COMICS ARE TOO EXPENSIVE
donahue
Face it people. We can all complain about the decline in comics sale,
bemoan the fact that some of the best writers and artists are going
unseen, cry that our industry is in the crapper, but the plain fact is
none of this is going to change until something's done about the basic
comic BOOK and its price. The whole format needs to be re-thought, or its
financing revamped. I don't care how great your House of Secrets or
Quantum & Woodys are, it's just too damn hard to justify two bucks or more
an issue! Hell, I buy comics like a fanatic, and even I've been balking
lately at these prices. It makes me really selective. We're all creative
types here, it seems, or at least somewhat intelligent {heh heh}, so let's
brainstorm a new model for comics. The current one isn't working, or at
least it's not working as well as it should be.
Adam
--
-- Adam Donahue
-- Internet and Media Consultant
-- mailto:ad...@cyber-guru.com
-- phone:212.443.9639
dave
I have to disagree. Many companies have tried lowering prices to no
avail. A lower priced 99 cent comic doesn't sell any better than a $2.95
comic. The problem isn't price - it's image (and I don't mean the
company -- well then again...) Comics are viewed as either for kids or
geeks by the majority of the public. They think there is nothing in
comics that will interest them. I think that the best way to save
comics is to show the non-comic buying public what they are missing.
Whether this means runing previews in Rolling Stone and Newsweek or
having ads on television (both of which would cost any company a small
fortune) I don't know... But that seems to be the answer to me.
*dave*
Sean Med
Uh... duh.
donahue
Gee, thanks for the intelligent reply.
Oh look, he's from AOL. Why am I not surprised.
Adam
Sean Med (sea...@aol.com) wrote:
: Uh... duh.
Sean Med
>Gee, thanks for the intelligent reply.
>
>Oh look, he's from AOL. Why am I not surprised.
>
>Adam
>
>Sean Med (sea...@aol.com) wrote:
>: Uh... duh.
Is that the best you can do, asshole?
Sean Medlock
donahue
: Is that the best you can do, asshole?
Wow, you were able to articulate a complete sentence. I am indeed
impressed.
Adam
donahue
SRoweCanoe (srowe...@aol.com) wrote:
: ? Because you have a free student account?
Bzzz. Wrong.
: And thank you for your intellegent reply as well...
:
: (and yes thank me for my intellegent reply to your intellegent reply to
: his intellegent reply, etc. etc. on and on word without end...)
No, I won't be sarcastic anymore. I apologize. I just thought it was a
very rude way to respond to my post. If you don't have anything to add,
that's fine. But that reply was pretty cold-hearted. Is it me, or is
RACM getting very vicious lately?
Best,
GreyWolf
On 23 Aug 1997 22:03:01 GMT, bria...@aol.com (Brian McDn) wrote:
>don...@acf2.nyu.edu (donahue) writes:
>
>>Face it people. We can all complain about the decline in comics sale,
>>bemoan the fact that some of the best writers and artists are going
>>unseen, cry that our industry is in the crapper, but the plain fact is
>>none of this is going to change until something's done about the basic
>>comic BOOK and its price. The whole format needs to be re-thought, or its
>>financing revamped. I don't care how great your House of Secrets or
>>Quantum & Woodys are, it's just too damn hard to justify two bucks or more
>>an issue! Hell, I buy comics like a fanatic, and even I've been balking
>>lately at these prices. It makes me really selective. We're all creative
>>types here, it seems, or at least somewhat intelligent {heh heh}, so let's
>>brainstorm a new model for comics. The current one isn't working, or at
>>least it's not working as well as it should be.
>
>Well, what is it you're suggesting, then? Yes, something needs to be done
>about prices. This is not new information. My subscription list has about
>70 titles on it. I KNOW comics are expensive. :)
This used to be me. When I was first going to college, I lived with
my parents. They didn't charge me rent, and I worked a 25 hour job a
week - so I had income. Well, with no rent to worry about, guess what
I blew it on?
Of course, that was all jim dandy, but when I finally moved out, I
wished I would've saved up some cash.... :)
>In another thread, I suggested that each Sandman Mystery Theatre storyline
>should be put out as one trade-paperback, rather than the 4 monthly issues.
> I'd like to see larger, quarterly comic book stories. If the writer
>wanted to write one long story, like Morrison's "New World Order" from JLA
>#1-4 could have the first quarterly issue of JLA. Or, you could have
>multiple shorter stories, like the DC Quarterly series, only bigger and
>better. I noticed that the JLA TPB was actually cheaper than the
>individual issues, so prices might be able to go down.
>
>I suppose that some people would feel lost and empty without their weekly
>haul of comics. :)
This would be me.... I really love my weekly haul. Going to the comic
shop and looking over the racks every week is part of my "comic
experience", if you will.
But on the other hand, how many times have you heard
>"This arc will probably read better in one sitting"?
I've heard it, but I don't subscribe to it. If I get terribly antsy
about the next issue that still has 3 weeks to arrive, I can go back
and read the last issue! And since it's not 100 pages, I can read it
quick. Whereas if I had to pick up a 100 page trade, I'd be more apt
not to read it.
>The problem with this plan is that people balk at paying $2.50 a month for
>a comic, so paying $7.95 or $8.95 for a tpb, even if it's 4 times as long
>as the monthly, might scare people away even more. Unfortunately, the
>consumer doesn't so much see that they could save a buck or two, and only
>have to spend that $8.95 every THREE months rather than once a month. They
>just see the price tag.
So, let's see. Say that your 68 (rounding down to make the math
easier) titles were to be put into tpb's. Assuming they each have 4
issues in them, so that they only come out 3 times a year, this would
give you about (68 / 4) 17 tpb's a month. That's about 4 tpb's a
week! That's IT? I need more of a fix than that! :)
Unless, of course, that all 68 tpb's were produced in the same month.
This would be mega-expensive, and it'd be a long 4 month period before
you got some more reading material!
You see, it might be cheaper to do it the TPB way. But the frequency
would be greatly impacted, and for me at least, frequency plays a
great part in my enjoyment of comics.
Plus, I love the serialized nature of it all. My favorite way to read
comics is to read the monthly first (aka SANDMAN), and then when the
whole storyline is done, collect it and read it all in one sitting!
Of course, that's doubly expensive...... but who said addictions have
to be cheap? :)
>Oh well, that's what I'd do.
I just couldn't handle the long wait inbetween.
>Brian.
>
>(I hope folks can quit sniping long enough to make this a readable
>thread.)
Well, I interjected a lot, but I snipped nothing! :)
David
Sean Med
don...@acf2.nyu.edu (donahue) wrote:
>: Is that the best you can do, asshole?
>
>Wow, you were able to articulate a complete sentence. I am indeed
>impressed.
I'm usually able to articulate quite a few sentences at
a time, but I obviously failed miserably in that case.
I apologize for posting such a stupid message, and
for calling you an asshole. I do wish you wouldn't
generalize like that, but then, I'm sure you were
just lashing out because you were pissed at me,
with good reason.
That said, I agree wholeheartedly that comics are
too expensive. In other breaking news, water is
wet and fire tends to be a bit warm.
Sean Medlock
ambrose
On 23 Aug 1997 22:03:01 GMT, bria...@aol.com (Brian McDn) wrote:
>don...@acf2.nyu.edu (donahue) writes:
>
>>Face it people. We can all complain about the decline in comics sale,
>>bemoan the fact that some of the best writers and artists are going
>>unseen, cry that our industry is in the crapper, but the plain fact is
>>none of this is going to change until something's done about the basic
>>comic BOOK and its price. The whole format needs to be re-thought, or its
>>financing revamped. I don't care how great your House of Secrets or
>>Quantum & Woodys are, it's just too damn hard to justify two bucks or more
>>an issue! Hell, I buy comics like a fanatic, and even I've been balking
>>lately at these prices. It makes me really selective. We're all creative
>>types here, it seems, or at least somewhat intelligent {heh heh}, so let's
>>brainstorm a new model for comics. The current one isn't working, or at
>>least it's not working as well as it should be.
>
>Well, what is it you're suggesting, then? Yes, something needs to be done
>about prices. This is not new information. My subscription list has about
>70 titles on it. I KNOW comics are expensive. :)
>
>In another thread, I suggested that each Sandman Mystery Theatre storyline
>should be put out as one trade-paperback, rather than the 4 monthly issues.
> I'd like to see larger, quarterly comic book stories. If the writer
>wanted to write one long story, like Morrison's "New World Order" from JLA
>#1-4 could have the first quarterly issue of JLA. Or, you could have
>multiple shorter stories, like the DC Quarterly series, only bigger and
>better. I noticed that the JLA TPB was actually cheaper than the
>individual issues, so prices might be able to go down.
>
>I suppose that some people would feel lost and empty without their weekly
>haul of comics. :) But on the other hand, how many times have you heard
>"This arc will probably read better in one sitting"?
>
>The problem with this plan is that people balk at paying $2.50 a month for
>a comic, so paying $7.95 or $8.95 for a tpb, even if it's 4 times as long
>as the monthly, might scare people away even more. Unfortunately, the
>consumer doesn't so much see that they could save a buck or two, and only
>have to spend that $8.95 every THREE months rather than once a month. They
>just see the price tag.
>
>Oh well, that's what I'd do.
>
>Brian.
>
>(I hope folks can quit sniping long enough to make this a readable
>thread.)
Apparently, the high cost of paper is a big factor in the rising cost
of comic books. Comics from just a few years ago used a lighter,
cheaper paper that did not hold ink well...nowadays, we have what
seems like very good to excellent quality paper. However, sometimes I
get the feeling that publishers use high quality stock for aesthetic
purposes only. In other words, using a lower quality (non-glossy
stock or thinner paper) wouldn't diminish the visuals/colors and
story. How about something in between? Something that still retains
ink/colors well, but at the same time, does not drive the cost of the
books up?
Probably impossible, but what about a major house like Marvel or DC
lowering the quality of paper in their books (not a major
downgrading...just enough to cut prices a bit, to $1.25 or $1.50) so
as to set a standard for the rest of the industry? By downgrading to
a lesser (but still good quality) paper and cutting prices,
well...maybe something will catch on. (Though maybe people *like*
paying more for better stock...remember the X-Men Deluxe controversy
from a few years back?)
Erik
_________
Remove the ^^^ from my address to email me.
Alleigh
bria...@aol.com (Brian McDn) wrote:
>don...@acf2.nyu.edu (donahue) writes:
But if one issue was to be part of a crossover (like those pesky
companies love to do) and a person wanting that specific issue would
have to buy the tpb, well unless the idjits actually could figure out
to put the total crossover together in the first place.
Another problem I see with the tpb idea is that people wanting to just
try a book would be paying 7 to 9 bucks (instead of .99 - 2.95 - the
"normal" range per issue) and if they didn't like the book they would
be out that much more money. People would be less likely try different
books.
The only thing that I can think of would to be have several comics
combined into on larger comic. Such as the Superman books, Spider-Man
books, X-Men (Uncanny, X-Men, X-Factor, Gen X, and Excalibur) and the
the Solo X (Wolvie, Cable and X-Man). But the problem with that would
be that some people may only want one title.
What I don't understand is why Marvel thinks L.S. and one-shots need
a higher price than the regular monthlies?
DwayneM595
>So if we're talking about a 96 page quarterly plus ads, the equivalent of
>4 regular issues, how much would you expect it to cost? Let's say a
>quarterly Sandman Mystery Theatre, which runs $2.50 monthly.
A very rough guess? About sixty thousand dolars for art and editorial.
Seps and printing? I couldn't say without knowing the print run and a lot
of other factors that I don't have a clue about. So let's stick with the
sixty thou for the sake of arguement. Less than five percent of all prose
books published are carrying that much overhead pre-publication. Almost
any 96 page color comic would. Most prose books manage to lose money in
spite of this.
Let's stick to comics for a second, If you're investing your money, do you
want to have sixty thousand dollars sitting in a drawer until it's ready
to be published or would you rather bet 15 thousand four times in the same
period? And only the most foolhardy, or should I say "agressive,"
retailer is going to order a ten dollar product in the same proportions as
four $2.50 products. Not on a non-returnable basis. Which reminds me of a
psychological consideration. Say a bunch of people tell me that SANDMAN is
terriffic? If I'm in the store, looking to make a casual buy, and it's 3
bucks, I may give it a shot. If it's 10 bucks (which it wouldn't be unless
it was selling in _extraordinary_ numbers, say like SPAWN in '92) I'll
probably pass.
>The Legion of Super Heroes #100 is going to be 96 pages, and will
>probablyrun about $5.95, if the news in the AOL chat is true. Is DC
going >to betaking a big hit on this, then?
I doubt they'll take a hit. They know what the books selling, and it's a
good bet that even more folks'll pony up extra for an aniversary issue.
But ask yourself, would you spend sis bucks for issue #101? I'm not sure I
would, and I've got a thirty-year run. However, even if disaster should
strike they probably wouldn't mind taking a hit on a book with such a long
history and such a faithful fan base.
>Does the grade of paper affect the price appreciably?
Not as much as you would think, and not enough to cut the cover price
appreciably.
Dwayne McDuffie
Tom Vincent
In article <5to814$7ss$1...@gte2.gte.net>, D Rapp <dr...@gte.net> wrote:
>
>Also, compare the content to past comics. The page count may not be all that
>different; but how many of those pages are one large panel with one or two
>sentences of dialogue? There is probably about 50%, at best, of the amount
>of story in these as there should be. The obsession with artwork and large
>elaborate panels has gotten way out of hand. Of course, that's much easier
>than trying to come up with a longer, more intricate story and drawing the
>artwork to coincide with it.
Dan, you have a really good point here, you're just approaching it from the
wrong side.
You are correct that the "obsession with artwork and large elaborate panels
has gotten way out of hand". Your reasoning for it is off though. (Please
allow me to state at this point that I agree completely with you.)
This trend, started by a few artists, dates back a few years to about the
early 90s. The speculative market was just finding its "feet". At a
convention, it didn't take artists long to realize that when selling
original artwork, they could price certain pages pretty high: splash pages
sold for the highest. Full body shots of major characters came in next (it
was even beter if *several* main characters were on a page. you could get
more $). Fight scenes followed closely behind, and on and on. I think you
get the picture.
Where splash pages were originally reserved for title pages (to set up the
mood for the story) or an occasional point where whatever was happening was
just too "big" or impressive to be squeezed into a panel (Kirby was THE
master of this), the splash had now become a commodity.
About the only pages artists had trouble selling were pages with
establishing shots, talking heads, etc. While these type of pages are
essential to good storytelling, they make for poor art sales. Artists
started doing whatever they could to avoid drawing those, even to the point
of rewriting the story to a degree, which, as you can imagine, didn't sit
too well with writers. Editors seemed to be turning a blind eye to this
development, because the sales seemed to be going up with each passing
month.
The most eggregious example of this ridiculous trend was one artist: now,
this guy wasn't a genius at anatomy, storytelling, two point perspective,
or any of the other things one had previously associated with good, solid
comic art. No, this fellow's forte was drawing grimacing people striking
impresive poses. It seemed that no matter *what* was written, this cat
would always manage to toss in a couple of pages which showed one of the
members of the team who's book it was strikin an impressive pose tking up
half the page, and squeezing the story in around it.
Unfortunately, it seems that because this has been going on so long, and
the nature of younger,new talent entering the field (most comic artists
learn to draw by looking at comics) this big page/big panel stuff is
becoming "accepted" comic storytelling.
---Tom Vincent
Ennead
donahue wrote:
: Face it people. We can all complain about the decline in comics sale,
: bemoan the fact that some of the best writers and artists are going
: unseen, cry that our industry is in the crapper, but the plain fact is
: none of this is going to change until something's done about the basic
: comic BOOK and its price. The whole format needs to be re-thought, or its
I agree, but - except for Scott McCloud's idea that comics will eventually
be distributed directly from the creator's web page to the reader's
computer - I haven't heard anything suggested that seems capable of making
much of a difference.
The web-idea won't work until 1) good, fast computer printers are as
common a household object as computers themselves, 2) the transmission
speed of internet stuff is vastly improved, for instance if we swich from
using phone lines to using cable TV or fiber-optic lines, and 3) most
importantly, some practicle method of charging people small amounts of
money - like a quarter (remember, the number and expense of middlemen to
be paid has been drastically reduced) - for downloading something from
your web site becomes available.
If it happens, it'll happen for black-and-white comics first, I suspect.
McCloud predicts that it'll be the dominant form of comics distribution in
10-20 years.
Yours,
--Ampersand
Cole
srowe...@aol.com (SRoweCanoe) wrote:
>In article <33ff95d5...@news.silcon.com>, ^^^leu...@hotmail.com
>(ambrose) writes:
>>(Though maybe people *like*
>>paying more for better stock...remember the X-Men Deluxe controversy
>>from a few years back?)
>Although how much is that was due to the fans fearful thinking that the
>cheaper paper were reprints?
Actually I thought that one was due to the fans not wanting to wait 2
or 3 weeks for their favorite book. The deluxe version was released
first, the standard version several weeks later. IMHO, Marvel stacked
the deck. If they had released both on the same day, I'd imagine the
cheaper version would have won out big. (And in most cases, the fans
didn't really even have a choice; a lot of comic shops ordered only
the earlier shippind deluxe version.)
Cole
DwayneM595
>I think a format like Paradox's "A History of Violence" holds a great
deal
>of potential. It was just under 300 pages, about 8"x5", b&w, and only
>$10 for a substantial, new story.
I like that format too (and the book, for that matter). But wasn't it a
compilation of four $5 books?
Dwayne McDuffie
DwayneM595
>A couple of comics have done very well this way... UNDERSTANDING >COMICS
and the two MAUS books. But they do seem to be exceptions.
Wasn't the first volume of Maus serialized in RAW?
Dwayne McDuffie
COMICKAZE
You know, as a retailer it amazes me how often the phrase "COMICS ARE
TOO
EXPENSIVE" is uttered to me instead of what is REALLY meant which is
that
"COMICS ARE TOO EXPENSIVE-for what you usually recieve".
Fast Food seems a good analogy to comics, where you have your big chains
slingin basically the same burger for $.99-$3.00 and garnering most of
the business. Every once in awhile they offer a truly tasty Marvels or
Kingdom Come Burger but usually only for a ltd. time, leaving one to
wonder why can't this be done on a regular basis.
Meanwhile it's up to us to decide if we will demand a better burger by
only buying the worthy or if we will continue to use to the convenience
and overwhelmong offerings of these purveyors of the bland to tide us
over to the next good meal.
As for quarterly books, I think those are too much akin to late shipping
books and as far as I'm concerned there is nothing worse than finding a
book I like and having to wait months for the next installment, whether
by design or happenstance.
I'd much rather see books done like Sin City where the six issues come
out monthly until the story is over and then a six month break until
he's
ready to go again. Or do an anthology book where you have 2-3 different
titles published in one book. The publisher could devote 75% to one
title and 25% another or do a 40%/30%/30%, 50%/30%/20% rotation that
gets fans of 3 different books to combine and drive up the sales for
that one title.
But then, no one ever asks me! =^>
--
Thanx from the heart of my bottom,
Comickaze
When you do a good deed, get a receipt, in case heaven is like the IRS.
COMICKAZE- SD's #1 source for Comics, Cards & Video -
in CA call(619)278-0371, all others(800)869-5275
Our Online Connection- http://www.glacierweb.com/comickaze
FREE INTERNET ISP- http://netcenter.com/freepage/sco5058.html
donahue
Tom Vincent (tom...@SPAMBLOCK.capital.net) wrote:
: > I don't care how great your House of Secrets or
: >>Quantum & Woodys are, it's just too damn hard to justify two bucks or more
: >>an issue!
: I'm sitting here in front of many thousands of dollars in hardware and
: software. *Somebody's* got to pay for it. I sure as hell don't want to.
: Man, what are you, un American or something? <*very* big grin, bells
: whistling and lights flashing to alert all to JOKE MODE. 'Cept you , Adam.
: I think you've gotten a handle on my humor, right boss?>
Ha ha! {grin}
Me un-American? Perish the thought! Heh heh. No, I totally realize that
someone has to pay for it, but I'm thinking strictly in terms of getting
more people back into reading comics. If it =is= the price of them that's
the main thing keeping people away, then what else could we do to keep the
income but broaden the acceptance? Didn't Busiek suggest making comics a
magazine-size format? I don't see what this doesn't deserve a shot.
