Couple of interesting pieces to note about getting comic books online...First, the next volume of Lullaby has a preview comic avaialble exclusively as a download from Wowio. I just scanned through it kind of quickly, but it looks like a majority of issue #1 in pencil format, and a good number of the same pages in color. There's also what looks to be some alternate cover sketches. No script/dialogue in place, but lots of pretty pictures. What caught my attention was the exclusivity of the preview. Not available from anywhere BUT Wowio. And here I was getting concerned about Wowio's comic library since it hadn't been touched in a few months!
Second, Newsarama conducted an interesting interview with Slave Labor Graphics publisher Dan Vado. I think this quote typifies the direction (and reasoning for this direction) that SLG is taking: "We are going to be moving a lot of stuff that would have come out as comics onto our download site. The comic book format seems to be breathing its last and I think releasing a comic with sales under 1,000 copies not only is a money-loser for us, it doesn't do anything to build circulation. At 69¢ and with the notion of instant gratification, the barrier to trying something becomes reduced."
I find it intriguing that all of the "real" discussions about the topic of downloadable comics seem to point towards the same general idea -- that comics should be able to be downloaded from a web site at little or no cost -- and nearly all of the publishers are STILL hedging their bets on this. Kudos to folks like SLG and Alias for recognizing the realities of the industry and doing something significant with that knowledge.
1 comments:
Lullaby isn't an Alias book any longer, it's an Abacus book. All Abacus books are available for free on Wowio.com
Post a Comment