I’ve been taking for a decade about how I was going to make a comic book. I fell in love with comics sometime during my junior high years. Since that time, my friends and I would talk about how one day we would make our own comic books. I was the only one out of my friends who took that fantasy seriously, as I practiced drawing all through high school and college. I worked on my stories, and took notes about the yarns I would spin and the characters I would create. I even took classes specifically about creating comics and graphic novels.
I’ve seen many people out there try to break into the field. I always cruise down the Artist’s Alley at the various conventions, and I read the self-published books of the guys trying to break in. I was always intimidated by what I saw, afraid that if I were to try that I would be no better than these guys. Because from what I saw, none of it caught my interest. None of it was good enough to get me to pay for what they were selling.
But then, I’ve always know I was better than them. I’ve studied this field for far too long to not know what it takes. As it turns out, I wasn’t the only person from my junior high class who intended to get into this field. My best friend from childhood approached me about finally doing a comic book together. So now for the past three weeks we have been meeting weekly to bring one of the many projects that I’ve had burning in the back of my head to life.
Today we mapped out a timeline and specific deadlines for each of the many steps involved in this process. It’s a bit scarey because of how large a project like this is. I chose to tell a story that I had planned for a graphic novel, because it’s a finite tale with a concrete ending. In addition, it’s an appropriate theme, being my first graphic novel and all (I’ll write more about what it’s about on a later date). It’s also scarey because I’m opening myself up for failure with this. In my head and in the eyes of untrained observers I’m incredibly talented at this. However, in the cold eyes of the unattached free market I may not be such a hot shot. Regardless of how talented I am, it’s time for my friend and I to find out the truth.
More importantly, whatever the outcome is of this first attempt to break into the business, I will be making a second attempt. I’m already preparing my second story and the second concept, if only because it’s bound to be better than the first.
I can’t believe my dream is finally coming true!
REVIEW: X-Factor 224.1
Score: 5 out of 5
This issue is exactly what a point-one issue should be! Without saying too much, it has a sampling of the humor that X-Factor typically has, coupled with some action and mystery! It does a good job at breaking down who each of the characters are without getting too heavy handed. De Landro does a great job on the art, to boot. Plus, it’s engaging and makes you want to read more. This is a great read for regular readers and new readers alike- I give it my highest recommendations.
How much would you pay for an eBook? Written by your favorite author?
Peter David, aka PAD
, is looking for the opinion of as many people as possible. His blog post pretty much explains it all. Myself, I feel that the value of an eBook depends on the value of the device you will be reading the book on. At the moment, I have been reading my eBooks on my MyTouch 4G Android phone. I read free books on it, because the screen is too small for me to comfortably enjoy reading something that I paid for. However, I am planning to get an iPad 2 or an HP TouchPad this summer, and I am going to want some quality content to view on that thing. I’d be willing to pay about as much as an expensive paperback for quality fiction on an iPad. If it was a well-researched text book, I’d pay more (obviously).
Voice your opinion here.
Why the X-editors should not differentiate the X-Men franchise books
There has been lots of people making the argument that the x-office needs to cut the redundancy of the x-titles and make each book more individual in composure, focus, and direction. In other words, differentiate.
People on various forums have made very good arguments about why they are tired of seeing three books about Cyclops Loves Emma. Creatively, it makes a lot of sense, and it will benefit the reader. If there are different types of books to choose from, readers will have an option between the various styles and characters, and everyone will be happy.
The sad part is that following this structure does not equal better sales.
Three books about Cyclops loves Emma will inevitably affect each other, and the common material will more or less drive readers to need or want to follow those other titles. This transforms the sales of one book into sales for three books. In the differentiated model, a popular style/character set will equate to the sale of only one book. Cyclops is the focal point of the x-titles lately, and by spreading stories about him into three titles, Marvel is now able to multiply the sales of a Cyclops based book by three.
We can also look at the converse: differentiated titles sell less than intertwined titles. X-Men Legacy focuses on characters that are not front and center in the X-Men’s main “story”, and as a result is “punished” sales-wise. I have never heard anyone complain about Carey’s writing on a message board: they claim to dislike Legacy because they dislike the Rogue/Magneto/Gambit focus.