Hell, make Vertigo a monthly title, with the stories and art of the all
the current titles, but also interviews, or fiction, or other things
related to Vertigo comics but necessarily comics themselves.
Quick note: I'm vacationing in California right now, and I'm not going to
finish reading all the responses here, or the rest of the rac newsgroups
for that matter, until I return. So please don't think I'm bailing on the
discussion I started! I'll do major clean-up upon my return.
GreyWolf
On Sun, 24 Aug 1997 16:43:52 GMT, ver...@bigfoot.com (Todd VerBeek,
gwm) wrote:
>>bria...@aol.com (Brian McDn) wrote:
>>>The problem with this plan is that people balk at paying $2.50 a month for
>>>a comic, so paying $7.95 or $8.95 for a tpb, even if it's 4 times as long
>>>as the monthly, might scare people away even more. Unfortunately, the
>>>consumer doesn't so much see that they could save a buck or two, and only
>>>have to spend that $8.95 every THREE months rather than once a month. They
>>>just see the price tag.
>
>My pal Alleigh said:
>>But if one issue was to be part of a crossover (like those pesky
>>companies love to do) and a person wanting that specific issue would
>>have to buy the tpb, well unless the idjits actually could figure out
>>to put the total crossover together in the first place.
>
>The publishers probably wouldn't =do= silly crossovers like that if they
>were publishing in this format instead. (That would be reason enough to
>switch, in my opinion. {smile})
>
>This publishing approach wouldn't work for all books, but there are some
>for which it would make considerably more sense than serialising them as
>monthlies. I don't read Sandman Mystery Theatre every month or Nexus
>every month when it's coming out; I save up the issues of a story and read
>them all together. So serialisation seems pointless to me.
>
>Cheers, Todd
>"The cautious seldom make mistakes (in bed)."
>- my fortune cookie at the 1996 r.a.c.* Comicon dinner
Not to argue, but........ (hee hee)
I like the serialism. For example, with the first 5-issue arc of
House Of Secrets - each issue was spooky, and it kept me excited for 5
months! I kept wanting to find out what was going to happen, I
chatted about it with friends, it was on my mind - for 5 months! I
still look back on that period of time fondly! :)
Now, had I read it in a TPB, all at once, I would've had an equally
great story, but the excitement would've been lessened. Yes, some of
the times I hate waiting for 3-4 weeks to get another 'fix'... but
serialism does give one a chance to get the excitement built up.
Actually, this is not so much an argument as it is more of a statement
of a different opinion.
David
Tom Galloway
In article <5tpn4v$5t3$2...@nadine.teleport.com> Ennead <enn...@linda.teleport.com> writes:
>A couple of comics have done very well this way... UNDERSTANDING COMICS
>and the two MAUS books. But they do seem to be exceptions.
Keep in mind that both were basically black and white (with a very few
color pages in UC). That alone will cut down costs considerably. Also
see Marvel's Essential series.
tyg t...@netcom.com
GreyWolf
On 24 Aug 1997 02:58:44 GMT, D Rapp <dr...@gte.net> wrote:
>donahue wrote:
>>
>> Face it people. We can all complain about the decline in comics sale,
>> bemoan the fact that some of the best writers and artists are going
>> unseen, cry that our industry is in the crapper, but the plain fact is
>> none of this is going to change until something's done about the basic
>> comic BOOK and its price. The whole format needs to be re-thought, or its
>> financing revamped. I don't care how great your House of Secrets or
>> Quantum & Woodys are, it's just too damn hard to justify two bucks or more
>> an issue! Hell, I buy comics like a fanatic, and even I've been balking
>> lately at these prices. It makes me really selective. We're all creative
>> types here, it seems, or at least somewhat intelligent {heh heh}, so let's
>> brainstorm a new model for comics. The current one isn't working, or at
>> least it's not working as well as it should be.
>>
>> Adam
>
>
>Also, compare the content to past comics. The page count may not be all that
>different; but how many of those pages are one large panel with one or two
>sentences of dialogue? There is probably about 50%, at best, of the amount
>of story in these as there should be. The obsession with artwork and large
>elaborate panels has gotten way out of hand. Of course, that's much easier
>than trying to come up with a longer, more intricate story and drawing the
>artwork to coincide with it.
>
>Dan
Very valid point. I'm against the large panels too, even though I
tend to drool over the exceptional ones! I guess that one or two
large panels (half - full page in size) per book isn't bad - but when
every other page contains large panels, it does tend to sacrifice
storytelling.
David
Carl Fink
On 25 Aug 1997 10:29:45 GMT, MBaron2156 <mbaro...@aol.com> wrote:
>The price of paper keeps going up . . .
Actually it has been dropping lately.
The "paper cost" argument is and always has been nothing but an
excuse for publishers -- the cost of paper is barely even a meaningful
component of comic costs, let alone the overwhelming factor it's
sometimes painted as.
Did you read Maggie's editorial in CBG a few weeks back, that for
print runs as small as 50 (!) one printer would charge under a dollar
an issue? (That might be a bit off, my memory sucks.)
--
Carl Fink ca...@dm.net
Manager, Dueling Modems Computer Forum
<http://dm.net>
"I don't mind being called a greedy, satanic terrorist." -Scott Adams
JOEZA
dave wrote:
>
> donahue wrote:
> >
> > Face it people. We can all complain about the decline in comics sale,
> > bemoan the fact that some of the best writers and artists are going
> > unseen, cry that our industry is in the crapper, but the plain fact is
> > none of this is going to change until something's done about the basic
> > comic BOOK and its price. The whole format needs to be re-thought, or its
> > financing revamped. I don't care how great your House of Secrets or
> > Quantum & Woodys are, it's just too damn hard to justify two bucks or more
> > an issue! Hell, I buy comics like a fanatic, and even I've been balking
> > lately at these prices. It makes me really selective. We're all creative
> > types here, it seems, or at least somewhat intelligent {heh heh}, so let's
> > brainstorm a new model for comics. The current one isn't working, or at
> > least it's not working as well as it should be.
> >
> > Adam
> >
> > -- Adam Donahue
> > -- Internet and Media Consultant
> > -- mailto:ad...@cyber-guru.com
> > -- phone:212.443.9639
>
> avail. A lower priced 99 cent comic doesn't sell any better than a $2.95
> comic. The problem isn't price - it's image (and I don't mean the
> company -- well then again...) Comics are viewed as either for kids or
> geeks by the majority of the public. They think there is nothing in
> comics that will interest them. I think that the best way to save
> comics is to show the non-comic buying public what they are missing.
> Whether this means runing previews in Rolling Stone and Newsweek or
> having ads on television (both of which would cost any company a small
> fortune) I don't know... But that seems to be the answer to me.
>
> *dave*
Sure there are companies that tried selling 99 cent comics. But the
problem is there are so few 99 cent titles that people don't notice them
and there're a thousand other 2 buck comics. The only way, is if all the
major company agree to lower the price of mostly all their products to a
new standard cheaper price. I'm pretty sure, this is how it should be.
JOEZA.
John C. Kirk
In article <340a63e0...@news.zippo.com>, "Todd VerBeek, gwm"
<ver...@bigfoot.com> writes
>What I find remarkable is that DC is able to sell enough =reprint= TPBs to
>justify the costs of reformatting and reproduction of material that's
>already been sold to its primary market. There were already gazillions of
>"Reign of the Supermen" comics out there, yet DC still found it worthwhile
>to reprint them in a huge, priced-to-sell TPB.
Well, I went and bought the TPBs surrounding the death of Superman from
normal bookshops, rather than comic stores, back before I was collecting
comics on a regular basis (and I've never read Superman on an ongoing
basis). I'd heard the hype, and just regarded it as the equivalent of
buying a Star Trek novel (at about the same price). I suspect that most
of the sales came this way, rather than to die hard Superman fans.
Thinking of this "TPB as novel" philosophy, maybe this is a way to
attract more readers. I've heard that "What Savage Beast" was a
bestseller, so would it be feasible to market more prose novels about
comics characters to a mainstream audience? I guess the downside to this
would be that not all superhero characters can be translated across
media this way; the Spider-Man novels I've read by Diane Duane (whose
other work I enjoy) have been very disappointing.
Anyway, enough of my ramblings ...
--
John C. Kirk
Jo...@golgotha.demon.co.uk http://www.golgotha.demon.co.uk/
I believe the technical term is ... "Oops"! (The Amazing Spider-Man)
dave
> >
> > I have to disagree. Many companies have tried lowering prices to no
> > avail. A lower priced 99 cent comic doesn't sell any better than a $2.95
> > comic. The problem isn't price - it's image (and I don't mean the
> > company -- well then again...) Comics are viewed as either for kids or
> > geeks by the majority of the public. They think there is nothing in
> > comics that will interest them. I think that the best way to save
> > comics is to show the non-comic buying public what they are missing.
> > Whether this means runing previews in Rolling Stone and Newsweek or
> > having ads on television (both of which would cost any company a small
> > fortune) I don't know... But that seems to be the answer to me.
> >
> > *dave*
>
> Sure there are companies that tried selling 99 cent comics. But the
> problem is there are so few 99 cent titles that people don't notice them
> and there're a thousand other 2 buck comics. The only way, is if all the
> major company agree to lower the price of mostly all their products to a
> new standard cheaper price. I'm pretty sure, this is how it should be.
>
> JOEZA.
Yeah, that's how it should be... But what are the chances that the major
publishers are gonna get together and decide they need to lower the
price of their product? It just ain't gonna happen...
*dave*
COMICKAZE
While researching the costs to self publish we found a local co. where
we could get 3000 b&w books printed for .65ea + writer, artist and
materials. There ar substantial discounts at 10,000+.
So it depends what it costs you to produce a camera ready book and how
much you have to spend on promotion. We figured to put an additional
.65
per book in promotion (Internet, direct mail and conventions) and about
$250 in materials or $4150.00/$1.35ea which grosses $1820 if we sell
every issue on our own at a hoped for cover price of $1.99.
Hernan Espinoza wrote:
>
> ca...@panix.com (Carl Fink) writes:
>
> >The "paper cost" argument is and always has been nothing but an
> >excuse for publishers -- the cost of paper is barely even a meaningful
> >component of comic costs, let alone the overwhelming factor it's
> >sometimes painted as.
>
> >Did you read Maggie's editorial in CBG a few weeks back, that for
> >print runs as small as 50 (!) one printer would charge under a dollar
> >an issue? (That might be a bit off, my memory sucks.)
>
> So does anyone _have_ the breakdown of costs-per-issue?
>
> Let's start from some solid numbers....
>
> -Hernan, suspects these numbers, like sales figures/demographics
> are trade secrets and will never appear here...
GreyWolf
On Tue, 26 Aug 1997 10:05:40 -0600, cpr...@worldnet.att.net (Priest)
wrote:
>Cameron's "Spider-Man," if it ever got made, might help things. I haven't
>yet seen a dumb Cameron movie, and the all hit the right beats for great
>comic book stories.
>
Wouldn't this be great? I'd love it!
>This would require both an extraordinary level of cooperation between
>competing companies, egos on leashes, and wringing more bucks out of
>parent companies who (seemingly) hold the comic companies as merchandising
>cash cows and nothing more. Somebody needs to go up to the corporate
>level and make the suits understand if DC/Marvel publishing goes under,
>they won't have anything to license.
>
>And if we could find our way back to, oh, 1965 when we were doing
>*incredible* numbers, the suits would start seeing real profit from the
>publishing programs again. But they have to shell out to make this
>hjappen. And then the comic companies have to stop shoving more and more
>product at fewer and fewer people, and make *real* steps towards expanding
>the market.
>
>Then you *could* conceiveably have 48-page $3 comics that earn them rack
>space in general merchandise outlets.
>
>--
>christopher j. priest // cheyenne mountain ranch, colorado
I can just see it now - let's advertise Strangers In Paradise on OPRAH
- I'm sure many women would be intrigued. We could get Astro City on
LARRY KING LIVE. And maybe a comercial for Sin City somewhere in the
middle of a COPS episode! Heck, with the number of kids alone that
watch COPS, any comic could be advertised! :)
Ooh, all the advertising possibilites - just think what could be done
if we could get a SUPER-BOWL spot.....
David
David Tallan
Hernan Espinoza <espi...@cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:
: Just out of curiosity, if it is not on a per-issue basis,
: what are the units you (or comics publishers in general) use for
: business accounting purposes? Print runs?
Well, there is business accounting and then there is the real
world. If my memory serves me correctly, for tax purposes
(which is where the accounting stuff becomes really important) the
per unit cost is really only the production cost (that is, the
printing cost) so that we'd say "We have so many units of merchandise
(comics) which cost so much to print working out to an average
of so much per unit". These expenses are, of course, taxable.
It's not an expense, it's an investment you are making in merchandise
you are hoping to sell at a profit.
Shipping expenses, on the other hand, are expenses (deductable)
and not part of the "per unit cost".
However, in the real world, printing is an expense (money that we
have to spend to get a product to you) and shipping is every bit
as much a part of getting the comic from Tara's fertile imagination
to your collection as printing (and often a more expensive part).
Of course, I'm not an accountant, nor do I play one in a comic
book.
--
Respectfully,
David Tallan
co-publisher GALAXION
Helikon Comics
check out our web page (and read the entire first issue FREE!)
http://www.interlog.com/~dtallan/galaxion/
dta...@interlog.com
Todd VerBeek, gwm
>Ennead wrote:
>> I agree, but - except for Scott McCloud's idea that comics will eventually
>> be distributed directly from the creator's web page to the reader's
>> computer - I haven't heard anything suggested that seems capable of making
>> much of a difference.
>>
>> The web-idea won't work until 1) good, fast computer printers are as
>> common a household object as computers themselves, 2) the transmission
>> speed of internet stuff is vastly improved, for instance if we swich from
>> using phone lines to using cable TV or fiber-optic lines, and 3) most
>> importantly, some practicle method of charging people small amounts of
>> money - like a quarter (remember, the number and expense of middlemen to
>> be paid has been drastically reduced) - for downloading something from
>> your web site becomes available.
My pal janis berzins said:
>(1) Are printers really that much of a factor? Would you want to print
>out the comic when you got it? It seems that it would be far cheaper to
>mass produce them if you're going to print them anyway. I think what
>we're waiting for here is an epiphany on the part of the reading public.
>(And lots better computer monitors.)
I don't think that "epiphany" will be happening any time soon. The
"paperless office" generates more reams of printed matter than ever
before, and that's because people =like= paper. It's a time-tested
technology, and what computers offer (and will ever offer) is (in many
ways) a poor substitute for it.
>(2) This is really one of major hurdles. How fast do transmissions have
>to be? A 56K modem could download a 20 page comic of 250K .jpeg pages
>in about 11 minutes (theoretically). That's pretty poor quality for a
>comic page but it isn't that long.
It is if the book only takes you 10 minutes to read. {smile} Someone
reading a comic book acquired through the net is likely to be reading it
=while= they're downloading it (instant gratification, you know). If
there's any delay between when I'm done reading and when I can turn the
page, forget it.
>> If it happens, it'll happen for black-and-white comics first, I suspect.
>I'm not sure I understand why.
Because monochrome image files are 1/3 the size of full-color images of
the same resolution, and strictly black-and-white images (or with very few
shades of grey) can be even smaller than that.
>> McCloud predicts that it'll be the dominant form of comics distribution in
>> 10-20 years.
>Probably, but we will be subscribing to everything else that way by then
>too.
I wouldn't count on it. I know better than to underestimate the magnitude
of technological change, but I also know not to overestimate the degree to
which people adapt to it. I'll still be around and kicking 10-20 years
from now, but at 32, I'm already pretty set in my preference for a small
stack of folded paper in my hand for reading. (And that's not even
getting into the "collector" mindset.) And I'm one of the geeks who
=likes= high tech.
Tom Vincent
In article <B02A0DCE9...@ag017.du.pipex.com>, Robin
Ri...@dial.pipex.com (Robin Riggs) wrote:
>
>Uh, Tom, surely that 120 dpi figure for the printed page is the frequency
>of the halftone screen rather than a pixel measurement.
Yup. You're right.
---Tom Vincent
janis berzins
Tom Vincent wrote:
>
> In article <34030F...@earthlink.net>, jabe...@earthlink.net wrote:
>
> >
> >(1) Are printers really that much of a factor? Would you want to print
> >out the comic when you got it? It seems that it would be far cheaper to
> >mass produce them if you're going to print them anyway. I think what
> >we're waiting for here is an epiphany on the part of the reading public.
> >(And lots better computer monitors.)
>
> my HD- one at 72dpi (resolution for a computer minoter) and one at 300 dpi
> (the size I actually work in) When printes, the pages are at 120 dpi, and I
> don't have one that size readily available for comparison.
> Also, there is a substantial loss of image quality when you bring the res
> down to 72 dpi. This loss would also be evident at the 120 used for
> printing.
> Here are the sizes:
>
> 300 dpi Photoshop document 12,987,610 (1-2 mb could probably be shaved off
> by conversion to JPEG)
>
> 72 dpi JPEG 261,016
>
> Given these file sizes, I just don't think it's realistic to publish
> exclusively on the web
>
Well, I just looked at the file sizes of several scanned comic pages I
have and a page that fills a 17 inch monitor with a perfectly acceptable
quality is about a 4Meg .bmp file (no compression) and less than 1 Meg
as a .jpg file. And that's in color. Sure there is a loss in quality,
but comics have never been famous for high quality reproduction in the
first place and those files are wasting bits because the number of
colors they were scanned at (16 million) is far greater than the number
of colors actually reproduced on the comic page. For the sake of
reading a comic for a tenth of what the paper version costs (or reading
10 times as many comics as I can afford now), there is still an argument
for Web comics. But we have to untie ourselves from Guttenberg first.
It'll happen sooner or later. The last several generations have gotten
farther and farther from getting most of their information from paper
already.
> >
> >> If it happens, it'll happen for black-and-white comics first, I suspect.
> >
> >I'm not sure I understand why.
>
> Because the file sizes are so much smaller. That 12.9 MB page in black and
> white was only about 1.3 MB in B&W, if I remember correctly.
>
This explains why so many web pages are in black and white, because
color takes up too much bandwidth. Yes, color comics are more
attractive and more expensive, but we're talking about an ecconomy of at
least two-thirds and possibly as much as one-tenth. Since most people
have unlimited net access for about $20 a month, I think they would
consider the added time a color comic would take at download to be a
good value if the price of the subscription wasn't more. Especially as
modem speeds continue to increase. For that matter, You could put
several hundred of your 12 Meg files on a CD and press it for about a
dollar. I don't see technology as the reason there aren't cheaper ways
to deliver comics.
--
jabe...@earthlink.net
"They say time is the fire in which we burn."
janis berzins
Todd VerBeek, gwm wrote:
>
> My pal janis berzins said:
> >out the comic when you got it? It seems that it would be far cheaper to
> >mass produce them if you're going to print them anyway. I think what
> >we're waiting for here is an epiphany on the part of the reading public.
> >(And lots better computer monitors.)
>
> "paperless office" generates more reams of printed matter than ever
> before, and that's because people =like= paper. It's a time-tested
> technology, and what computers offer (and will ever offer) is (in many
> ways) a poor substitute for it.
>
the limiting factor. The "paperless office" is a possibility (though at
the time it was used it was an advertizing slogan) but we still have
people printing out memos and then stuffing the paper into a fax machine
to send it somewhere. Actually, faxes became popular long after the
ability to do pretty much the same thing with a computer was a proven
technology. People do like paper and its real handy, but sending
information over a computer is already cheaper and is getting less
expensive while paper costs continue to go up. Newspaper and
periodicals are disposable data, and while you can line the birdcage
with the morning paper it doesn't have a searchable database and you
probably pay to get rid of all those pages the next day (unless your
parrot craps a LOT). There are advantages and disadvantages to both,
but if you are paying for the data and not the atoms, why not JUST pay
for the data.
> >(2) This is really one of major hurdles. How fast do transmissions have
> >to be? A 56K modem could download a 20 page comic of 250K .jpeg pages
> >in about 11 minutes (theoretically). That's pretty poor quality for a
> >comic page but it isn't that long.
