ly who says that the transaction issues were due to problems on PayPal’s end, and that everything is working fine now.