This pattern is duplicated with X-Factor to an even further extreme. The book has a noir theme and is about a detective agency that employs former X-Men or x-characters. Message boards are filled with arguments from people claiming that X-Factor should not be an x-title because it is so far removed from the other x-books. The team doesn’t live on Utopia or even in California. They don’t keep in contact with the other X-Men. The book doesn’t feature Emma frost or any other currently popular x-character (although a majority of the cast was A or B list in popularity at one point or another in the past). X-Factor is the epitome of a differentiated book, yet it sells less than any of the other inbred x-books people complain about.
Comic book fans love to complain, but in the end, only their dollars are heard.
The HP TouchPad and Comics
I have been looking forward to using WebOS for about two years now. I fell in love with my Palm Centro phone ages ago, even though I knew the technology was on it’s way out. Palm OS was dead, and in it’s place emerged WebOS. People familiar with the OS say that it is just as good as, if not better than the current operating systems out there (specifically Android and iOS). And in my Palm-loving fever, I slavishly vowed to own a WebOS device. Fast forward a few years to today, and despite having ditched my trusty Palm Centro for a spiffy MyTouch (read: Android phone) I am still very interested in owning a WebOS device. The big problem has been that the hardware running the operating system has been crap.
The HP TouchPad may be the first product to break this trend. It is by far the biggest screen that WebOS has ever been on, and it looks to be one fine media consuming machine. Early reports are claiming that the in order for the TouchPad to survive today’s market, it needs to do more than simply ape the features of the current crop of tablets, it needs to beat them. If it’s not able to do more than the iPad, or do a particular task better, then it needs to do something that the iPad cannot do. If that is the professional reviewer’s opinion, then I guess that I am different from the typical consumer. I would be perfectly happy to use the TouchPad simply because it is new, fresh, and I have had an extremely satisfying experience with past Palm products. Given that, it is safe to conclude that I am the idea TouchPad consumer. So why am I not planning to buy one?
It simply comes down to the specificity of intended tasks. I’m buying this thing to consume media: I want to read books and magazines on it, watch movies, play music, and most importantly, read and buy comics. And that is why the TouchPad fails. While is has the essential apps to allow the user access to today’s top phone activities (social networking, buying and listening to music, games), the TouchPad is limited in the second level of popular apps. What it is missing is an application to buy comic books with: comiXology. comiXology is the company and application that Marvel, DC, and the top indy publishers such as Image use to sell their digital books. The application also doubles as a comic reader, as well. No one from this segment of the population (comic readers who pay for their comics rather than stealing them) will be looking at the TouchPad without a way to purchase the big name titles they read every month.
Apple knew what they were doing when they advertised comiXology’s dedicated Marvel app as one of the iPad 1′s launch apps. They were establishing themselves as the company to champion to digital comic book movement’s first step into legitimacy. People have been stealing at least two to three times as many books every month than they are buying (and that’s a very conservative estimate based off the number of torrents seen at ONE popular torrent site). The bigger comic book companies are trying to stop the hemorrhaging revenue by providing a legal outlet for purchasing digital comics online. While the movement wasn’t initially successful, many decisions made with the initial launch of the digital initiative prevented wholesale adoption. For example: early on, the only books sold digitally were “back issues”. Readers who wanted to read the most recent stories had to buy their books in paper from a brick and mortar store for three to four times as much as other digital books. Selling back issues exclusively is an inefficient business model for selling comics because of their periodic nature. The current issue of a comic book is like the current episode of a popular television show: everyone in the in-crowd will be talking about the newest installment until the next installment is released. Nobody wants to be the last to discover what secrets are revealed in the “new issue”. With the lightning fast speed of spoilers on the Internet, this factor is more important now than ever. 
DC comics is changing all of that. While other companies have begun to sell a couple of titles digitally on the same day they are released on paper in the stores, DC is doing this with it’s 52 main titles. On top of it all, they are rolling out a massive reader-gaining strategy by renumbering all of their major books and starting the story out at issue one in order to gain new readership. It’s a massive push that will direct a lot of comic readers to try out digital comics for the first time. Many of the smaller titles will be harder to find at a smaller store, so it will be much easier to collect the series if they are purchased online. Myself, I plan to try out a number of these new books. Despite not having an iPad yet, I plan to buy them digitally simply because they are cheaper. It’s a brand new universe with characters I am new to: it sounds like the perfect place to establish my digitally only rule regarding modern DC comics.