>
> It is if the book only takes you 10 minutes to read. {smile} Someone
> reading a comic book acquired through the net is likely to be reading it
> =while= they're downloading it (instant gratification, you know). If
> there's any delay between when I'm done reading and when I can turn the
> page, forget it.
Then download the whole thing attached to an e-mail and you can read it
as fast as your monitor can redisplay the page. It's an emergent
technology, some things are going to be done differently, certainly.
Are the trade offs worth reading 10 times as many comics as you do now,
or having 10 times as many comics to choose from?
>
> >> If it happens, it'll happen for black-and-white comics first, I suspect.
>
> >I'm not sure I understand why.
>
> Because monochrome image files are 1/3 the size of full-color images of
> the same resolution, and strictly black-and-white images (or with very few
> shades of grey) can be even smaller than that.
While the savings for printing comics in black and white is considerable
it is far less for publishing color on the web, and we have few comics
in B&W now. I think the value added for color web comics is worth the
extra size if the value added for printed comics is worth the extra
money. I would think the addition of color would be a good reason for
someone who is considering print publishing in B&W on a shoestring to
consider the Web as an alternative. People have already proven they
will pay more for color.
> >> McCloud predicts that it'll be the dominant form of comics distribution in
> >> 10-20 years.
>
> >Probably, but we will be subscribing to everything else that way by then
> >too.
>
> I wouldn't count on it. I know better than to underestimate the magnitude
> of technological change, but I also know not to overestimate the degree to
> which people adapt to it. I'll still be around and kicking 10-20 years
> from now, but at 32, I'm already pretty set in my preference for a small
> stack of folded paper in my hand for reading. (And that's not even
> getting into the "collector" mindset.) And I'm one of the geeks who
> =likes= high tech.
Perhaps at 32 you have already gotten used to paper, but that doesn't
mean that kids growing up now will. Your generation gets most of it's
information from TV when the generation before it thought that a
newspaper was the only way to get the news. Double the cost of paper a
few times over the next 10-20 years and drop the cost of computer
communication by about half every 18 months over that same period and
have another look at whether that stack of paper is really worth what
you'll be paying for it. I agree that the time it takes people to adapt
to change is the limiting factor, but don't underestimate the pressure
cost and convience can put on that adaptation. I've been e-mailing
people since 1980, but in the last couple of years EVERYBODY has started
doing it. The tech was there a long time ago but in the meantime we
still had people printing out a document, stuffing it into a fax
machine, having it printed out on the other end, and then scaning (or
typing) the fax into a computer on the other end. But there are not
near as many of those people as there were only 5 years ago. Delivery
of periodicals to your computer is comming. I think Newspapers will be
first, but it seems inevetable.
janis berzins
David Tallan wrote:
>
> janis berzins <jabe...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> : That kind of makes the argument of why prices are so high, doesn't it?
> : That would mean with a $2 cover price you would be at break-even, since
> : the retailer is going to want about half the cover price. Anything
> : above $2 and issue would go to the creative people.
>
> Not quite. The distributors get a cut, too. The shippers get a piece.
> Some of that money may go towards trying to get more people to buy
> it. Some of the money goes towards supplies. There are also the
> costs of making the plates and, if you are going to have a colour
> cover, doing the separations. It's a good thing the creative
> people love doing what they're doing!
>
Absolutely, but even without considering THOSE costs we're already up to
$2 an issue!
DCOJohanna
>>what are the chances that the major
publishers are gonna get together and decide they need to lower the
price of their product?<<
Isn't that illegal? The "publishers getting together" part, anyway?
Johanna
COMICKAZE
restrict page rates and things like that you might have a point but who
in their right mind would think of suing a company for charging less for
a product anyway?
Elayne Wechsler-Chaput
Johanna Draper (dcojo...@aol.com) wrote:
: >>what are the chances that the major
: publishers are gonna get together and decide they need to lower the
: price of their product?<<
: Isn't that illegal? The "publishers getting together" part, anyway?
Sounds like collusion to me. But if it's collusion to the benefit of the
consumers...?
- Elayne (it'd be a first, at any rate <g>)
--
"No. That's not what I'm saying. As a matter of fact, I'm saying that
that's not what I'm saying, and I've been saying it, and I will continue
to KEEP saying it until people stop telling me that I'm saying something
else." - Lemming <lemm...@cybernex.net>, making a point on rac*
janis berzins
Tom Vincent wrote:
>
> In article <34052B...@earthlink.net>, jabe...@earthlink.net wrote:
...
> >
> >Well, I just looked at the file sizes of several scanned comic pages I
> >have and a page that fills a 17 inch monitor with a perfectly acceptable
> >quality is about a 4Meg .bmp file (no compression) and less than 1 Meg
> >as a .jpg file. And that's in color. Sure there is a loss in quality,
> >but comics have never been famous for high quality reproduction in the
> >first place
>
> distill that number down to households with internet access as well, and
> the number gets even smaller. Although many people have 17 inch monitors,
> and a few really, really lucky ones have 21 inch, most people still have 14
> or 15 inch. Trust me, it's not adequate to display a comic page on. Now,
> the audience has gotten even smaller yet.
>
While I agree with your basic premise that we aren't ready for web
delivered comics yet, let me play devil's advocate for a minute. Look at
the other side of that equation. Your print comic is probably only
going to be seen by folks that go into comic shops and then when you
eliminate the folks who frequent comic shops that don't stock a lot
except the biggest sellers (I have yet to find a shop in my area (out of
about 10!) that even stocks Cerebus for the shelf). Divide that by the
number of folks who are already spending their bugeted amound on comics
every month and would have to drop another title to try yours. Frankly,
for the small amount of overhead it would take (especially when you
consider that most comics producers already have some sort of presence
on the web) I don't think it would take THAT many sales to make it worth
doing. Especially if it allows new readers to try your comic for a
quarter rather than two and a half bucks. And since the number of folks
who own computers is certainly larger than the number of folks who find
themselves in a comic shop frequently, what exactly is the downside?
And BTW, I don't think you can say that most households (at least in the
US) don't own a computer anymore. The last I saw, the number was right
at the 50% mark and a good percentage of those have 15" monitors or
better.
> Re: resolution, there is a real noticibale difference between the 300 res
> and 72 res files. Maybe this wouldn't bother a lot of people, but it
> bothers me- a lot. In order to enlarge the image enought to read the text
> on the page, the artwork blurs.
Well, there certainly is a quality tradeoff. On the other hand, there
is a vibrancy to backlit colors that no paper can begin to rival.
That's why movie posters in theatres are backlit, for one example. This
especially lends itself to many of the genres that comics are fond of.
You could send the file at 1600x1200 and run it at that if your 15"
monitor and video card are up to it (though 1028x756 is probably as high
as you would need). I think interlace and refresh rates are still the
problem. Most computer eyestrain still seems to be linked to monitors
that are adjusted too bright and flicker. Double or triple those puny
80Hz refresh rates and a monitor will become a lot friendlier (and more
like paper, with it's infinite refresh rate) to read.
> >and those files are wasting bits because the number of
> >colors they were scanned at (16 million) is far greater than the number
> >of colors actually reproduced on the comic page.
>
> An RGB image can give something like 16.3 million colors. CMYK (used in
> printing) gives a couple hundred thousand. An RGB image is smaller on the
> disk, I think, but converting a file originally done in CMYK (the mode I
> work in) to RGB doesn't make a substantial difference in file size.
>
Are you using compression software optimized for the transition and
number of colors you actually want? 16 Bit color seem more than enough
for comics and perhaps 8 bit with an optimized color palette would be
enough for some applications (such as 60's reprints).
Which brings up another point. Using the Web is another way to keep
your work in print longer. Shelf space consists of enough secondary
storage to keep the files on. You sell your own backissues and the
reader avoids questions of when to jump on to a title, or how much they
might pay for backissues because everybody wants to catch what they
missed. Want to start reading JLA because you've heard so much talk in
the newsgroup? Hop over to DC's order website and have the whole run
delivered while you sleep tonight.
This also leads to the biggest reason this wont happen overnight. We're
talking about what will eventually be a fundamental change in commerce.
The home shopping club is just the embrionic form of what will
eventually be interactive catalogues for just about anything you want to
buy. Newspapers and Magazines first, then music, software and some
books would seem the next natural step. There is just no way to predict
how much of the US ecconomy will eventually be trasacted over the net or
it's progeny.
Someday.
> > For the sake of
> >reading a comic for a tenth of what the paper version costs (or reading
> >10 times as many comics as I can afford now), there is still an argument
> >for Web comics. But we have to untie ourselves from Guttenberg first.
> >It'll happen sooner or later. The last several generations have gotten
> >farther and farther from getting most of their information from paper
> >already.
>
> I don't know- I still think the upfront costs are too great and
> transmission too slow.
>
> Also- everyone would need a Jazz drive to store their collections on, and
> be burning thru disks like nobody's business.
>
Oh that's a major sticking point. We're talking about cheap, disposable
reading material. You know, the way comics were when they sold in the
millions per issue? Meant to be thrown away. If you are a collector,
you really should stick with something that will fit in a bag. If you
just love to read comics, but don't want to have to give up so much
other entertainment to afford them, you can just sub the download
versions. Like people who love movies but prefer them on HBO. Or
subscribe to magazines and (gasp!) throw them away after they read them.
Anyway, you can still keep the ones you really like. Multi-Gig drives
and recordable CD's are here.
>
> I have a 33.6 modem. Even if I bumped it up to 56, it wouldn't be worth the
> time to me to sit here and tie up my phone line for the amount of time it
> would take to download a comic. An ISDN line, or hookup via CATV coax cable
> would be needed. Now consider those costs-
> around here (Albany, NY), you'll pay about $100 or so for the initial
> wiring from the phone company. The routers will run about $300. Local ISP's
> that provide ISDN lines charge about $50/month.
> or, there's cable: Time Warner just started offering access via their coax
> lines about a month ago here. You need basic cable (20/month) rent their
> equipment (god knows what they're charging for that- I'd estimate at least
> $7/month) and the access itself is $40/month.
>
> I pay 16.95/month for unlimited access. why would I change? Not to get
> comics on the web, that's for damn sure.
>
Because in a few years your setup will be obsolete and you're going to
have to change anyway. No, not yet. But soon. 4 Years ago an internet
connection would probably cost you $10-$20 a month PLUS $2-$3 and hour
over a measley 5 or 10 hours. And those were precious hours, because
your modem was only going to be a 14.4. Now ISDN lines are becomming
more popular as an alternative to a second phone line for families. My
first modem was a 300 baud and I paid about $400 for it. That was not
20 years ago.
> Again, Janis, you can increase modem sppeds all you want- the phone lines
> are only capapble of handling so much data, which limits that speed. Just
> like your computer- you could have a 700mhz processor, but it won't do you
> much good with a 40mhz bus.
>
That's right. A phone line has an actuall speed of 1200 baud (if I
remember) everything above that already surpases the actual speed of
phone line transmission. And there's cable and ISDN and asynchronous
transfer and DBS to your primestar dish just around the corner or here
already. Are we going to wait until all these are common before we
start to prepare? (Yes, I think the industry will.) In a market where
the best selling books move less than 200,000 issues a month, and
everyone seems to agree that cost is a factor, wouldn't just 10 or 20
thousand new subscribers be worthy to pursue?
> For that matter, You could put
> >several hundred of your 12 Meg files on a CD and press it for about a
> >dollar. I don't see technology as the reason there aren't cheaper ways
> >to deliver comics.
>
> Now this makes much more sense than web based. Much more.
>
Yeah, but nobody seems to be doing anything on this front either. Like
I said, a paradiem shift.
Todd VerBeek, gwm
>> >>what are the chances that the major
>> publishers are gonna get together and decide they need to lower the
>> price of their product?<<
>DCOJohanna wrote:
>> Isn't that illegal? The "publishers getting together" part, anyway?
My pal COMICKAZE said:
>No why would it be? Now if they "colluded" to raise the prices or to
>restrict page rates and things like that you might have a point but who
>in their right mind would think of suing a company for charging less for
>a product anyway?
Technically, price fixing is price fixing. If the major players in the
industry got together and agreed to =any= certain pricing, I'm pretty sure
they'd be violating anti-trust laws, even if the new price were lower.
This is because they would not be =competing= with each other, which is a
violation of the First Law Of The Sacred Marketplace.
And what they'd be doing =could= be considered predatory pricing. That's
when a company artificially lowers their prices (usually falling back on
cash reserves or other resources to make up for the loss) in order to
drive a competitor out of business. And if DC, Marvel, and Image were all
selling their books for 75 cents, you can bet that a lot of $2.95
self-publishers =would= go under, if only because readers would grouse
about how the self-pub-ers were "ripping them off".
janis berzins
COMICKAZE wrote:
>
> Fast Food seems a good analogy to comics, where you have your big chains
> slingin basically the same burger for $.99-$3.00 and garnering most of
> the business. Every once in awhile they offer a truly tasty Marvels or
> Kingdom Come Burger but usually only for a ltd. time, leaving one to
> wonder why can't this be done on a regular basis.
>
> Meanwhile it's up to us to decide if we will demand a better burger by
> only buying the worthy or if we will continue to use to the convenience
> and overwhelmong offerings of these purveyors of the bland to tide us
> over to the next good meal.
>
McDonald's current loss of market share over the last two years is being
attibuted, in large part, to a lack of quality or their product.
Todd VerBeek, gwm
>> My pal janis berzins said:
>> >(2) This is really one of major hurdles. How fast do transmissions have
>> >to be? A 56K modem could download a 20 page comic of 250K .jpeg pages
>> >in about 11 minutes (theoretically). That's pretty poor quality for a
>> >comic page but it isn't that long.
>Todd VerBeek, gwm wrote:
>> It is if the book only takes you 10 minutes to read. {smile} Someone
>> reading a comic book acquired through the net is likely to be reading it
>> =while= they're downloading it (instant gratification, you know). If
>> there's any delay between when I'm done reading and when I can turn the
>> page, forget it.
My pal janis berzins said:
>Then download the whole thing attached to an e-mail and you can read it
>as fast as your monitor can redisplay the page. It's an emergent
>technology, some things are going to be done differently, certainly.
>Are the trade offs worth reading 10 times as many comics as you do now,
>or having 10 times as many comics to choose from?
There aren't enough hours in the day for me to read 10 times as many
comics as I do now, and I already have more to choose from than I need.
>> >> McCloud predicts that it'll be the dominant form of comics distribution in
>> >> 10-20 years.
>> >Probably, but we will be subscribing to everything else that way by then
>> >too.
>> I wouldn't count on it. I know better than to underestimate the magnitude
>> of technological change, but I also know not to overestimate the degree to
>> which people adapt to it. I'll still be around and kicking 10-20 years
>> from now, but at 32, I'm already pretty set in my preference for a small
>> stack of folded paper in my hand for reading. (And that's not even
>> getting into the "collector" mindset.) And I'm one of the geeks who
>> =likes= high tech.
>Perhaps at 32 you have already gotten used to paper, but that doesn't
>mean that kids growing up now will.
My point was that 10-20 years from now, I'll still be be very far from
dead, as will millions of people even older (and more set in their ways)
than I am. Your predication that our preferences for and usage of paper
will just fade away in that time frame is overlooking this fact.
>Your generation gets most of it's
>information from TV when the generation before it thought that a
>newspaper was the only way to get the news. Double the cost of paper a
>few times over the next 10-20 years and drop the cost of computer
>communication by about half every 18 months over that same period and
>have another look at whether that stack of paper is really worth what
>you'll be paying for it.
Much of the increase in paper price has been due to increasing demand.
Since you're predicting an overall decrease in demand, you should expect
paper prices to drop. And it would not surprise me at all to see the
price curve on comm service leveling off (or even rising), as global
bandwidth is absorbed, and demand continues to increase.
>I agree that the time it takes people to adapt
>to change is the limiting factor, but don't underestimate the pressure
>cost and convience can put on that adaptation. I've been e-mailing
>people since 1980, but in the last couple of years EVERYBODY has started
>doing it.
"Everyone"? So why am I having such a difficult time sending e-mail to my
parents, my sisters, my boyfriend's parents and siblings, my next-door
neighbours (on both sides), the guy I met at the coffeehouse a few weeks
ago, my new boss, the graphic designer I'm supposed to be collaborating
with, the social service agencies I volunteer for, etc? You're
demonstrating a rather considerable lack of perspective with such
comments.
>The tech was there a long time ago but in the meantime we
>still had people printing out a document, stuffing it into a fax
>machine, having it printed out on the other end, and then scaning (or
>typing) the fax into a computer on the other end. But there are not
>near as many of those people as there were only 5 years ago. Delivery
>of periodicals to your computer is comming. I think Newspapers will be
>first, but it seems inevetable.
(But will the spelling be better than in Usenet? {smile})
I don't doubt that it's coming. So is the eventual election of a
Republican president, another Ice Age, the nova stage of the Sun, and the
entropic death of the Universe. None of which I am particularly eager
for. {smile}
You seem to be assuming that this change will be (when it's finished) a
good thing, and the only problem is the difficulty of getting there. I
disagree. Just because a change to electronic media may be possible, that
doesn't make it desirable.
Todd VerBeek, gwm
My pal janis berzins said:
>reading a comic for a tenth of what the paper version costs (or reading
>10 times as many comics as I can afford now), there is still an argument
>for Web comics. But we have to untie ourselves from Guttenberg first.
>It'll happen sooner or later. The last several generations have gotten
>farther and farther from getting most of their information from paper
>already.
(One might argue that the last several generations have also gotten
farther and father from getting meaningful and accurate information in the
process. If the archetypal example of the "print" medium is the
Guttenberg Bible, the archetypal "broadcast" content was the CBS Evening
News with Walter Cronkite, and the archetypal "net" material is Dilbert,
www.babes.com, or rec.humour.funny, that suggests an overall decline in
the quality of the content from one to the next. But that's another rant
altogether. {smile})
>> >> If it happens, it'll happen for black-and-white comics first, I suspect.
>>jabe...@earthlink.net wrote:
>> >I'm not sure I understand why.
>Tom Vincent wrote:
>> Because the file sizes are so much smaller. That 12.9 MB page in black and
>> white was only about 1.3 MB in B&W, if I remember correctly.
>This explains why so many web pages are in black and white, because
>color takes up too much bandwidth. Yes, color comics are more
>attractive and more expensive, but we're talking about an ecconomy of at
>least two-thirds and possibly as much as one-tenth. Since most people
>have unlimited net access for about $20 a month,
Are you competing with Pat O'Neill for the most unsupported generalisation
about the Internet here? {smile} As the Bard put it: There are more modes
of connecting to the Internet than are dreamt of in your philosophy,
Horatio.
Besides, based on what I know from my former job in information and
communications services, I'm pretty confident that "unlimited access"
rates will not last. AOL found out the hard way one of the worst hazards
of such programs, and just as local phone companies are moving toward
"measured service" instead of a flat monthly rate, so are the major
commercial data carriers (e.g. MCI, AT&T, Sprint). In other words,
instead of paying $XXX/month for a T1, T3, etc, you'll get charged for how
much data you receive/transmit over it. Your local cable company is
heading the same way with tiered and pay-per-view services. And your
local ISP will be charging you by the packet as soon as competitive
pressures force them to (and the tools exist to do so cost-effecitvely).
>I think they would
>consider the added time a color comic would take at download to be a
>good value if the price of the subscription wasn't more. Especially as
>modem speeds continue to increase.
As Tom mentioned, we're pretty much at the theoretical limit for data
transmission through the current phone system. Dramatically higher speeds
will require a continued overhaul of the hardware we use, costing a great
deal of money along the way, and not reaching everyone at the same time.
Unless you already have a computer with a high-speed network connection
(and most homes do =not=), that's a lot of money to invest up-front to
read comics (or other publications) online. By contrast, a $2.50 cover
price on a comic =book= isn't much of a hurdle.
>For that matter, You could put
>several hundred of your 12 Meg files on a CD and press it for about a
>dollar. I don't see technology as the reason there aren't cheaper ways
>to deliver comics.
