Dear comic book companies: here is a clue, no charge

[obsession_inc]

For various reasons, I've been off the internet most of the week; the major reason may well have been because last weekend was consumed entire by the round-robin fail of PETER DAVID VS. SCANS_DAILY, which was great fun to read until I started venturing off my normal sites for monitoring such wankery and found things that made my blood pressure

Comments

[destro]

This feeling, deep in my chest, must be love.

Or my boobs are getting bigger. But either way you win.

And jesus, yes, yes, yes to all of this.

But specifically this:

It's 2009, for God's sake; Napster was like a decade ago, and iTunes has been out for six years! There is no excuse for a major industry to not have an easy, convenient way for customers to access media products online. Amazon figured out how to do it with books, for the love of God, books, they built a whole $400 product for the purpose and people actually buy the damned things. And Amazon doesn't get to put advertisements in their books-- comic books could.

Iron Con comes around, and I'm owing you a Full Frontal Manhattan, babe.

[obsession_inc]

Oh, man, I am concerned that somehow your boobs getting bigger means I win. Dude. (and ahahahahahahahaha

[honey_wheeler]

This has nothing to do with any of theis but GHELLOO HI. Drunk drunk but hi and I miss you. I hope we have iout in April. And yes yes I agree.

[obsession_inc]

YAY DRUNK!YOU!!! Awww. Yes we will hang out in April! I will get you drunk off your ass and then turn you loose on your family. (Or possibly just put you in a food coma.) It will be AWESOME.

[amonitrate]

NIIIICE

1) It operated in an inter-connected environment that non-fans were already comfortable with, and where they spent a lot of their internet time,

2) It served as a newbie-friendly answer service, explaining what was going on, diagramming the connections between titles, and summarizing the history-- not to mention answering any questions,

and

3) It gave people a chance to get a feel for a title before having to pay money for it.YES

[obsession_inc]

SERIOUSLY.

God, the more I think about it, the worse it gets. Comics are in competition with other industries for the time and money of their customers, and not only has a new competitor (video games) entered the fray in a major way over the past decade, but all the other major time-suck industries-- music, movies, TV, video games-- have developed online delivery methods and business plans built to further develop it as a major part of their future. Hell, Netflix saw the writing on the wall years back and has been running full-tilt toward having their entire library available for online screening (which frankly I would rather have than the DVD-in-the-mail format because who knows what they're going to want to watch at some point in the future?). The comics industry is virtually ignoring the whole thing and I can't help but think that unless things change, the whole business is going to shrink even more dramatically over the next five years, because every other form of entertainment will be available instantly, online, except for

[amonitrate]

THIS EXACTLY.

the whole business is going to shrink even more dramatically over the next five years, because every other form of entertainment will be available instantly, online, except for comics.

Seriously. Can't they see the writing on the wall?

They don't advertise, I can't get over that, they don't advertise.Well, they advertise *in other comics* -- HEADDESK. It's such an insular subculture, from what I can see, that it's almost like they're in this defensive crouch half the time, as if they actively DON'T WANT new comers to get their newbie (or girl) cooties all over the nice maintained elaborately constructed sandbox