“Rantz Hoseley, the editor behind Image’s “Comic Book Tattoo” anthology of comics inspired by Tori Amos, introduced his latest endeavor at Heroes Con.
Longbox, a digital comics platform similar to iTunes, is expected to launch later this year as a free download for Mac, PC, and Linux. Developed by Quicksilver Software, Longbox comics can be download for a suggested price point of $.99 per issue, with the potential for block and subscription pricing. The first two publishers confirmed for Longbox are Top Cow and BOOM! Studios.“
There’s been very little reporting of this potential momentous event in comicdom this week. Comic Book Resources had an article on it, Comic Alliance followed it up and various folks have given it mentions. This may well be as there is very little real information about the product yet which is meant to debut “later this year”. But it may well be one of the most important things that happens in the world of comics in 2009. Hell, it might be one of the most important things to happen in comics since graphic novels took off.
(Screenshot from the Longbox comic reader software. Grabbed from the CBR site. And yes, that’s Phonogram The Singles Club issue 1 on screen.)
Because we all know that comics as a format isn’t doing so well right now. It’s been staggering along for a long time in fact. More and more of us are doing the “waiting for the trade” thing and that effectively means the entire model is rather screwed. After all, the way it works right now, at least for the big companies is as follows: If a comic sells over x copies per month it will be collected. Now granted, x as a sales target is getting lower and lower all the time, it’s still deeply flawed. Take as an example Captain Britain & MI-13, one of the few Marvel comics I’m interested in. I picked up issue 1 & 2 and then started waiting for the collection. But now it’s finished, sales just weren’t high enough. Except how many of us were not buying the comic yet loved the book?
The problem is essentially that, with the continued expansion of the graphic novel market, the comic pamphlet has become more and more a disposable, throw away thing. If you like the book and want to keep it then it makes more sense to have it in a nicer format, with a spine, maybe hardcover and often at a cost under the cost of buying the individual issues.
And although webcomics do give us one new avenue with eventual collection as graphic novels, there is always the possibility that folks will just read it for free and then not “wait for the trade”.
So the idea of charging a nominal, near throw away fee for a throw away product is extremely attractive indeed. Indeed it may change the idea of regular comics completely. Digital printing is cheap. The artwork needs producing for the graphic novel anyway so would it not be possible to see the first couple of issues released onto something like Longbox as trailers for the graphic novel? The potential is wide open for this one and no-one knows which way it’s going to go.
Yes we all know that there are many, many places online you can get download copies of the latest comics for free. But I honestly believe that paid digital content, especially at the right (low) price will appeal to the majority of comics readers. If Longbox doesn’t take off, I reckon something similar certainly will. And sooner rather than later.
Longbox goes into closed beta testing later in the year for a release sometime in 2009. More details and information from Rantz Hoseley can be found at the CBR site. Well worth a read. Welcome to the future perhaps?
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June 23rd, 2009 at 10:14 pm
I really suspect that what you will have is either a price point which is so cheap that people just pick it up as it’s only 25cents, 10 cents, 5 cents, a micro payment (I seem to remember they didn’t quite work) – but then you need to sell lots or where someone thinks that people should pay ‘fair worth’ for the product. Jamie puts forward a dollar – good luck with that. People who would use this and don’t want hard copies will mostly just pinch them through torrents. Comic ‘collectors’ won’t really be interested. The publishers will then be taking full risk on the trade possibly with little of the costs of production having been amortised by serialised issues. I reckon in the end those who have lived with nice page rates can forget them – payments, barring for the very top creators will be slashed by publishers, if they continue to exist at all. More likely a book model will come in – and that will be small advances and sales driven royalties. Many, many creators will make way less than under the current system. I might be wrong but I don’t think it’s as straightforward as everyone assumes.