You're right: technology isn't the reason. But technology isn't the
solution, either. I'm not trying to denigrate technology; it makes a
great many things possible that would not be otherwise. Comics as we know
them are possible because of modern printing technology. I've spent the
past decade and a half playing and working with high tech, and love it.
But even when communication technology gets good enough to transmit images
fast enough, and display technology gets good enough to show them as well
as current printing technology does, there will still be things that paper
is simply =better= for.
Robin
In article <3406F3...@earthlink.net>,
janis berzins <jabe...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>Are you using compression software optimized for the transition and
>number of colors you actually want? 16 Bit color seem more than enough
>for comics and perhaps 8 bit with an optimized color palette would be
>enough for some applications (such as 60's reprints).
It does sound that way doesn't it? Unfortunately it doesn't work that way.
The extra bit depth doesn't just give you additional colours. It also
smooths the transitions between those colours. If you use a reduced palette
then you are going to get dithering trying to approwimate smooth
transitions.
Take a look at the difference between a scanned page which has been saved
as a 24bit jpeg compared to the same image as a gif (8bit). Even
reproduction of 60's reprints benefit from the extra bit depth.
Robin Riggs.
COMICKAZE
Jason Fliegel wrote:
>
> As for the why -- well, suppose DC, Marvel, Image, and Acclaim got
> together and set prices for comics at 75 cents each. How long do you
> think Dark Horse would be able to stay in business? It wouldn't sell many
> comics at 3-4 times the price of the competition, and it doesn't have
> pockets deep enough to drop its own prices that low.
>
> Now, this is less of a threat in the comics industry than it was in the
> oil industry, since there was no difference between Socony Oil and Esso
> Oil, for instance, wheras there is something of a difference between an
> Image comic and a Dark Horse comic. But if Supreme is selling for 75
> cents and Star Wars is selling for $3.50, which one are you more likely to
> buy?
I understand your implication but disagree vehemently. KB's Untold
Tales
of Spiderman is $.99 and I still by Sin City for $2.95. One has
absolutely nothing to do with the other and the gas analogoy is just
that. It is exactly because you can only buy Star Wars from Dark Horse
that will keep them in business. I would argue that since in no Marvel,
DC or Image book can I read stories about SW characters whereas I can
fill up at any Gas station and presume to get virtually the same product
and in that regard each title of a book would be a sparate commodity
and that it wouldn't be considered collusion.
Hernan Espinoza
COMICKAZE <comi...@sprynet.com> writes:
Re: If Big Companies got together to lower their prices, the smaller
companies that couldn't follow suit would be screwed (by gasoline
analogy)
>I understand your implication but disagree vehemently. KB's Untold
>Tales of Spiderman is $.99 and I still by Sin City for $2.95. One has
>absolutely nothing to do with the other and the gas analogoy is just
>that. It is exactly because you can only buy Star Wars from Dark Horse
>that will keep them in business. I would argue that since in no Marvel,
>DC or Image book can I read stories about SW characters whereas I can
>fill up at any Gas station and presume to get virtually the same product
>and in that regard each title of a book would be a sparate commodity
>and that it wouldn't be considered collusion.
I think your analysis breaks down when you consider buying comics
on a budget (which I do and assume many others do as well). I generally
try to make my buying decisions based on the quality of each individual
book, but if buying one book will cost me three other titles, I will
give passing on it a second and third thought no matter how good it
is. Buying each title isn't totally independent from buying other
titles in most cases.
Frankly, I guess I don't believe that people would really believe
it if the companies said "OH, the fact that we lowered the prices of
all our books at the same time is coincidence. Each was separate business
decision reached independently" Or did I miss your point about "not
collusion"?
-Hernan
Carl Fink
>McDonald's current loss of market share over the last two years is being
>attibuted, in large part, to a lack of quality or their product.
By whom? The business papers I read attribute it to market saturation
and the rise of the non-burger fast food chains.
Jason Fliegel
In article <340676...@sprynet.com>,
COMICKAZE <comi...@geocities.com> wrote:
>
>I understand your implication but disagree vehemently. KB's Untold
>Tales of Spiderman is $.99 and I still by Sin City for $2.95.
Take it to an absurd extreme -- suppose Spiderman were 5 cents an issue
and Sin City were $45 an issue. Would you still buy Sin City? What if it
were $800 an issue? $47,000 an issue?
Everybody's got some point at which the difference in price between two
titles more than outweighs any perceived difference in quality. You may
feel you were getting an extra two dollars worth of entertainment from Sin
City, but a lot of people probably weren't. The law of demand -- a
fundamental rule of economics that says that for every increase (or
decrease) in price there is a corresponding decrease (or increase) in
quantity demanded -- applies not just to absolute price ($2.95 for Sin
City), but to relative price as well.
--
Jason Fliegel
j-fl...@uchicago.edu
2L, University of Chicago Law School
ATKokmen
COMICKAZE <comi...@sprynet.com> writes:
>I understand your implication but disagree vehemently. KB's Untold
>Tales of Spiderman is $.99 and I still by Sin City for $2.95. One has
>absolutely nothing to do with the other and the gas analogoy is just
>that. It is exactly because you can only buy Star Wars from Dark Horse
>that will keep them in business. I would argue that since in no Marvel,
>DC or Image book can I read stories about SW characters whereas I can
>fill up at any Gas station and presume to get virtually the same product
>and in that regard each title of a book would be a sparate commodity
>and that it wouldn't be considered collusion.
As with any artistic medium, this is a difficult
definitional hair to split.
Suffice it to say that were a few comics publishers
to get together to agree to reduce prices, some other
publisher would likely sue them for collusion. Their
arguement in court would probably be similar
to the above--that they're not really dealing with
the same commodity since the content is so different--
while the plantiff publisher would argue based on
industry practices. The whole thing would drag on in
a protracted lawsuit that'd eventually end when
one of the parties begins to run out of money for
lawyer's fees. At the end of the day, comics
publishers on both sides would probably lose
out in terms of monies spent on the suit, as well
as having been distracted from the business
of publishing good comics during this whole
process. Whatever effect the suit would have
for the comics consumer would probably be minimal.
But then again, maybe I'm just feeling a little
punchy and jaded as I make this forecast. ;-)
ATKo...@aol.com
"No great thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes
or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there
must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen."
---Epictetus, Discourses
Todd VerBeek, gwm
My pal janis berzins said:
>> >I agree that the time it takes people to adapt
>> >to change is the limiting factor, but don't underestimate the pressure
>> >cost and convience can put on that adaptation. I've been e-mailing
>> >people since 1980, but in the last couple of years EVERYBODY has started
>> >doing it.
>Todd VerBeek, gwm wrote:
>> "Everyone"? So why am I having such a difficult time sending e-mail to my
>> parents, my sisters, my boyfriend's parents and siblings, my next-door
>> neighbours (on both sides), the guy I met at the coffeehouse a few weeks
>> ago, my new boss, the graphic designer I'm supposed to be collaborating
>> with, the social service agencies I volunteer for, etc? You're
>> demonstrating a rather considerable lack of perspective with such
>> comments.
My pal janis berzins said:
>I forgot that you can't say anything on usenet without being taken
>litterally.
On Usenet, people are judged primarily on how they express themselves.
Express yourself carelessly, and people will respond according to that.
Incidentally, careful and thoughtful self-expression is something I hope
people will take into =offline= interactions as well. Sloppy
generalisations are bad in any context, and I tend to stomp on them
=wherever= I encounter them. {smile}
>Will you grant that while EVERYONE isn't actually using
>e-mail (for that matter you couldn't say everyone uses the telephone,
>either) the numbers are rising at a phenomonal rate and the trend seems
>to be continuing?
Sure, but "a small, but rapidly growing minority" and "everyone" are two
rather different concepts. Don't fault me for reading what you said
instead of what you meant.
>> You seem to be assuming that this change will be (when it's finished) a
>> good thing, and the only problem is the difficulty of getting there. I
>> disagree. Just because a change to electronic media may be possible, that
>> doesn't make it desirable.
>I don't think the change will be good or bad. "Nothing is good nor bad,
>except thinking so makes it so." I do think it will take place. Not a
>bad way to do it but just another way.
Well I think it =is= a bad way to do it, for reasons I think I've already
expressed. Paper is a =better= medium for comics.
>And since the nature of the
>dicussion is how to make comics less expensive, I think it is a
>posibility to consider.
"You get what you pay for."
COMICKAZE
Jason Fliegel wrote:
>
> In article <340676...@sprynet.com>,
> COMICKAZE <comi...@geocities.com> wrote:
> >
> >Tales of Spiderman is $.99 and I still by Sin City for $2.95.
>
> and Sin City were $45 an issue. Would you still buy Sin City? What if it
> were $800 an issue? $47,000 an issue?
What's your point? That all comics are basically the same and that I
would switch to reading Spiderman for a nickel because I couldn't
afford Sin City. Ludicrous. If I'm already paying $2.95 for SC then
obviously it is within my budget and no amount of other companies
selling their books for a nickel would change that although it might
get me to try some new titles in addition to SC.
> Everybody's got some point at which the difference in price between two
> titles more than outweighs any perceived difference in quality. You may
> feel you were getting an extra two dollars worth of entertainment from Sin
> City, but a lot of people probably weren't.
That might be true if you were arguing production value rather than
content. Let me make it easier for you. Ice Cream is Ice Cream and I
love chocolate and hate coconut. If chocolate was $1 and coconut was
free I'd still pay a buck for chocolate. If chocolate was $47,000 and
coconut was free I'd stop eating ice cream.
> The law of demand -- a
> fundamental rule of economics that says that for every increase (or
> decrease) in price there is a corresponding decrease (or increase) in
> quantity demanded -- applies not just to absolute price ($2.95 for Sin
> City), but to relative price as well.
Ah, but relative price is subjective and absolute price is not.
janis berzins
Todd VerBeek, gwm wrote:
>
> My pal janis berzins said:
> >> > I've been e-mailing
> >> >people since 1980, but in the last couple of years EVERYBODY has started
> >> >doing it.
>
> >Todd VerBeek, gwm wrote:
> >> "Everyone"?
> >> You're
> >> demonstrating a rather considerable lack of perspective with such
> >> comments.
>
> >litterally.
>
> On Usenet, people are judged primarily on how they express themselves.
> Express yourself carelessly, and people will respond according to that.
>
that I knew it was an exageration to start with, BTW.) I'll let you in
on a little secret: When people say you can't see the forest for the
trees, they aren't talking about forestry.
> Incidentally, careful and thoughtful self-expression is something I hope
> people will take into =offline= interactions as well. Sloppy
> generalisations are bad in any context, and I tend to stomp on them
> =wherever= I encounter them. {smile}
>
Well, everybody needs a reason to live, I guess. I have a tendency to
try to stamp out tired debating tricks which obfuscate the actual
discussions on usenet. Such as latching onto one word in a sentence and
ignoring the idea. Funny that on all the things I said, that was the
only thing you heard. (I didn't actually say it, you know, and you
didn't actually hear it. Unless you move you lips to read, which I
assume you don't.) It reminds me of people who think that if they can
find a spelling error in a post it invalidates everything said in the
post. (Oh, wait, you tried that one already too, didn't you?)
> >Will you grant that while EVERYONE isn't actually using
> >e-mail (for that matter you couldn't say everyone uses the telephone,
> >either) the numbers are rising at a phenomonal rate and the trend seems
> >to be continuing?
>
> Sure, but "a small, but rapidly growing minority" and "everyone" are two
> rather different concepts. Don't fault me for reading what you said
> instead of what you meant.
Hows about I fault you for not understanding what I'm trying to say on
purpose because you don't have anything better to say about the ideas
I'm presenting. You are free to disagree all you want, that's what
makes a discussion interesting. And up until now I've been enjoying our
mental gymnastics (not actual gymnastics, mind you.) But I plan to use
simile, metaphor, analogy, and exageration to make my points, rather
than talking baby talk trying to make sure no one can question my word
choice (since that is a impossiblity anyway). It seems obvious that you
were able to understand what I was trying to say; I have to assume that
if you had anything to say in reply you would have said that instead of
this. Reminds me of the poor soul who trys to say "A dog is like a
traffic cop in that..." and gets 20 replies from folks showing off their
vast intellectual powers by pointing out all the ways that dogs and
traffic cops differ, completely ignoring the point being made. I hope
someday we can go back to talking about ideas rather than debating about
words.
> >> You seem to be assuming that this change will be (when it's finished) a
> >> good thing, and the only problem is the difficulty of getting there. I
> >> disagree. Just because a change to electronic media may be possible, that
> >> doesn't make it desirable.
>
> >I don't think the change will be good or bad. "Nothing is good nor bad,
> >except thinking so makes it so." I do think it will take place. Not a
> >bad way to do it but just another way.
>
> Well I think it =is= a bad way to do it, for reasons I think I've already
> expressed. Paper is a =better= medium for comics.
>
Never said it wasn't. What I said was that the web seemed like a less
expensive way to deliver comics even though there are certainly
compromises. Responding to something someone didn't say is another old
debating trick that's had the last drop of blood squeezed from it on
the net (not actual blood, but... oh what's the use).
> >And since the nature of the
> >discussion is how to make comics less expensive, I think it is a
> >posibility to consider.
>
> "You get what you pay for."
>
Well then I'll pay for the stories and art and I'll be happy to send you
several rolls of paper I have been saving in the bathroom cabinet at a
price that should make you think you have something special.
Besides, isn't "You get what you pay for" a sloppy generalization? Not
to mention trite. Reminds me of another non-literal phrase about motes
and beams and eyes and brothers. Careful you don't ruin your shoes
stomping on it.;-)
Todd VerBeek, gwm
>> COMICKAZE <comi...@geocities.com> wrote:
>> >I understand your implication but disagree vehemently. KB's Untold
>> >Tales of Spiderman is $.99 and I still by Sin City for $2.95.
>Jason Fliegel wrote:
>> Take it to an absurd extreme -- suppose Spiderman were 5 cents an issue
>> and Sin City were $45 an issue. Would you still buy Sin City? What if it
>> were $800 an issue? $47,000 an issue?
My pal COMICKAZE said:
>What's your point? That all comics are basically the same and that I
>would switch to reading Spiderman for a nickel because I couldn't
>afford Sin City. Ludicrous. If I'm already paying $2.95 for SC then
>obviously it is within my budget and no amount of other companies
>selling their books for a nickel would change that although it might
>get me to try some new titles in addition to SC.
Imagine, if you can, that you're not already a devoted Sin City reader,
and that perhaps the only comics you've read are these hypothetical 5-cent
Spider-Man books. Would you pay $45 (or even $2.95) for your first-ever
issue of Sin City? Probably not. You'd sneer at it as over-priced. This
is how lower-priced books from the big publishers would =definitely= hurt
publishers who cannot meet that price point. Hell, it's how $1.95 books
=already= hurt the publishers of $2.95 books.
Todd VerBeek, gwm
>> My pal janis berzins said:
>> >> > I've been e-mailing
>> >> >people since 1980, but in the last couple of years EVERYBODY has started
>> >> >doing it.
(I pointed out that this wasn't even close to being true.)
>> My pal janis berzins said:
>> >I forgot that you can't say anything on usenet without being taken
>> >litterally.
>Todd VerBeek, gwm wrote:
>> On Usenet, people are judged primarily on how they express themselves.
>> Express yourself carelessly, and people will respond according to that.
My pal janis berzins said:
>I wrote what I wrote to make a point. (The capitalization was a tip off
>that I knew it was an exageration to start with, BTW.) I'll let you in
>on a little secret: When people say you can't see the forest for the
>trees, they aren't talking about forestry.
I understand (and actually =like=) metaphor, allegory, analogy, and
simile. Well enough to distinguish them from generalisations which are so
far from fact as to be suspect. There =are= people on the net who are
oblivious to the majority of society who are not, thinking that everybody
(or at least everybody who matters) is online. Based on your frequent
references to the forest as a bunch of maple trees, I had reason to
suspect that you were one of them.
>> Incidentally, careful and thoughtful self-expression is something I hope
>> people will take into =offline= interactions as well. Sloppy
>> generalisations are bad in any context, and I tend to stomp on them
>> =wherever= I encounter them. {smile}
>Well, everybody needs a reason to live, I guess. I have a tendency to
>try to stamp out tired debating tricks which obfuscate the actual
>discussions on usenet. Such as latching onto one word in a sentence and
>ignoring the idea.
Or responding to a factual error by saying it was an exaggeration to make
a point?
The idea you were promoting was the ubiquity of e-mail usage, right? Well
it's not the case. Even if you'd skipped the overt generalisation,
instead saying "almost everyone", "most", or even "enough", you'd =still=
be wrong. Even today, e-mail usage is rather uncommon in our society (as
evidenced anecdotally by the fact that I know more people in my community
who don't use it than who do), and that fact invalidates your argument
that we'll soon be ready to dump paper for online delivery. We won't, and
the =low= usage of e-mail in American society is symptomatic of the
reason.
Cheers, Todd
"You can tell me anything you want. I'll still think you're wrong, though."
-- "anonymous"
DCO Moore
jbfl...@midway.uchicago.edu (Jason Fliegel) said:
>As for the why -- well, suppose DC, Marvel, Image, and Acclaim got
>together and set prices for comics at 75 cents each. How long do you
>think Dark Horse would be able to stay in business?
How long would any of us?
While the Marvel 99 cent comics were a nice thing for readers, I always
had a problem with people interpreting their existence as "proof" that it
was possible to do a viable comic book at that price. It's not, anymore.
The 99 cent comics were loss leaders, designed to bring in younger readers.
And, as Jason says, less commercially-driven comics (which are hardly
limited to small publishers -- we publish a fair number of them at DC)
would lose far more money at that price point.
Circulations are down, paper costs are up, and creators are used to higher
rates than was true in (say) the early '80s. We all agree that it'd be
ideal if comics cost less; but I've never seen a feasible plan for
accomplishing it. I think it's far more fruitful to try to improve the
quality of the books themselves.
Best,
Stuart Moore
Senior Editor, Helix/Vertigo
Ennead
Tom Vincent wrote:
Re: internet-distributed comics
: Most households do not have a computer. That's the first hurdle. Then
: distill that number down to households with internet access as well, and
: the number gets even smaller. Although many people have 17 inch monitors,
: and a few really, really lucky ones have 21 inch, most people still have 14
: or 15 inch. Trust me, it's not adequate to display a comic page on. Now,
: the audience has gotten even smaller yet.
Well, I _was_ talking about in ten or twenty years, and most
black-and-white comic readers are _relatively_ educated and middle-class
or above. It doesn't seem to me to be unrealistic to think that computers
with fast internet access will be pretty common among the middle class and
above by 2012.
: Re: resolution, there is a real noticibale difference between the 300 res
: and 72 res files. Maybe this wouldn't bother a lot of people, but it
: bothers me- a lot. In order to enlarge the image enought to read the text
: on the page, the artwork blurs. [...]
This is why I was imagining people printing out their comics. A
laser-printed black and white comics pages looks just fine - better than
many published comics, in fact.
: Also- everyone would need a Jazz drive to store their collections on, and
: be burning thru disks like nobody's business. [...]
I suspect that data storage will only continue getting faster and cheaper.
I don't think it's realistic to talk about what the internet will be
capable of 15 years from now by looking at what today's limits are. (How
much home data storage was available in 1982?)
: Again, Janis, you can increase modem sppeds all you want- the phone lines
: are only capapble of handling so much data, which limits that speed. Just
: like your computer- you could have a 700mhz processor, but it won't do you
: much good with a 40mhz bus.
The switch to using cable-TV lines for internet access has already begun;
it's expensive, but all technologies are expensive in their first few
years of existance.
: > For that matter, You could put
: >several hundred of your 12 Meg files on a CD and press it for about a
: >dollar. I don't see technology as the reason there aren't cheaper ways
: >to deliver comics.
: Now this makes much more sense than web based. Much more.
No it doesn't. It retains all the problems of the current distribution
system: it just switches the media from paper to CD, but otherwise changes
nothing. You'd still need comic shops, and those shops would still need to
pay owners and employees; there'd still need to be distributors, and
because the up-front costs of printing CDs is enourmous you'd still need
publishers, not to mention CD printing plants.
The problem with the current system is that it has to pay a lot of people
who aren't really necessary for the creation of comics, meaning that the
price is much higher than it would be if earning the artist(s) a living
were the only consideration. This is particularly damaging for
low-circulation comics, which may have more than enough readers to support
the artist but not enought to support the artist, the editor, the
publisher, the printer, the distributer, the UPS driver, the comic-store
owner and the comic-store clerk.
Yours,
--Ampersand
Ennead
Todd VerBeek, gwm wrote:
: >I don't think the change will be good or bad. "Nothing is good nor bad,
: >except thinking so makes it so." I do think it will take place. Not a
: >bad way to do it but just another way.
: Well I think it =is= a bad way to do it, for reasons I think I've already
: expressed. Paper is a =better= medium for comics.
I agree, for many purposes. But right now I can't afford to buy most of
the comics I'm interested in reading, so I'd probably make the sacrafice
if I could.
Also, I'm more interested in another potential benefit: a way in which
independant comics with 8,000 readers could prosper and earn their
cartoonists a living without having to pass through the obsticle course of
the current distribution system.
It would also be a low-cost way for cartoonists to keep all of their back
issues in print, and making money, forever.
: >And since the nature of the
: >dicussion is how to make comics less expensive, I think it is a
: >posibility to consider.
: "You get what you pay for."
I don't think that's true, in this case. A color-covered saddle-stapled
ZOT #31 is certainly nice to have, but is it worth $2.25 more than the
same think printed out by my laser printer and stapled? Especially if I
could use that $2.25 to get issues 21-30 as well?
Curiously, what would be worse for the form (lower-quality, less
nice-looking printings) might turn out to be better for the medium (more
innovative, independant comics).
Finally, I'm not imagining internet comics replacing pre-printed comics
altogether; sufficiently popular comics could still go the trade paperback
collection route once a year or so.
Yours,
--Ampersand
janis berzins
damons of distinction wrote:
>
> Ennead wrote:
>
> > Tom, my guess is that you've never tried writing, laying out and lettering
> > (CEREBUS probably has the most complicated lettering of any comic) your
> > own comic, or you'd know how wrong this is. All these chores take time;
> > with all due respect for Gerhard's incredibly intricate backgrounds
> > (although there are pages, and sometimes whole issues, where Gerhard has
> > little to do beyond filling in solid black backgrounds), I doubt he spends
> > much more time chained to the drawing board than Sim, let along "four
> > times."
>
I remember reading that they work in the same studio and hand pages back
and forth. Realistically, you would have to assume they spend somewhere
near the same amount of time or else one of them is doing a lot of
knitting.
I think Tom just wanted to make sure Gerhard got some deserved
appreciation.
> i'll have you know you're wrong---
>
> i have it on good authority that dave keeps gerhard chained to the
> drawing board night and day, with maybe a twenty mintue walk
> per day to 'do business', as it were.
>
Except when he's released to go get beer.
> ------
> about the layout thing--
> i dunno--
> i find the hardest thing i have to do is lay out a page, but
> it's not so much time consuming as mental
> sweating. drawing intricately detailed backgrounds really
> burns up time for me.
>
Would you go so far as to say that layouts are more important than
backgrounds (or rendering, for that matter).
> 34 is done.
Then let's see it, for gosh sake!
damonless
Ennead wrote:
>
> Tom Vincent wrote:
>
> Re: internet-distributed comics
>
> : Most households do not have a computer. That's the first hurdle. Then
> : distill that number down to households with internet access as well, and
> : the number gets even smaller. Although many people have 17 inch monitors,
> : and a few really, really lucky ones have 21 inch, most people still have 14
> : or 15 inch. Trust me, it's not adequate to display a comic page on. Now,
> : the audience has gotten even smaller yet.
>
> Well, I _was_ talking about in ten or twenty years, and most
> black-and-white comic readers are _relatively_ educated and middle-class
> or above. It doesn't seem to me to be unrealistic to think that computers
> with fast internet access will be pretty common among the middle class and
> above by 2012.
well, i think the biggest problem won't be any of those things---
quuick question- how many web sites are there now?
now, multiply that times, say, 3000.
now, imagine you're scanning the web ten years from now.
how many of these indy comic sites are you likely to run across?
--
The nice thing about edu accounts is that it only
takes 7 days to bring a server back on line.
34 is done.
Brandon
all of them. 'cause you're gonna have this agent, you see. It's your own
little computer program, but it's gonna know all about you and what you
like and its going to dscan the web for you and suggest things you like.
and organize things for you. Really. I swear. That's what they told me.
Brandon
cynical as ever
--------------------
Look at my email address and delete what it says to send mail.
"Guess I just needed to blow something up. I feel better now."
-Tabitha Smith, X-Force#70
Ennead
damonless wrote:
: well, i think the biggest problem won't be any of those things---
: quuick question- how many web sites are there now?
: now, multiply that times, say, 3000.
: now, imagine you're scanning the web ten years from now.
: how many of these indy comic sites are you likely to run across?
As Scott McCloud pointed out, if he had a ZOT! distribution-by-web site,
he'd certainly have links from it to CAGES, BEANWORLD, and other of his
favorite indy comics (similar to his "plug-of-the-month" feature he did in
his lettercol, except he wouldn't be limited by space to just one). He'd
probably have a few links to "recommended comics" sites by fans whose
taste (and webpage format) he thought was good. And Dave McKean and Larry
Marder would probably do the same thing.
It would probably be a bit like searching for stuff on the web now.
Finding the initial "good site" on the subject might be a bit difficult -
requiring fifteen minutes with Yahoo or a specific recommendation by a
friend or whatever. (And, really, the odds of running across such a site
eventually just by web-surfing interesting-sounding comic sites is pretty
good.) But once you've found one, finding fifty other good indy comic
sites probably won't be difficult at all.
Yours,
--Ampersand
damonless
Ennead wrote:
>
> damonless wrote:
>
> : now, imagine you're scanning the web ten years from now.
> : how many of these indy comic sites are you likely to run across?
>
> As Scott McCloud pointed out, if he had a ZOT! distribution-by-web site,
> he'd certainly have links from it to CAGES, BEANWORLD, and other of his
> favorite indy comics (similar to his "plug-of-the-month" feature he did in
> his lettercol, except he wouldn't be limited by space to just one). He'd
> probably have a few links to "recommended comics" sites by fans whose
> taste (and webpage format) he thought was good. And Dave McKean and Larry
> Marder would probably do the same thing.
>
> It would probably be a bit like searching for stuff on the web now.
> Finding the initial "good site" on the subject might be a bit difficult -
> requiring fifteen minutes with Yahoo or a specific recommendation by a
> friend or whatever. (And, really, the odds of running across such a site
> eventually just by web-surfing interesting-sounding comic sites is pretty
> good.) But once you've found one, finding fifty other good indy comic
> sites probably won't be difficult at all.
lessee, i searched for cerebus web sites a while ago....
it took me three hours to cover half of the ones i found
that came up right away.
my point is that signal:noise is gonna increase so much that
even linked pages are gonna be insufficient...
if marder had started beanworld by web, how long would it
have taken for his page to be linked to yours [for example]?
especially when we're paying for accessing the web page?
my hunch is that we'll se a repeat of the comic
store cultre, with different focus--
you'll have a bunch of interlinked titles that all cover similar
ground/demographics, and these will *tend* towards exclusion
of other "indie" indies.
--
"Effloresce and deliquesce- carefree sparkling effervesce/Sparks
ignite the starry-eyed- soon a supernova/Effloresce and
deliquesce/ He bursts forth and then regrets/ She breaks down
and when he goes slowly ices over"
the Chills, "Effloresce and deliquesce"
34 is done.
damonless
janis berzins wrote:
>
> damons of distinction wrote:
> > i'll have you know you're wrong---
> >
> > i have it on good authority that dave keeps gerhard chained to the
> > drawing board night and day, with maybe a twenty mintue walk
> > per day to 'do business', as it were.
> >
>
> Except when he's released to go get beer.
what do you think 'do business' is?
> > ------
> > about the layout thing--
> > i dunno--
> > i find the hardest thing i have to do is lay out a page, but
> > it's not so much time consuming as mental
> > sweating. drawing intricately detailed backgrounds really
> > burns up time for me.
> >
> Would you go so far as to say that layouts are more important than
> backgrounds (or rendering, for that matter).
nope. i like visuals a lot, and crappy art does distract
from the story a lot for me. good layouts are more
intellectual, as opposed to visceral, which backgrounds are.
so, i'm torn.
i know i do layouts better, but TRY to do backgrounds like gerhard.
> > 34 is done.
>
> Then let's see it, for gosh sake!
sure, as soon as i do 35-40, the back page, and the cover...
obshameless selfpromotion:
i have had the layout and rough pencils done since the end of 1992
[i wrote the story using roughs so i could place the text right.],
but i never had an idea for the cover.
recently i had thought to possibly do a collage, which
sounded even better when i found photoshop. now,
i've come across a better idea, i think.
--i'd be done 39 tonite but there's no more toner in the printer;
modern technology!
janis berzins
damonless wrote:
>
> janis berzins wrote:
> >
> > damons of distinction wrote:
>
> > > ------
> > > about the layout thing--
> > > i dunno--
> > > i find the hardest thing i have to do is lay out a page, but
> > > it's not so much time consuming as mental
> > > sweating. drawing intricately detailed backgrounds really
> > > burns up time for me.
> > >
> > Would you go so far as to say that layouts are more important than
> > backgrounds (or rendering, for that matter).
>
> nope. i like visuals a lot, and crappy art does distract
> from the story a lot for me. good layouts are more
> intellectual, as opposed to visceral, which backgrounds are.
>
exercise for the artist. While I agree with that, I think they are a
primary tool for evoking emotion in the viewer.
Tom Vincent
In article <5uo12c$ndr$3...@nadine.teleport.com>, Ennead
<enn...@linda.teleport.com> wrote:
>Tom Vincent wrote:
>
>Re: internet-distributed comics
>
>: Most households do not have a computer. That's the first hurdle. Then
>: distill that number down to households with internet access as well, and
>: the number gets even smaller. Although many people have 17 inch monitors,
>: and a few really, really lucky ones have 21 inch, most people still have 14
>: or 15 inch. Trust me, it's not adequate to display a comic page on. Now,
>: the audience has gotten even smaller yet.
>
>Well, I _was_ talking about in ten or twenty years, and most
>black-and-white comic readers are _relatively_ educated and middle-class
>or above. It doesn't seem to me to be unrealistic to think that computers
>with fast internet access will be pretty common among the middle class and
>above by 2012.
oooohhhh- careful here, Ampersand- this is pretty much proposing removing
access to comics to predetermined economic classes...
>
>: Re: resolution, there is a real noticibale difference between the 300 res
>: and 72 res files. Maybe this wouldn't bother a lot of people, but it
>: bothers me- a lot. In order to enlarge the image enought to read the text
>: on the page, the artwork blurs. [...]
>
>This is why I was imagining people printing out their comics. A
>laser-printed black and white comics pages looks just fine - better than
>many published comics, in fact.
That gets pretty redundant though, doesn't it? First spend time
downloading, then time printing, expenses of both...
>
>: Also- everyone would need a Jazz drive to store their collections on, and
>: be burning thru disks like nobody's business. [...]
>
>I suspect that data storage will only continue getting faster and cheaper.
>I don't think it's realistic to talk about what the internet will be
>capable of 15 years from now by looking at what today's limits are. (How
>much home data storage was available in 1982?)
Cost will continue to be a factor. Zip drives have been around awhile, and
while the cost/mb is fairly reasonable, the disks still run $20 a pop.
>
>: Again, Janis, you can increase modem sppeds all you want- the phone lines
>: are only capapble of handling so much data, which limits that speed. Just
>: like your computer- you could have a 700mhz processor, but it won't do you
>: much good with a 40mhz bus.
>
>The switch to using cable-TV lines for internet access has already begun;
>it's expensive, but all technologies are expensive in their first few
>years of existance.
No way I'm paying what Time/Warner is charging for access. Forty bucks
/month, above and beyond your basic cable charges... I outlined all the
costs there.
>
>: > For that matter, You could put
>: >several hundred of your 12 Meg files on a CD and press it for about a
>: >dollar. I don't see technology as the reason there aren't cheaper ways
>: >to deliver comics.
>
>: Now this makes much more sense than web based. Much more.
>
>No it doesn't. It retains all the problems of the current distribution
>system: it just switches the media from paper to CD, but otherwise changes
>nothing. You'd still need comic shops, and those shops would still need to
>pay owners and employees; there'd still need to be distributors, and
>because the up-front costs of printing CDs is enourmous you'd still need
>publishers, not to mention CD printing plants.
But Ampersand, every single computer based "solution" entails greater
expense to the consumer.
>
>The problem with the current system is that it has to pay a lot of people
>who aren't really necessary for the creation of comics, meaning that the
>price is much higher than it would be if earning the artist(s) a living
>were the only consideration.
All you're doing with web based comics is changing the titles and jobs of
the middlemen. And they cost more. Does Bill Gates *really* need to own a
peice of the comics market?
---Tom Vincent
On September 5 in Calcutta, perhaps the greatest humanitarian to walk the
earth left us. Goodnight, dear Mother. Rest well. You have earned it.
Lemming
janis berzins <jabe...@earthlink.net> sayethed:
>damonless wrote:
>> nope. i like visuals a lot, and crappy art does distract
>> from the story a lot for me. good layouts are more
>> intellectual, as opposed to visceral, which backgrounds are.
>>
>I take it that by that you mean layouts are more of an intellectual
>exercise for the artist. While I agree with that, I think they are a
>primary tool for evoking emotion in the viewer.
Absolutely. Layouts affect the reader on such a visceral level that
they're not even aware of it. It's not something you notice, exactly
where the panels sit and why, but I've noticed when someone says
"There's something wrong with the art but I can't quite say what" they
usually mean layout. Half the fun of someone like Eisner is the
imaginative way the story wanders around the page.
You could make a good case that Giffen's -only- innovations were in
layout. Check his early LSH stuff for some bizarre experiments with
the path the eye follows, and see Trevor Von Eeden's Thriller to see a
million times more. Let's see if I can explain this. A normal page
is read like so:
--->
---->
---->
----->
Von Eeden goes
-- --
|_| |
|\ /
| \/
|_-_->
Apologies if your newsreader makes that into nonsense, but trust me,
he's weird. I love that.
Lemming
writing portfolio and strange opinions at:
http://www2.cybernex.net/~lemming7/
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.
Lemming
tom127@.capital.net (Tom Vincent) sayethed:
>In article <5uo12c$ndr$3...@nadine.teleport.com>, Ennead
><enn...@linda.teleport.com> wrote:
>>Tom Vincent wrote:
>>
>>Re: internet-distributed comics
>>
>>: Most households do not have a computer. That's the first hurdle. Then
>>: distill that number down to households with internet access as well, and
>>: the number gets even smaller. Although many people have 17 inch monitors,
>>: and a few really, really lucky ones have 21 inch, most people still have 14
>>: or 15 inch. Trust me, it's not adequate to display a comic page on. Now,
>>: the audience has gotten even smaller yet.
>>
>>Well, I _was_ talking about in ten or twenty years, and most
>>black-and-white comic readers are _relatively_ educated and middle-class
>>or above. It doesn't seem to me to be unrealistic to think that computers
>>with fast internet access will be pretty common among the middle class and
>>above by 2012.
>oooohhhh- careful here, Ampersand- this is pretty much proposing removing
>access to comics to predetermined economic classes...
Isn't the internet already like that?
>>: Re: resolution, there is a real noticibale difference between the 300 res
>>: and 72 res files. Maybe this wouldn't bother a lot of people, but it
>>: bothers me- a lot. In order to enlarge the image enought to read the text
>>: on the page, the artwork blurs. [...]
>>
>>This is why I was imagining people printing out their comics. A
>>laser-printed black and white comics pages looks just fine - better than
>>many published comics, in fact.
You still have the resolution problem, though. 72res printed still
looks pretty grotty to me.
>That gets pretty redundant though, doesn't it? First spend time
>downloading, then time printing, expenses of both...
If we've got cable systems not much time spent downloading, and
besides, a lot of people (myself included) do it already.
>>: Again, Janis, you can increase modem sppeds all you want- the phone lines
>>: are only capapble of handling so much data, which limits that speed. Just
>>: like your computer- you could have a 700mhz processor, but it won't do you
>>: much good with a 40mhz bus.
>>
>>The switch to using cable-TV lines for internet access has already begun;
>>it's expensive, but all technologies are expensive in their first few
>>years of existance.
>No way I'm paying what Time/Warner is charging for access. Forty bucks
>/month, above and beyond your basic cable charges... I outlined all the
>costs there.
Ah, but then the free market system works its magic (no! no! I'm not
soapboxing here! Please, don't go communist yet! =) ). You won't
pay it now, so they have to drop prices to get people like you. Then
they have to lower prices to deal with their competition, who already
have people like you. Then the economies of scale come in. They
should be down to the $20 a month I pay for phone service in five
years or so, huh?
And the phone lines are already upgrading, to boot.
>>The problem with the current system is that it has to pay a lot of people
>>who aren't really necessary for the creation of comics, meaning that the
>>price is much higher than it would be if earning the artist(s) a living
>>were the only consideration.
>All you're doing with web based comics is changing the titles and jobs of
>the middlemen. And they cost more. Does Bill Gates *really* need to own a
>peice of the comics market?
We're also paying them less. I could publish a web comic, if I
thought anyone would read it, for $20 a month. Let's see Diamond top
that.
Lemming
writing portfolio and strange opinions at:
http://www2.cybernex.net/~lemming7/
The world has held great heroes/As history-books have showed/
But never a name to go down to fame/Compared with that of Toad!
Robin
In article <EG7zC...@nonexistent.com>,
lemm...@cybernex.net (Lemming) wrote:
>You could make a good case that Giffen's -only- innovations were in
>layout. Check his early LSH stuff for some bizarre experiments with
>the path the eye follows, and see Trevor Von Eeden's Thriller to see a
>million times more.
Creative layouts can be a lot of fun. They are also a pretty surefire way
to confuse the reader.
It's okay if you're actually *trying* to make the reader feel uneasy and
confused as part of your storytelling but if you're doing it just for
something different to do you're in danger of losing your readers. I think
it's best to deviate from traditional storytelling layout practice only
when it's called for.
Communication is everything. Make the page too difficult to follow and
you're going to make sure that your readers don't come back.
Notice that Dave Sim can lead you all over the page when he's doing a "Mind
Games" issue but for most of the time his layouts are very traditional.
He's more likely to create visual interest with his composition *within*
the panels.
Robin Riggs.
Traditionalist. :)
Tom Vincent
>tom127@.capital.net (Tom Vincent) sayethed:
>
>>In article <5uo12c$ndr$3...@nadine.teleport.com>, Ennead
>><enn...@linda.teleport.com> wrote:
>
>>>Tom Vincent wrote:
>>>
>>>Re: internet-distributed comics
>>oooohhhh- careful here, Ampersand- this is pretty much proposing removing
>>access to comics to predetermined economic classes...
>
>Isn't the internet already like that?
Precisely the point. The internet is, but comics are not.
>
>>That gets pretty redundant though, doesn't it? First spend time
>>downloading, then time printing, expenses of both...
>
>If we've got cable systems not much time spent downloading, and
>besides, a lot of people (myself included) do it already.
Look at the file sizes involved. A single comic in b&w at low res could
easily be 20mb. I have a 336 modem, and it takes about 45 mins. to download
a 14 mb file late, late at night when the traffic isn't particularly heavy.
The time element is unworkable at present. Who wants to tie up their phone
lines and computer for an hour to download a comic it takes 12 mins. to
read?
>>>
>>>The switch to using cable-TV lines for internet access has already begun;
>>>it's expensive, but all technologies are expensive in their first few
>>>years of existance.
>
>>No way I'm paying what Time/Warner is charging for access. Forty bucks
>>/month, above and beyond your basic cable charges... I outlined all the
>>costs there.
>
>Ah, but then the free market system works its magic (no! no! I'm not
>soapboxing here! Please, don't go communist yet! =) ).
Why is it that when someone has disdain for feudalism they are labled a
communist?
> You won't
>pay it now, so they have to drop prices to get people like you. Then
>they have to lower prices to deal with their competition, who already
>have people like you. Then the economies of scale come in. They
>should be down to the $20 a month I pay for phone service in five
>years or so, huh?
Don't forget- you have to rent *their* modems (much like you rent cable
boxes now). You have to have cable already installed (which I, and about
50% of the country does not have), you have to *pay* the internet access
*in addition to* basic cable.... it gets expensive.
Re: market forces driving the price down, that's the same thing that was
said when cable was first deregulated, and we saw how accurate that one
was. Prices went up, as did the volume of paid for infomercials. You paid
more for cable so they could show you more paid commercials, which is why I
do not have cable anymore, in case you were wondering.
>
>And the phone lines are already upgrading, to boot.
NYNEX (serving NY/New England) is almost completely fiber optic now. It's
made no discernable difference in transmission speeds. Calls may be
clearer, NYNEX can handle greater volume, but it hasn't speeded anything
up.
>>All you're doing with web based comics is changing the titles and jobs of
>>the middlemen. And they cost more. Does Bill Gates *really* need to own a
>>peice of the comics market?
>
>We're also paying them less. I could publish a web comic, if I
>thought anyone would read it, for $20 a month. Let's see Diamond top
>that.
For starters, Diamond doesn't publish, they distribute. Additionally, you
have the initial expense and time elements involved. You may publish
cheaper, but if only a handful read it, who cares?
The whole point of the discussion was that comics are too expensive, but
web based fantasies make them even more expensive yet.
Ennead
Tom Vincent, quoting me quoting him, wrote:
: >Well, I _was_ talking about in ten or twenty years, and most
: >black-and-white comic readers are _relatively_ educated and middle-class
: >or above. It doesn't seem to me to be unrealistic to think that computers
: >with fast internet access will be pretty common among the middle class and
: >above by 2012.
: oooohhhh- careful here, Ampersand- this is pretty much proposing removing
: access to comics to predetermined economic classes... [...]
Uh-huh. Tom, with all due respect for the class politics of yours I so
admire (and I'm not being sarcastic about that), what world do you live
in? Do you really think that, right now, folks with two children to feed
on $12,000 a year are buying many comics? To bring up an extreme example,
how many poor people do you suppose bought STORYTELLER? (I could only buy
it because my local store had a half-price sale, frankly.)
Also, consider the costs of self-publishing a comic, as long as you're
considering which classes do and don't have access under each system.
: >This is why I was imagining people printing out their comics. A
: >laser-printed black and white comics pages looks just fine - better than
: >many published comics, in fact.
: That gets pretty redundant though, doesn't it? First spend time
: downloading, then time printing, expenses of both...
Even if you calculate in the costs of downloading and printing, it would
_still_ be much cheaper than the current $2.75. (And most consumers
wouldn't calculate those costs in; they wouldn't be "felt" costs.)
: >I suspect that data storage will only continue getting faster and cheaper.
: >I don't think it's realistic to talk about what the internet will be
: >capable of 15 years from now by looking at what today's limits are. (How
: >much home data storage was available in 1982?)
: Cost will continue to be a factor. Zip drives have been around awhile, and
: while the cost/mb is fairly reasonable, the disks still run $20 a pop.
Zip drives have not been around _that_ long; more important, they are
only now beginning to become a popular-use item. You seem to think that
history will stop around 1998; that, even though all these things have
consistantly been getting faster and cheaper for twenty years, they'll
suddenly stop doing so now. If you're right about that, then I agree:
internet comic distribution will never be practical. But I don't see the
slightest reason to think that you're right about that, and you haven't
put forth any arguements to support this view.
: >: Again, Janis, you can increase modem sppeds all you want- the phone lines
: >: are only capapble of handling so much data, which limits that speed. Just
: >: like your computer- you could have a 700mhz processor, but it won't do you
: >: much good with a 40mhz bus.
: >The switch to using cable-TV lines for internet access has already begun;
: >it's expensive, but all technologies are expensive in their first few
: >years of existance.
: No way I'm paying what Time/Warner is charging for access. Forty bucks
: /month, above and beyond your basic cable charges... I outlined all the
: costs there.
I'm not arguing that it's currently viable, Tom, so arguing that it's not
practical currently is a straw man. If you want to argue that cable-access
will never, ever get cheaper, then make that argument, but you haven't
done so here.
It'll probably eventually be possible to get a cable hook-up for your
computer without having to buy cable TV as well. There's no tech reason
it can't be done now; it's just a matter of building up the market for it.
: [Comics on CDs] retains all the problems of the current distribution
: >system: it just switches the media from paper to CD, but otherwise changes
: >nothing. You'd still need comic shops, and those shops would still need to
: >pay owners and employees; there'd still need to be distributors, and
: >because the up-front costs of printing CDs is enourmous you'd still need
: >publishers, not to mention CD printing plants.
: But Ampersand, every single computer based "solution" entails greater
: expense to the consumer.
Only if the consumer isn't going to own a computer with internet access
anyway. I think that it's very unlikely that will be true of many
alternative comic book readers 15 years from now. Do you disagree?
: >The problem with the current system is that it has to pay a lot of people
: >who aren't really necessary for the creation of comics, meaning that the
: >price is much higher than it would be if earning the artist(s) a living
: >were the only consideration.
: All you're doing with web based comics is changing the titles and jobs of
: the middlemen. And they cost more. Does Bill Gates *really* need to own a
: piece of the comics market?
Bill Gates would need to be paid once initially, not continually. And,
again, you're assuming that comic readers wouldn't own comptuers with
internet access regardless, and are only buying it in order to buy
comics. This seems very unrealistic to me.
It's a little bit like if you were complaining that comic strips will
never be a viable form, because it costs too much to buy a newspaper just
to read DOONESBURY. Of course, you're right; but the fact is, people don't
buy newspapers _just_ to read DOONESBURY. And so long as enough people
read newspapers for _other_ reasons, newspaper strips will remain a viable
way of reaching readers.
You're right - if I was suggesting that comics readers buy computers just
to read comics, I'd be insane. But what I'm suggesting is that in 10-20
years, the vast majority of comic readers (especially alternative readers)
will have internet access regardless, so selling comics that way will not
be putting an additional expense onto them.
Yours,
--Ampersand
damonless
Lemming wrote:
>
> janis berzins <jabe...@earthlink.net> sayethed:
>
> >damonless wrote:
>
> >> nope. i like visuals a lot, and crappy art does distract
> >> from the story a lot for me. good layouts are more
> >> intellectual, as opposed to visceral, which backgrounds are.
> >>
> >I take it that by that you mean layouts are more of an intellectual
> >exercise for the artist. While I agree with that, I think they are a
> >primary tool for evoking emotion in the viewer.
>
> Absolutely. Layouts affect the reader on such a visceral level that
> they're not even aware of it. It's not something you notice, exactly
> where the panels sit and why, but I've noticed when someone says
> "There's something wrong with the art but I can't quite say what" they
> usually mean layout. Half the fun of someone like Eisner is the
> imaginative way the story wanders around the page.
actually, i mean the opposite---
i find layouts to be inellectually stimulating.
i find backgrounds to be viscerally stimulating....
much the same way that captions are *usually* more intellectually
stimulating, while
word balloons tend towards both intellectual and emotional stumulating.
ideally, of course, layout contributes to the visceral reaction.
--
"And it all seems larger than life to me/ I find it rather hard
to believe...And so i stand as the sound goes striahg through
my body/ I'm so bloated up happy that i throw things around me/
And I'm growing in stages and have been for ages/ Just singing,
and floating, and free..." the Chills, Heavenly Pop Hit
34 is done.
Cole
Ennead <enn...@linda.teleport.com> wrote:
>Tom Vincent, quoting me quoting him, wrote:
>: That gets pretty redundant though, doesn't it? First spend time
>: downloading, then time printing, expenses of both...
>Even if you calculate in the costs of downloading and printing, it would
>_still_ be much cheaper than the current $2.75. (And most consumers
>wouldn't calculate those costs in; they wouldn't be "felt" costs.)
They would be when you were halfway through printing your fourth 20 to
30 page book and the printer ran out of paper. Personally, I don't
see *any* publishing medium ever going to net-only distribution. Most
people who read, self included, like to have the book in their hand.
I don't want to read something on a computer screen, nor do I want the
hassle of printing it out and collating the pages. I want the comic,
or book, or magazine in my hand, able to be picked up and put down
without having to power up the computer, or find a particular
filename, or download the next chapter off the web. Like the ZoomTV/
Divx debacle developing in the new DVD format, I just don't see this
happening.
Cole
Lemming
Robin Ri...@dial.pipex.com (Robin Riggs) sayethed:
>In article <EG7zC...@nonexistent.com>,
>lemm...@cybernex.net (Lemming) wrote:
>>You could make a good case that Giffen's -only- innovations were in
>>layout. Check his early LSH stuff for some bizarre experiments with
>>the path the eye follows, and see Trevor Von Eeden's Thriller to see a
>>million times more.
>Creative layouts can be a lot of fun. They are also a pretty surefire way
>to confuse the reader.
>It's okay if you're actually *trying* to make the reader feel uneasy and
>confused as part of your storytelling but if you're doing it just for
>something different to do you're in danger of losing your readers. I think
>it's best to deviate from traditional storytelling layout practice only
>when it's called for.
Sorry, I thought that was implicit. Never let a layout too difficult
to read, because then no one will read it and what' s the point. With
a few notable exceptions von Eeden's and Giffen's layouts were
perfectly easy to follow, yet imaginative and enhanced the story
tremendously. Eisner wasn't as experimental, but he was certainly
exemplary of this. Miller was also nearly as good, especially around
Daredevil.
>Notice that Dave Sim can lead you all over the page when he's doing a "Mind
>Games" issue but for most of the time his layouts are very traditional.
>He's more likely to create visual interest with his composition *within*
>the panels.
Layout is the number one coolest thing about comics, so far as I'm
concerned. Wacky panels are something you just can't do anywhere
else, especially daily strips. You've got this great blank page
there, and you want to put nine boxes on it and forget about it? Why?
Tom Vincent
In article <5v3jbf$o6m$1...@nadine.teleport.com>, Ennead
<enn...@linda.teleport.com> wrote:
>Tom Vincent, quoting me quoting him, wrote:
>
>: >Well, I _was_ talking about in ten or twenty years, and most
>: >black-and-white comic readers are _relatively_ educated and middle-class
>: >or above. It doesn't seem to me to be unrealistic to think that computers
>: >with fast internet access will be pretty common among the middle class and
>: >above by 2012.
>
>: oooohhhh- careful here, Ampersand- this is pretty much proposing removing
>: access to comics to predetermined economic classes... [...]
>
>Uh-huh. Tom, with all due respect for the class politics of yours I so
>admire (and I'm not being sarcastic about that),
Yes, I know, and I appreciate your saying it- very much so.. And thank you
very much for that disclaimer.
> what world do you live
>in? Do you really think that, right now, folks with two children to feed
>on $12,000 a year are buying many comics?
Probably about the same number of folks with two children making 20k/yr
that have computers and internet access.
> To bring up an extreme example,
>how many poor people do you suppose bought STORYTELLER? (I could only buy
>it because my local store had a half-price sale, frankly.)
Amprsand, *I* don't even have copies of # 8 and 9. I didn't get any
contributer copies, and wasn't ready to plop down 5 bucks for it. I thought
from the very beginning (like, January 96) that a *big* mistake was being
made by going with that price and format. Barry and Alex politely listened
to my concerns on the matter, and the best concession I could get was full
color reproduction (the original plan called for "flat" color a la 1970s)-
I thought that at least then readers would be getting *something* for the
extra money besides a storage headache. (I actually worked at about 15%
below my rate to make this happen, too)
>
>Also, consider the costs of self-publishing a comic, as long as you're
>considering which classes do and don't have access under each system.
From a publishing standpoint, the economy of web publishing makes all the
sense in the world- it really does. It does make it affordableto publish,
therefore accessible to people who might otherwise not be able to see it.
Kippil is a good example. An absolutely wonderful and witty multi panel
strip which, had it not been for the web page it was on, I never would have
seen. To have missed out on that would have been a terrible shame. Had you
been able to publish it in physical form, however, I think more people
would have been able to enjoy it.
>
>: >This is why I was imagining people printing out their comics. A
>: >laser-printed black and white comics pages looks just fine - better than
>: >many published comics, in fact.
>
>: That gets pretty redundant though, doesn't it? First spend time
>: downloading, then time printing, expenses of both...
>
>Even if you calculate in the costs of downloading and printing, it would
>_still_ be much cheaper than the current $2.75. (And most consumers
>wouldn't calculate those costs in; they wouldn't be "felt" costs.)
Man, I feel those costs every time I head out to Office Max to buy another
ink cartrige for my printer! That shit's expensive, and it doesn't go very
far.:-)
>
>: >I suspect that data storage will only continue getting faster and cheaper.
>: >I don't think it's realistic to talk about what the internet will be
>: >capable of 15 years from now by looking at what today's limits are. (How
>: >much home data storage was available in 1982?)
>
>: Cost will continue to be a factor. Zip drives have been around awhile, and
>: while the cost/mb is fairly reasonable, the disks still run $20 a pop.
>
>Zip drives have not been around _that_ long; more important, they are
>only now beginning to become a popular-use item. You seem to think that
>history will stop around 1998; that, even though all these things have
>consistantly been getting faster and cheaper for twenty years, they'll
>suddenly stop doing so now. If you're right about that, then I agree:
>internet comic distribution will never be practical. But I don't see the
>slightest reason to think that you're right about that, and you haven't
>put forth any arguements to support this view.
When Zip drives are considered standard equipment like floppy drives and CD
roms, I can see the price of disks dropping, but not before that. Well,
maybe before that- if the SUN model of completely networked computers
becomes reality, then maybe. I don't even see that as terribly likely given
the nuts&bolts of the whole Microsoft/Apple deal. I'm referring here to
Microsoft's refusal to support pure Java in favor of their own (from what I
understand) inferior mutation of it, and the effect this will have in
delaying the whole networked computer in the home concept. I just don't see
Microsoft willing to give up the scads of money being made off of OS's for
desktops in an altruistic move to make the world a better place.
>
>: >The switch to using cable-TV lines for internet access has already begun;
>: >it's expensive, but all technologies are expensive in their first few
>: >years of existance.
>
>: No way I'm paying what Time/Warner is charging for access. Forty bucks
>: /month, above and beyond your basic cable charges... I outlined all the
>: costs there.
>
>I'm not arguing that it's currently viable, Tom, so arguing that it's not
>practical currently is a straw man. If you want to argue that cable-access
>will never, ever get cheaper, then make that argument, but you haven't
>done so here.
History. Cable companies had been crying the regulation blues for years, so
the FCC finally aquiesced and deregulated the industry. Rates have
skyrocketed since, while real programming has suffered. "Not true" cry the
naysayers "There's more channels now- greater selection!" Well, if the home
shoping network and six hours a night of infomercials is improved
programming, it's news to me.
>
>It'll probably eventually be possible to get a cable hook-up for your
>computer without having to buy cable TV as well. There's no tech reason
>it can't be done now; it's just a matter of building up the market for it.
I hope so, but I'll believe it only when I see it. I think you're
underestimating the greed factor though.
>
>: But Ampersand, every single computer based "solution" entails greater
>: expense to the consumer.
>
>Only if the consumer isn't going to own a computer with internet access
>anyway. I think that it's very unlikely that will be true of many
>alternative comic book readers 15 years from now. Do you disagree?
No, I agree with you here.
>
>: >The problem with the current system is that it has to pay a lot of people
>: >who aren't really necessary for the creation of comics, meaning that the
>: >price is much higher than it would be if earning the artist(s) a living
>: >were the only consideration.
>
>: All you're doing with web based comics is changing the titles and jobs of
>: the middlemen. And they cost more. Does Bill Gates *really* need to own a
>: piece of the comics market?
>
>Bill Gates would need to be paid once initially, not continually.
Starting very soon, Microsoft's Internet Explorer will be the default
browser on every desktop computer sold. Every one. Don't you think it's
naive, given the history of Microsoft, to think it ends there? Espescially
given the Java situation? Gates is the wealthiest human being on the
planet, but I donated a higher percentage of my income to charitable causes
than he did. I think if you took the combined incomes of my household,
those of my two sisters and two brothers, you'd come up with a bigger
dollar amount than the richest guy in the world donated to charities.
Altruism isn't his strong suit- making money is.
> And,
>again, you're assuming that comic readers wouldn't own comptuers with
>internet access regardless, and are only buying it in order to buy
>comics. This seems very unrealistic to me.
Okay- that's a valid point. I'll concede that one to you.:-)
I'll probably be fighting this battle to the grave, who knows. I guess
there's a really big part of me that just looks around every day, only to
find us becoming more and more soulless. There's a certain warmth that
comes from the entire experience of reading... reading anything, that
simply cannot be replicated from a computer screen no matter how hard we
try. It's just the nature of the beast.
Perhaps I'm just a dinosaur, destined to extinction as the world becomes
increasingly wired and I become increasingly withdrawn from it. I mean, I'm
no Luddite. I like technology. I use it all the time. I've just seen what
its done to medicine, where the potential for well meaning but starry eyed
abuse is horrifyingly real and happening on a daily basis, and I'd hate
like hell for that to happen in any art form. And the stakes are much lower
here, which will make it all the more easy to happen.
Ennead
Lemming wrote:
: [...] With
: a few notable exceptions von Eeden's and Giffen's layouts were
: perfectly easy to follow, yet imaginative and enhanced the story
: tremendously. Eisner wasn't as experimental, but he was certainly
: exemplary of this. [...]
Actually, I think Eisner was sometimes far more experimental; if it
doesn't seem that way, it's only because von Eeden & Giffen had Eisner's
achievements to build on, and not vice versa.
None of these people have done layouts half as weird and interesting (and
effective) as George Herriman did eighty years ago, imo.
: Layout is the number one coolest thing about comics, so far as I'm
: concerned. Wacky panels are something you just can't do anywhere
: else, especially daily strips. You've got this great blank page
: there, and you want to put nine boxes on it and forget about it? Why?
Actually, a nine-panel grid can be an interesting experiment, if the
creator(s) find a better way to make use of it. Look at WATCHMEN, for
instance.
In my current comic strip, I spent a while drawing on a strict
24-tiny-panel grid. I found it an interesting and refreshing project - the
lack of concern with panel size or shape, and the lack of room to attempt
to do anything flashy with the drawings, forced me to strip away
everything from my style that wasn't pure cartooning (not unlike my first
24-hour comic). But YMMV.
Yours,
--Ampersand
Jason Fliegel
In article <5v5ov1$gt7$2...@nadine.teleport.com>,
Ennead <enn...@linda.teleport.com> wrote:
>Lemming wrote:
>
>: Layout is the number one coolest thing about comics, so far as I'm
>: concerned. Wacky panels are something you just can't do anywhere
>: else, especially daily strips. You've got this great blank page
>: there, and you want to put nine boxes on it and forget about it? Why?
>
>Actually, a nine-panel grid can be an interesting experiment, if the
>creator(s) find a better way to make use of it. Look at WATCHMEN, for
>instance.
>
For a great use of a (16-panel, I think) grid layout, check out Miller's
Dark Knight Returns. The sequence where Bruce flashes back to his parents
murder uses a grid layout and sets of panels which are nearly identical (a
gun with a shell just out of the chamber followed by the gun with the
shell a little further out of the chamber; Thomas Wayne pushing Bruce out
of the way followed by a panle of Bruce just a little further behind
Thomas, and, of course, Martha's strand of pearls breaking). The whole
effect is to put the scene in slow motion, and I think it works quite
nicely.
--
Jason Fliegel
j-fl...@uchicago.edu
2L, University of Chicago Law School
janis berzins
Robin Riggs wrote:
>
> Who said anything about nine boxes? I said "traditional". Once you can do
> the traditional method there's nothing wrong with experimenting. Too many
> use "creative" panel layouts to cover the fact that they're not that
> competent at linear storytelling.
>
Amen. There is a lot to be done in traditional layout formats. And
layout pyrotechnics are simply not appropreate to every story.
Robin
In article <EGA21...@nonexistent.com>,
lemm...@cybernex.net (Lemming) wrote:
>You've got this great blank page
>there, and you want to put nine boxes on it and forget about it? Why?
Who said anything about nine boxes? I said "traditional". Once you can do
the traditional method there's nothing wrong with experimenting. Too many
use "creative" panel layouts to cover the fact that they're not that
competent at linear storytelling.
Robin Riggs.
Todd VerBeek, gwm
>Lemming wrote:
>: [...] With
>: a few notable exceptions von Eeden's and Giffen's layouts were
>: perfectly easy to follow, yet imaginative and enhanced the story
>: tremendously. Eisner wasn't as experimental, but he was certainly
>: exemplary of this. [...]
My pal Ennead said:
>Actually, I think Eisner was sometimes far more experimental; if it
>doesn't seem that way, it's only because von Eeden & Giffen had Eisner's
>achievements to build on, and not vice versa.
>
>None of these people have done layouts half as weird and interesting (and
>effective) as George Herriman did eighty years ago, imo.
Chris Ware is definitely trying to, however. Acme Novelty Library
(especially the big ones) are chock full o' non-standard page layouts.
Cheers, Todd
"The cautious seldom make mistakes (in bed)."
- my fortune cookie at the 1996 r.a.c.* Comicon dinner
janis berzins
Jason Fliegel wrote:
>
> In article <5v5ov1$gt7$2...@nadine.teleport.com>,
> Ennead <enn...@linda.teleport.com> wrote:
> >Lemming wrote:
> >
> >: Layout is the number one coolest thing about comics, so far as I'm
> >: concerned. Wacky panels are something you just can't do anywhere
> >: there, and you want to put nine boxes on it and forget about it? Why?
> >
> >creator(s) find a better way to make use of it. Look at WATCHMEN, for
> >instance.
> >
>
> For a great use of a (16-panel, I think) grid layout, check out Miller's
> Dark Knight Returns. The sequence where Bruce flashes back to his parents
> murder uses a grid layout and sets of panels which are nearly identical (a
> gun with a shell just out of the chamber followed by the gun with the
> shell a little further out of the chamber; Thomas Wayne pushing Bruce out
> of the way followed by a panle of Bruce just a little further behind
> Thomas, and, of course, Martha's strand of pearls breaking). The whole
> effect is to put the scene in slow motion, and I think it works quite
> nicely.
>
that morphed between a flag and Superman symbol (been a long time).
Miller is one of a short list who approach the page as a total
composition of panels. The problem is that the more experimental you
get, the more likely you are to lose the reader.
Watchmen, however, I see as a triumph over what is basically a more
restrictive format- the nine-panel grid. Gibbons is doing basic,
straight ahead storytelling without the aid of a lot of panel tricks. A
more innovative style wouldn't have jibed with the nostalgic feel of the
series.
Sim has just used every trick in the book, and several of his own.
An interesting twist on the page-as-an-independant-composition idea
(please, is there a word for this? R. Fiore, where are you?) is Neal
Adams' "hidden head" trick. The panel layout was conventional, but the
pictures combined to make a whole page image of a head. He did it in
Ben Casey and Deadman that I know of.
> --
> Jason Fliegel
> j-fl...@uchicago.edu
> 2L, University of Chicago Law School
Jason! Law School!
Lemming
janis berzins <jabe...@earthlink.net> did speak:
>Robin Riggs wrote:
>>
>> Who said anything about nine boxes? I said "traditional". Once you can do
>> the traditional method there's nothing wrong with experimenting. Too many
>> use "creative" panel layouts to cover the fact that they're not that
>> competent at linear storytelling.
Absolutely. A bad artist using bad layouts to cover up bad art ends
up with a bad page.
>Amen. There is a lot to be done in traditional layout formats. And
>layout pyrotechnics are simply not appropreate to every story.
But when they work they work oh so well. Comics are told, not in
panels, but in pages. Miller could have told Dark Knight Returns, to
use everyone's favorite example, in traditional format. He could have
used a nine-panel grid and taken a lot of space, or sixteen panels a
la the otherwise excrable Video Jack, or simple tiers like Bone, or
just about anything. And he used all those. It becomes great because
he did that and so much more.
Lemming
Ennead <enn...@linda.teleport.com> sayethed:
>Lemming wrote:
>: [...] With
>: a few notable exceptions von Eeden's and Giffen's layouts were
>: perfectly easy to follow, yet imaginative and enhanced the story
>: tremendously. Eisner wasn't as experimental, but he was certainly
>: exemplary of this. [...]
>Actually, I think Eisner was sometimes far more experimental; if it
>doesn't seem that way, it's only because von Eeden & Giffen had Eisner's
>achievements to build on, and not vice versa.
Really? I'm paging through the Spirit right now, and I see nothing
that stretched the limits as much as Giffen, even assuming that Giffen
had studied Eisner. Eisner aside, they were both drawing on "fine
art" and all the rules of composition made zillions of years before
either of them.
Now, if you wanted to say Mondrian was more experimental I'd have to
agree with you... =)
>None of these people have done layouts half as weird and interesting (and
>effective) as George Herriman did eighty years ago, imo.
And his disciple, Mr. Watterson, got up to some pretty nasty tricks
with his half-page Sunday specials. There's one strip I'm thinking of
(you'd know it if you'd seen it) where Hobbes dreams of stalking
Calvin.
>: Layout is the number one coolest thing about comics, so far as I'm
>: concerned. Wacky panels are something you just can't do anywhere
>: else, especially daily strips. You've got this great blank page
>: there, and you want to put nine boxes on it and forget about it? Why?
>Actually, a nine-panel grid can be an interesting experiment, if the
>creator(s) find a better way to make use of it. Look at WATCHMEN, for
>instance.
IMO, Giffen blew Watchmen away with his LSH: Five Years After. And a
grid's easy to draw, and -incredibly- easy to write, and some of my
favorites stories were written in it. But I still like funky layouts.
>In my current comic strip, I spent a while drawing on a strict
>24-tiny-panel grid. I found it an interesting and refreshing project - the
>lack of concern with panel size or shape, and the lack of room to attempt
>to do anything flashy with the drawings, forced me to strip away
>everything from my style that wasn't pure cartooning (not unlike my first
>24-hour comic). But YMMV.
Wish my art were good enough to compare notes. I've found a grid to
be the simplest way of writing, with the clearest communication and
the least effort necessary. But I didn't think it made the best
comics.
David Tallan
Tom Vincent <tom127@.capital.net> wrote:
: I'll probably be fighting this battle to the grave, who knows. I guess
: there's a really big part of me that just looks around every day, only to
: find us becoming more and more soulless. There's a certain warmth that
: comes from the entire experience of reading... reading anything, that
: simply cannot be replicated from a computer screen no matter how hard we
: try. It's just the nature of the beast.
: Perhaps I'm just a dinosaur, destined to extinction as the world becomes
: increasingly wired and I become increasingly withdrawn from it. I mean, I'm
: no Luddite. I like technology. I use it all the time. I've just seen what
: its done to medicine, where the potential for well meaning but starry eyed
: abuse is horrifyingly real and happening on a daily basis, and I'd hate
: like hell for that to happen in any art form. And the stakes are much lower
: here, which will make it all the more easy to happen.
Time for my two cents. Computer publishing will not replace paper
publishing until it can do what paper publishing does better*, cheaper
and more conveniently. By "better" I'm not failing to acknowledge
that there are somethings that computer technology will, chances are,
never be able to do better or even as well as paper technology but
other improvements will more than make up for them. On the whole, the
general public will be getting a productr which better meets their
needs. Until then, we have no need to fear a change in technology.
When that point comes, we won't be too sorry to see the change.
Let me compare this to another change in technology. About five
hundred years ago printing press entered Europe and began the
process of replacing the manuscript as the dominant form of book
production. What was lost in terms of the end product was
incredible. Anyone who has even seen the printed reproductions
of medieval illuminated manuscripts can attest to this. ObComics
#1: Undoubtedly the most beautiful comic I possess is my reproduction
of a 13th century retelling of the Old Testament in comics. As
someone who has held some of these medieval illuminated manuscripts
in his hot little hands, let me assure you that the experience of
reading even the most beautiful of mass-produced paper books lags
just as far behind the experience of reading a lovingly produced
manuscript in terms of "soulfullness" as reading a computer file
lags behind reading a printed book.
But, much as I love illuminated manuscripts (and anyone who has
seen my bookshelves and walls can attest to that love) all things
considered I don't regret the change in the technology of book
production. We gained more than we lost. Otherwise we wouldn't
have made the switch.
ObComics #2: I saw an incredibly georgious hand-painted comic
book (set Holmesian London with a very Arts-and-Crafts movement
feel to it). None of you will ever see this comic. It was
done as a manuscript and there won't be more than one copy of it.
The artist/writer doesn't attend comic book conventions. If it
weren't for the printing press, all comics would be like that.
ObComics (sort of)#3: Probably the neatest wall decoration we
have is a page of the Galaxion novel hand calligraphed and
illuminated by Tara in the style of the _Grandes Heures of
Jean Duc de Berry_.
--
Respectfully,
David Tallan
dta...@interlog.com
Bradly E. Peterson
tom127@.capital.net (Tom Vincent) done said this here deal:
>In article <EG7zr...@nonexistent.com>, lemm...@cybernex.net wrote:
>>We're also paying them less. I could publish a web comic, if I
>>thought anyone would read it, for $20 a month. Let's see Diamond top
>>that.
>For starters, Diamond doesn't publish, they distribute.
Well, no... They don't. But Geppi, who owns Diamond does.
Publish, I mean. There's the Gemstone stuff, which I wish would
have all the credits on the EC reprints they do. eh...
Sorry, got lost a second, there...
>Additionally, you have the initial expense and time elements
>involved. You may publish cheaper, but if only a handful read
>it, who cares?
>The whole point of the discussion was that comics are too expensive, but
>web based fantasies make them even more expensive yet.
Truly, the web has certain advantages for publishers, but
publishing strictly for the web has yet to be really done well.
Shannon Wheeler has done a pretty good job of utilizing the
internet as a resource, including getting a weekly one-page strip
at the Mania site (I know, I know... Put down those bricks,
dammit! heh...).
Those pages ARE available in print as well, but they aren't as
big at Mania. They load up fairly quickly, and are a hoot. It's
a tradeoff having smaller pages on the web, it's a good way for
someone who hasn't seen "Too Much Coffee Man" to check it out.
My question is, "Are the folks who check the weekly strip going
out and buying the books?". Dunno.
I'm just now learning how to code html and should have a page for
"Psychodrama Press" up fairly soon. It should prove a fairly
good place for folks who aren't reading the reports that end up
here on Usenet, or don't pick up the "Psychodrama Spacefiller" at
Cliff's Comics (Fort Worth, TX). Hopefully, I'll be able to get
some feedback on my stories, at the least. At the most... Who
knows?
In the end, however, using the web as the sole means for
publishing your work is pretty pointless. To promote it? To
draw attention to it? Sure! It's a tool and it should be used.
If I let it use me, then I'M a tool! heh...
Besides, it's sorta hard to get into a web comic... At least as
much as you can get into a printed comic. It's the feel of the
paper in your hands. It's a tangible thing. It's feels better.
More human, maybe.
Just a thought...
Bradly E. Peterson, Psychodrama Press
"I stared long and hard into the abyss...
... and saw myself staring back"
"Great spirits have always encountered
violent opposition from mediocre minds"
(Albert Einstein)
"Liefeld's art made my eyes bleed..."
(Elayne Wechsler Chaput)
(Remove SPAMBLOCK from address to reply)
Bradly E. Peterson
Ennead <enn...@linda.teleport.com> done said this here deal:
>Tom Vincent, quoting me quoting him, wrote:
>: >I suspect that data storage will only continue getting faster and cheaper.
>: >I don't think it's realistic to talk about what the internet will be
>: >capable of 15 years from now by looking at what today's limits are. (How
>: >much home data storage was available in 1982?)
I remember reading a quote from Bill Gates circa 1982 stating
that he was excited about the new technology and that we'd start
seeing 100 mg hard drives for under $10,000 soon. heh...
>: Cost will continue to be a factor. Zip drives have been around awhile, and
>: while the cost/mb is fairly reasonable, the disks still run $20 a pop.
>Zip drives have not been around _that_ long; more important, they are
>only now beginning to become a popular-use item. You seem to think that
>history will stop around 1998; that, even though all these things have
>consistantly been getting faster and cheaper for twenty years, they'll
>suddenly stop doing so now. If you're right about that, then I agree:
>internet comic distribution will never be practical. But I don't see the
>slightest reason to think that you're right about that, and you haven't
>put forth any arguements to support this view.
Zip drives will HOPEFULLY become more the standard and the price
on the drives as well as the disks will go down soon. Now, I
can't see downloading a monthly comic in the very near future,
but it's certainly possible. Not bloody likely, but possible.
What about this... You can get roughly 90+ megs worth of stuff
onto a zip, right? You could put out digital tradebacks out on
them. Joe Monks of "Chanting Monks Studios" (Formerly CFD
Productions) has been experimenting with digital pics on regular
diskettes, and shipping them out with some of his titles. Dunno
how succesful that venture has been, though.
JOE! You out there? What's the scoop? What's the response
been?
Later yah'll...
tom...@capital.net
In article <3416C3...@earthlink.net>, janis says...
>An interesting twist on the page-as-an-independant-composition idea
>(please, is there a word for this? R. Fiore, where are you?) is Neal
>Adams' "hidden head" trick. The panel layout was conventional, but the
>pictures combined to make a whole page image of a head. He did it in
>Ben Casey and Deadman that I know of.
Adams really did do some dynamic and unconventional things with his layouts,
didn't he?
I find it so interesting when people dismiss things done by Eisner, Adams, etc.
did because the ground broken by them is now a pretty conventional method of
comic storytelling. I think people tend to forget that when these guys did this
stuff, no one anywhere was doing anything even remotely similar.
---Tom Vincent
janis berzins
Tom Vincent wrote:
>
> In article <5v3jbf$o6m$1...@nadine.teleport.com>, Ennead
> <enn...@linda.teleport.com> wrote:
>
> >Tom Vincent, quoting me quoting him, wrote:
> >
> > what world do you live
> >in? Do you really think that, right now, folks with two children to feed
> >on $12,000 a year are buying many comics?
>
> Probably about the same number of folks with two children making 20k/yr
> that have computers and internet access.
>
right? Average income in the US was in the mid-thirties the last time I
looked and the average per capita income in my area is around 37,000.
Home computer market penitration is around 50% in the US. And I would
think there is some advertising advantage to reaching all the potential
comic buying school children in the nation who has fast net access at
school. A digital line can download a comic page fast.
> > To bring up an extreme example,
> >how many poor people do you suppose bought STORYTELLER? (I could only buy
> >it because my local store had a half-price sale, frankly.)
>
> Amprsand, *I* don't even have copies of # 8 and 9. I didn't get any
> contributer copies, and wasn't ready to plop down 5 bucks for it. I thought
> from the very beginning (like, January 96) that a *big* mistake was being
> made by going with that price and format. Barry and Alex politely listened
> to my concerns on the matter, and the best concession I could get was full
> color reproduction (the original plan called for "flat" color a la 1970s)-
> I thought that at least then readers would be getting *something* for the
> extra money besides a storage headache. (I actually worked at about 15%
> below my rate to make this happen, too)
>
Well, I gotta say thank you, because the colors were a big addition to
the book. And although I see how it would have been appropreate
considering the style BWS was using, I do think if he was going to do
flat color he should have stayed with standard comic size.
As to the matter of price, I think the problem is one of diminishing
returns. As the market gets smaller prices have to go up. When I see
stuff like Storyteller go belly up I have to wonder what hopes the
newcommer interested in self-publishing has.
> >
> >Also, consider the costs of self-publishing a comic, as long as you're
> >considering which classes do and don't have access under each system.
>
> From a publishing standpoint, the economy of web publishing makes all the
> sense in the world- it really does. It does make it affordableto publish,
> therefore accessible to people who might otherwise not be able to see it.
> Kippil is a good example. An absolutely wonderful and witty multi panel
> strip which, had it not been for the web page it was on, I never would have
> seen. To have missed out on that would have been a terrible shame. Had you
> been able to publish it in physical form, however, I think more people
> would have been able to enjoy it.
>
I see the net as a great democratizing tool for individual publishing.
Startup costs are so small and possible market penetration is so great
that publishing becomes a hobby rather than a way to lose your life
savings. The net does the same thing for people who want to write that
the printing press did for people who wanted to read.
> >
> >: >This is why I was imagining people printing out their comics. A
> >: >laser-printed black and white comics pages looks just fine - better than
> >: >many published comics, in fact.
> >
> >: That gets pretty redundant though, doesn't it? First spend time
> >: downloading, then time printing, expenses of both...
> >
> >Even if you calculate in the costs of downloading and printing, it would
> >_still_ be much cheaper than the current $2.75. (And most consumers
> >wouldn't calculate those costs in; they wouldn't be "felt" costs.)
>
This is where you lose me. Without a breakthrough in technology, mass
printing is going to be far more ecconomical. Last I looked, the cost
of color printing on an ink jet printer at about half the quality of
newspaper presses was between $1 and $2 a page for consumables. Dye
Sublimation printers average about $.75 a page and the quality is much
higher, but the initial cost of such printers looks like it will be too
high for the average consumer for several more years. If you want paper
comics, it seems to me that subscriptions are your more ecconomical
route.
Anyway, we're still thinking in terms of the printed page. I think
computer comics with the artistic strengths and weaknesses of the
computer monitor in mind open new vistas for the artist. How about a
comic of vastly expanded number of pages, formatted in landscape, and
planned with the idea they would be viewed from the distance a computer
monitor is generally seen from. Seems to me, bigger panels would
predominate and storytelling would tend to be faster as a result.
I'm shocked I don't see more sequential panel art in Web pages. It
seems a natural juxtaposition.
I think I'm just going to have to do a hypertext comic...
...
> When Zip drives are considered standard equipment like floppy drives and CD
> roms, I can see the price of disks dropping, but not before that.
I've owned a zip drive for a couple of years and my opinion is that
right now you'd be better off with a WORM drive, if you can afford the
$300 or so higher upfront price. It doesn't take long to fill up a zip
disk with comic pages, and at $20/100Meg that only leaves you 12.5 meg
per issue at a storage cost of $2.50 an issue. Cost of storage on WORM
is around $.02 a Meg (!), or about $7 per disk.
...
> I'll probably be fighting this battle to the grave, who knows. I guess
> there's a really big part of me that just looks around every day, only to
> find us becoming more and more soulless. There's a certain warmth that
> comes from the entire experience of reading... reading anything, that
> simply cannot be replicated from a computer screen no matter how hard we
> try. It's just the nature of the beast.
>
I don't understand how the net can make us more soulless. Not anymore
than the telephone has. If anything, I see it as a chance for regular
people who would never meet otherwise to talk about their lives. Rather
than learning about people in other places by reading what someone has
written about them, I can talk to them directly. If anything, I see net
communication as more intimate. I get to know how a person thinks
without preconceptions based on how they look (how they dress, etc.)
intruding. Still, all this, comics and the lot, is years away from
happening. Imagine how communication will change when a lot of people
are spending a significant amount of their social time in a virtual
world being represented by avitars.
> Perhaps I'm just a dinosaur, destined to extinction as the world becomes
> increasingly wired and I become increasingly withdrawn from it. I mean, I'm
> no Luddite. I like technology. I use it all the time. I've just seen what
> its done to medicine, where the potential for well meaning but starry eyed
> abuse is horrifyingly real and happening on a daily basis, and I'd hate
> like hell for that to happen in any art form. And the stakes are much lower
> here, which will make it all the more easy to happen.
--
Tom Galloway
In article <341851...@earthlink.net> jabe...@earthlink.net writes:
>This is where you lose me. Without a breakthrough in technology, mass
>printing is going to be far more ecconomical. Last I looked, the cost
>of color printing on an ink jet printer at about half the quality of
>newspaper presses was between $1 and $2 a page for consumables. Dye
And there's current work going on at MIT on said breakthrough, which
is called "electronic paper" and combines the best features of computer
storage and paper printing.
The basic idea is that you have one "book" of several hundred pages
of electronic "paper". Said "paper" is something with the ability to
have its "pixels" reformat into a fixed form on downloading with
book quality resolution (if I recall correctly, it's a plastic with
embedded electronic wires). So you'd keep the content on DVDs or on the
Web and each morning you'd download you're planned reading material
for the day to your book. The pages of the book would reformat themselves
to display the content you've downloaded; say a newspaper, a couple of
magazines, all the comic strips you want to follow, a novel you're
working on, notes for the staff meeting that day, your schedule, etc.
And the next morning you download that day's content into the book,
and it reformats the pages to display that content. And so on.
Assuming the development comes through, this plus the Web are what will
*really* change publishing.
tyg t...@netcom.com
janis berzins
tom...@capital.net wrote:
>
> In article <3416C3...@earthlink.net>, janis says...
> >An interesting twist on the page-as-an-independant-composition idea
> >(please, is there a word for this? R. Fiore, where are you?) is Neal
> >Adams' "hidden head" trick. The panel layout was conventional, but the
> >pictures combined to make a whole page image of a head. He did it in
> >Ben Casey and Deadman that I know of.
>
> Adams really did do some dynamic and unconventional things with his layouts,
> didn't he?
>
follow the continuity in some of the Brave and Bold stuff.
> I find it so interesting when people dismiss things done by Eisner, Adams, etc.
> did because the ground broken by them is now a pretty conventional method of
> comic storytelling. I think people tend to forget that when these guys did this
> stuff, no one anywhere was doing anything even remotely similar.
>
Yeah. The Hidden-Head trick is really pretty easy to do but it's always
gonna be associated with Adams. Miller was hailed for his use of light
and shadow in Daredevil, but Eisner had done a lot of it before. But
Miller's look changed the idiom (bringing in the Dark Age of Comics).
Seemed like for 10 or 15 years every new artist was an Adams clone. I
guess it's the nature of a transitory artform.
damonless
> >Notice that Dave Sim can lead you all over the page when he's doing a "Mind
> >Games" issue but for most of the time his layouts are very traditional.
> >He's more likely to create visual interest with his composition *within*
> >the panels.
i think composition is part of layout.
> Layout is the number one coolest thing about comics, so far as I'm
> concerned. Wacky panels are something you just can't do anywhere
> else, especially daily strips. You've got this great blank page
> there, and you want to put nine boxes on it and forget about it? Why?
comics are great for their subtlety, their packing
of information, and their page design.
also, the art looks kewl.
--
"I think of words to tell you/I find nothing fine enough to say
Nothing worth anything- nothing worth nothing/ Nohting left in
this lump of grey/That even vaguely says I love you/in a way
that pleases me/ SoI'll let the oncoming day say it for me."
the Chills, "The Oncoming Day"
34 is done. 39 is done.
Tom Vincent
>Tom Vincent wrote:
>>
>> In article <5v3jbf$o6m$1...@nadine.teleport.com>, Ennead
>> <enn...@linda.teleport.com> wrote:
>>
>...
>> > what world do you live
>> >in? Do you really think that, right now, folks with two children to feed
>> >on $12,000 a year are buying many comics?
>>
>> Probably about the same number of folks with two children making 20k/yr
>> that have computers and internet access.
>>
>Neither of which is a major part of the audience right now anyway,
>right? Average income in the US was in the mid-thirties the last time I
>looked and the average per capita income in my area is around 37,000.
A much better measure would be *median* income, wouldn't you think? Average
income measurements are far too easily skewed by extremes at either end,
aren't they?
>Home computer market penitration is around 50% in the US.
You've given this number before, Janis, but it still seems awfully high to
me. Where are you getting the figure from?
> And I would
>think there is some advertising advantage to reaching all the potential
>comic buying school children in the nation who has fast net access at
>school. A digital line can download a comic page fast.
Heh, heh. That'd be an interesting switch- teachers used to throw out our
comics when we slipped em inside our books, but now they'll let kids read
em online instead of hitting NASA or Smithsonian websites?
>>
>> Amprsand, *I* don't even have copies of # 8 and 9. I didn't get any
[blah, blah]
>Well, I gotta say thank you, because the colors were a big addition to
>the book.
Thank you very, very much- I really appreciate that.
> And although I see how it would have been appropreate
>considering the style BWS was using, I do think if he was going to do
>flat color he should have stayed with standard comic size.
>
Absolutely.
>As to the matter of price, I think the problem is one of diminishing
>returns. As the market gets smaller prices have to go up. When I see
>stuff like Storyteller go belly up I have to wonder what hopes the
>newcommer interested in self-publishing has.
Quite a bit of a Catch 22, isn't it?
[snip]
>
>I think I'm just going to have to do a hypertext comic...
I'd love to see it.
>
>I've owned a zip drive for a couple of years and my opinion is that
>right now you'd be better off with a WORM drive, if you can afford the
>$300 or so higher upfront price. It doesn't take long to fill up a zip
>disk with comic pages, and at $20/100Meg that only leaves you 12.5 meg
>per issue at a storage cost of $2.50 an issue. Cost of storage on WORM
>is around $.02 a Meg (!), or about $7 per disk.
What's a WORM drive? Is it like a Jaz drive?
>...
>> I'll probably be fighting this battle to the grave, who knows. I guess
>> there's a really big part of me that just looks around every day, only to
>> find us becoming more and more soulless. There's a certain warmth that
>> comes from the entire experience of reading... reading anything, that
>> simply cannot be replicated from a computer screen no matter how hard we
>> try. It's just the nature of the beast.
>>
>I don't understand how the net can make us more soulless. Not anymore
>than the telephone has.
Well, I guess when we talk on the phone we can hear tone of voice. How many
times have you spoken with someone, and knew by their tone of voice that
they weren't feeling well? You can't do that on the net- it's only fonts
making words on a screen.
>If anything, I see it as a chance for regular
>people who would never meet otherwise to talk about their lives. Rather
>than learning about people in other places by reading what someone has
>written about them, I can talk to them directly. If anything, I see net
>communication as more intimate. I get to know how a person thinks
>without preconceptions based on how they look (how they dress, etc.)
>intruding.
Well, yeah, this is true. i've "met' a lot of really cool people over the
net. Indeed, I hooked up with Barry because I'd sent him an email. That
notwithstanding, I'd definitely take a face to face conversation with
people any day.
> Still, all this, comics and the lot, is years away from
>happening. Imagine how communication will change when a lot of people
>are spending a significant amount of their social time in a virtual
>world being represented by avitars.
That's exactly what frightens me- an entire culture of people who stuck to
their cathode ray tubes, and relating to those images rather than, oh, I
dunno, trees, animals, people...
---Tom Vincent
Her eyes brimmed with tears. "The Princess is dead, and now the Mother is
gone too. Who will care for all those people? Who will care for the infirm
and the unwanted? Who will do the good works now?" The simplicity of the
answer startled her. "Us", came the reply, "all of us."
damonless
From: Mitch Lee <m...@saga10.stanford.edu>
<<<damonless <db...@po.cwru.edu> writes:
<much snipped>
> sure, as soon as i do 35-40, the back page, and the cover...
> obshameless selfpromotion:
> i have had the layout and rough pencils done since the end of 1992
> [i wrote the story using roughs so i could place the text right.],
> but i never had an idea for the cover.
> --i'd be done 39 tonite but there's no more toner in the printer;
> modern technology!
>
God must be telling you something... :-)>>>
god doesn't mess with me.
but demons hound me.
<<<BTW, you might be referring to "layouts" but there's a distinction in
what you're describing which sounds like "breakdowns". This term refers
to
how a story is paced and executed once the story is plotted and you've
allotted the number of pages to the comic. At this stage the number of
panels
per page, their relation to each other, and the kinds of shots are
decided.
The writer can (and should in my opinion) determine breakdowns ahead of
time
for the artist, although many (especially those at Marvel) allow the
artist
to determine breakdowns.
Layouts are synonymous with rough pencils, and is concerned with sketchy
panel content, not necessarily how a sequence is broken down (although
Marvel
uses terminology that makes one term subsume the other rather than
making
a distinction.)>>>>>
i was going to disagree with you, really i was.
and i'll tell you why-
it seems to me that 'layout' intuititvely means how the story
or page is layed out, while 'breakdowns' connotes to me the idea
of rough pencils.
but it's not like i'm violently against your definitions,
like some are with 'irregardless'.
what follows is a digression on how one person makes comics....
what i did have was thing whole thing designed....
i think of these stories i do as works to be constructed.[1]
so, i lay out the blueprints, as it were...
first, i write down the idea of a sheet, which now i have oodles
of. then, when i do the story, i scribble
notes down until the sheet fills up. i generally then
draw the story with notes that say
something like, 'repeate of panel on page 24.', or 'use
photocopy of [source] here.' this is what's
going on in my head; i'm constructing an image.
it's very htought intensive, because while i know
where the story should go, i don't know how
i'm getting there, or how the pacing is going to work.
after 8 years of thought on this story, i really couldn't
say where/when i got some of my ideas,
but if i got them when i consructed
the story, then i've rediscovered them later,
and found that i was thinking on more
levels at the time that i remember.
[1] i use the term 'constructed' because that's
how i approach drawing, as a mechanical ather than organic
process. this is because i don't think i draw very well.
--
"Well, you won't stop by and tell me what the trouble is/
I couldn't care less- Ha Ha- but my double does/ And he told me
we're both superceeded/ So why not drop by- burst my bubble for
me!" the Chills, "Familiarity Breeds Contempt"
THIS SPAM BLOCKcom
>From: Mitch Lee <m...@saga10.stanford.edu>
>
>
>
><<<damonless <db...@po.cwru.edu> writes:
>
><much snipped>
>
>> sure, as soon as i do 35-40, the back page, and the cover...
>> obshameless selfpromotion:
>> i have had the layout and rough pencils done since the end of 1992
>> [i wrote the story using roughs so i could place the text right.],
>> but i never had an idea for the cover.
>
>> --i'd be done 39 tonite but there's no more toner in the printer;
>> modern technology!
Hey, inkers still run out of ink in the middle of the night, I bet.
Although a bottle of ink is way less expensive than a toner cartridge. You
must suffer for your art Damon:)
>God must be telling you something... :-)>>>
>
>god doesn't mess with me.
>but demons hound me.
Woof!
<snip, snip>
--------------------
Look at my email address and delete what it says to send mail.
My sig got off the leash and is currently running around the 'net. If
found, please return.
T.J.Stansbie
David Tallan wrote:
>
> Tom Vincent <tom127@.capital.net> wrote:
>
> : I'll probably be fighting this battle to the grave, who knows. I guess
> : there's a really big part of me that just looks around every day, only to
> : find us becoming more and more soulless. There's a certain warmth that
> : comes from the entire experience of reading... reading anything, that
> : simply cannot be replicated from a computer screen no matter how hard we
> : try. It's just the nature of the beast.
*cut*
> Time for my two cents. Computer publishing will not replace paper
> publishing until it can do what paper publishing does better*, cheaper
> and more conveniently. By "better" I'm not failing to acknowledge
> that there are somethings that computer technology will, chances are,
> never be able to do better or even as well as paper technology but
> other improvements will more than make up for them. On the whole, the
> general public will be getting a productr which better meets their
> needs. Until then, we have no need to fear a change in technology.
> When that point comes, we won't be too sorry to see the change.
*cut*
The printed/written object will never be replaced by 'display'
literature.
It may dwindle in it's availability, but, the point that may be
being missed here is the fetish of the object.
To hold a book, or comic, in your hands, to /own/ it in a physical,
'real' form cannot be duplicated by a software/informational
representation, on a screen or otherwise.
TJS. Sworn to fear and hate a world that protects him.
----------------------------------------------------------
USE WHAT IS DOMINANT IN A CULTURE TO CHANGE IT QUICKLY
----------------------------------------------------------
Michael Lehmeier t771202
T.J.Stansbie (ti...@psoft.co.uk) wrote:
> The printed/written object will never be replaced by 'display'
> literature.
Someone couldn't imagine that in the immediate future there
might be PC's with more than 1 MB memory.
The founder of DEC said that there is no reason, why someone might
have a PC at home. (IIRC)
The founder of IBM once estimated the world market for computers
to be six. (IIRC)
In the electronics world "never" is a term that spans a time from
5 to 20 years.
My father once said that he would never buy a computer.
My mother once said that she would never let a VCR into her home.
Now guess what?
Of course display literature will replace printed literature.
The only question is when.
--
The Nightshade Dragon -==(UDIC)==-
http://rphc1.physik.uni-regensburg.de/~lem11441/
Lehmeier Michael (Michael....@stud.uni-regensburg.de)
"AYOOAHH!!!! I'm going to Mandratha and getting a tatoo!"
Lusiphur Malache - Poison Elves
Tom Vincent
In article <5v6an0$eji$1...@news.interlog.com>, David Tallan
<dta...@interlog.com> wrote:
>#1: Undoubtedly the most beautiful comic I possess is my reproduction
>of a 13th century retelling of the Old Testament in comics. As
>someone who has held some of these medieval illuminated manuscripts
>in his hot little hands, let me assure you that the experience of
>reading even the most beautiful of mass-produced paper books lags
>just as far behind the experience of reading a lovingly produced
>manuscript in terms of "soulfullness" as reading a computer file
>lags behind reading a printed book.
I envy your luck(?) to have been able to see thes manuscripts in the
'flesh'. I went to Ireland many years ago, and to Trinity College where the
Books of Kells is kept. Absolutely incredible.
David Tallan
T.J.Stansbie <ti...@psoft.co.uk> wrote:
: The printed/written object will never be replaced by 'display'
: literature.
: It may dwindle in it's availability, but, the point that may be
: being missed here is the fetish of the object.
: To hold a book, or comic, in your hands, to /own/ it in a physical,
: 'real' form cannot be duplicated by a software/informational
: representation, on a screen or otherwise.
The same could be be said for manuscripts. To hold the hand-written
or drawn or calligraphed or painted manuscript of a book, or comic,
in your hands is to /own/ it in a physical, 'real',emotional form
that cannot be duplicated by a mass-produced printed object that
was made by machines rather than by the hand of a living person
directly.
Nevertheless, the vast majority of the books I (and I dare say,
most of the others in this forum) read are printed rather
than original hand-written/drawn/calligraphed/painted manuscripts.
I don't underestimate the fetish of the object. I just learn
from history.
janis berzins
David Tallan wrote:
>
> T.J.Stansbie <ti...@psoft.co.uk> wrote:
>
> : The printed/written object will never be replaced by 'display'
> : literature.
>
> : It may dwindle in it's availability, but, the point that may be
> : being missed here is the fetish of the object.
>
if you are a collector you'll be happier with something you can put in a
bag. Printing may never be replaced by "display" delivery, but it
doesn't seem that hard to imagine a time when most people get a
significant portion (or even the majority) of their information from a
screen rather than a page (Wait. Isn't that true already? Don't we call
it "television"?) It strikes me that you could make the same argument
for newspapers never being replaced, but their circulation has been
dropping steadily for a while now (due to a lot of things other than the
internet, to be sure). Newspapers and comics may want to get on a
screen to widen their potential markets and lower their overhead. When
the decision to go online is made, it will be for ecconomic and not
artistic reasons.
> The same could be be said for manuscripts. To hold the hand-written
> or drawn or calligraphed or painted manuscript of a book, or comic,
> in your hands is to /own/ it in a physical, 'real',emotional form
> that cannot be duplicated by a mass-produced printed object that
> was made by machines rather than by the hand of a living person
> directly.
>
Again, I agree, but you are talking about collecting rather than mass
distribution. I want some information in a throwaway form. There are a
lot of folks who would just as soon get their morning paper on their
computer desktop. No, you can't snip out a funny paragraph and 3M it to
the refrigerator, but you don't have to load the Cherokee full of them
every six months and haul 'em down to the recycler, either. It seems
that we are going to become increasingly MORE connected through our
computers and, like it or not, Moore's law has been uncannily accurate
so far.
BTW, there was a question about number of computers in the US and I've
said a couple of times that market penetration for PC's was about 50% of
households. I couldn't remember where I'd read this so I did a little
research. The latest figures I've been able to find on the net are for
January 1986 (Can you believe it?! Information society--bah!) and showed
market penetration for computers at about 34% of US households (33.9
million homes). Projections indicate that the market will hit 49 million
(50% of households) in 1999. Demographics are most interesting. If
what I see on usenet comes from these people, I can't wait to see what
the other 66% of the population has to say!
(BTW in 1995 the national average per capita income was $23,208.)
There is also good information @
http://www.adcom.net/pcsnowin.htm
http://www.e-land.com/e-stat_pages/e-stat_growth_pcs.shtml
http://www.twgi.com/markpene.htm
http://aplusbiz.com/helpyou.htm
Sorry it takes me so long to respond, but often my work schedule only
allows time for reading, not writing.
> Nevertheless, the vast majority of the books I (and I dare say,
> most of the others in this forum) read are printed rather
> than original hand-written/drawn/calligraphed/painted manuscripts.
>
> I don't underestimate the fetish of the object. I just learn
> from history.
>
I would guess that most of the people on this newsgroup can't remember a
time without television. TV has been around for about 50 years.
Commercial radio for about 80. Automobiles and airplanes and telephones
have existed for about 100 years. Personal computers have been around
for about 20 years. Commercialization of the internet- about 3-5 years.
Look at the first 20 years of the auto industry. I'd be shocked if
certain types of periodicals aren't being largely distributed
electronically in 15-20 years. I'd rather have a newspaper that was
continually updated than one made out of trees. That's just me. I don't
think printed comics will be replaced for a long while. If it does
happen, it will be part of a much larger market shift and I don't think
comics are going to have any kind of significant role in whether this
happens or not. By the time comics are being transmitted directly to
your home you'll probably be watching them on your HDTV screen.
I just hope when it does happen they still aren't $2 a issue.
The National Folk Hero of the Net
In <5voo4f$pdk@rrzs3> Michael....@stud.uni-regensburg.de wrote:
> T.J.Stansbie (ti...@psoft.co.uk) wrote:
>
> > The printed/written object will never be replaced by 'display'
> > literature.
>
> The only question is when.
You're not seeing the whole picture....
Of course cooperative art forms are replacing "literature." The only
question is how long it will take to finish.
-:-
POZZO: He used to dance the farandole, the fling, the brawl, the jig,
the fandango and even the hornpipe. He capered. For joy. Now
that's the best he can do. Do you know what he calls it?
ESTRAGON: The Scapegoat's Agony.
VLADIMIR: The Hard Stool.
POZZO: The Net. He thinks he's entangled in a net.
--Samuel Beckett, _Waiting for Godot_
--
Col. G. L. Sicherman
work: sich...@lucent.com
home: col...@monmouth.com
Ryan McGinnis
On 17 Sep 1997 14:06:07 GMT, lem11441@rggs14 (Michael Lehmeier t771202)
wrote:
>T.J.Stansbie (ti...@psoft.co.uk) wrote:
>
>> The printed/written object will never be replaced by 'display'
>> literature.
>
>Someone couldn't imagine that in the immediate future there
>might be PC's with more than 1 MB memory.
>The founder of DEC said that there is no reason, why someone might
>have a PC at home. (IIRC)
>The founder of IBM once estimated the world market for computers
>to be six. (IIRC)
>
>In the electronics world "never" is a term that spans a time from
>5 to 20 years.
>My father once said that he would never buy a computer.
>My mother once said that she would never let a VCR into her home.
>Now guess what?
There is a difference. Those are all examples of new technology doing
things previously unimagined. Replacing books with electronics is not
"doing something previously unimaginable", it's supposedly "making it more
convienant and ecological". And, IMHO, it is a far more stirring issue.
There is something intangibly better about feeling the paper sift through
your fingers as you hurridly flip the page. The look of the book, the
smell, the feeling you get late at night under the covers reading with the
flashlight on. I'm sorry, but the ablility to store an entire library on a
little chip the size of your thumb and the ablility to flip pages by
clicking "next" just doesn't seem worth the price, to me. The entire world
is built upon the use of paper for literature; while I most certainly won't
declare it impossible for machine to replace paper (or man, for what it
matters), I will say that it is a world in which I would rather not live.
+-+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+-+
Ryan McGinnis ()_() TLKiaWoL
mcg...@iastate.edu (_) Jay's Mosh
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~mcginnr/lionking/
"Yoyoyo, Nala, Ah say YO Nala, you be lookin fine"
-- The dangers of catnip
+-+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+-+