Why can’t the HP TouchPad have released a comic book reading app? I don’t know, they still might be. I, however, don’t feel like wait to see what tricks they are hiding up their sleeves. I want to buy and read comics on a tablet, and it doesn’t look like I’ll get to do that anytime soon.
Sorry, HP. I was really looking for an excuse to justify the price of your new toy. You can’t appeal to everyone all the time, so you might as well pick a niche and stick to it.
So To Clarify…
I am going to be writing again. In the blog. Where do you take it? In the blog. [Yes, I will stoop to using base jokes. Thank you, Based God.] Since I am not going to be doing Graphic Novel or Comic reviews until I am finished with school, the stuff I write here will be a lot of commentary on the world of comics and the smaller real world outside of it.
Like many people, I use an Internet handle whenever I post Internet related information. I just wanted to clarify that I am not doing this to maintain some level of secret anonymity [yes, that's an intentional pleonasms], but rather in attempt to to construct some boundaries around my professional identity. I work with parents, families and sometimes schools in the “real world”. And when doing that work, clients frequently want to research the professional working with them. An Internet search will bring up resumes, past educational credentials and other accomplishments in the field. I would prefer that this same search does not bring up my essay on why I feel Bob Harris (Group Editor of the X-Men related comic books in the 90′s) is a douche.
It doesn’t help my clients to have them aware of my personal feelings and biases, because the work I do is not about me- it’s about them. I would prefer that they don’t have access to my profanity strewn rants because I want to say what I feel like saying without having to worry about those feelings rounding a corner to bite me in my Professional Asshole.
Therefore, I am going to assume that it is not difficult to tie Living Silver with my real name: I’m sure it’s on the Internet somewhere. It’s not supposed to be a secret who I am, and I won’t be confessing to statements that you would not hear me say in a personal conversation. However, I would prefer to keep those statements separate from my professional name. And unfortunately, my professional clients don’t know my by a pseudonym.
It’s so hard to BUY a digital comic book, yet so easy to steal one.
It’s frustrating how difficult it is to buy comics online. I don’t own an iPad yet, as the main reason I will be buying one will be to purchase comics. Every week when I walk through the rows at my LCS, I come across new books that I want to try but cannot afford. In this economy, my comic dollar is maxed out, and I am having to pass up series that I know I will enjoy were I able to purchase them cheaply.
ENTER: digital comics. Even though I personally feel $2 is too much to pay for a digital issue, I’m willing to spend it since hey- it’s cheaper than $4. I’ll even sit at my desk and read the thing on my computer. Simply put, I’d like to read more books. Here are the reasons why this isn’t happening for me.
#1. The purchasing methods suck. Graphic.ly, Longbox, Comixology. They all use some type of crappy Flash-based interface to function. Us Macintosh users are well aware that Flash doesn’t play well with our toys of choice. I just finished attempting to buy a book through Comixology’s store on three different browsers. I was first forced to upgrade my version of Flash (the old version worked perfectly, why do I need to upgrade, Adobe?). Now, the store doesn’t work.
#2. The model sucks. Comics that I purchase using Longbox can’t be read using Graphic.ly, and vice versa (at least there is no easily visible solution). MP3s purchased from the Apple store can be played with Winamp or other programs. There is no option to right-click the comics in my library and reveal their location on my hard drive. If I’m migrating to a new machine, where is the folder containing my “comics” that I need to drag to the new hard drive? If the Apocalypse comes and all the Internet servers are destroyed, can I still read my comics from my hard drive (this doesn’t seem to be the case with the free samples they give- maybe it’s different when you actually drop cash on a book)?
#3. Nothing new is online. Ok, maybe I should say that very little new content is online. If there are new books being released, I’m not aware of them. In the past month, I’ve wanted to buy Wonder Woman #600 & #601, Velocity #1, Morning Glories #1, and a hand full of other one-shots and books whose names I can’t remember. None of these are available online, and I’m can’t afford the full price of a hard copy. True, there is the logic that if I can’t afford something, I should not own it. Yet, from a business model, there is a potential customer right now. I’m willing to pay for something that I know how to obtain for free. I can’t be the only one who feels the same way.
Can you tell that I’m frustrated right now 
. I do feel better after venting.
I love comic books and I believe that the people who make them deserve to be compensated for what they do. However, with regard to bootlegging, I am going to quote Chris Rock: “I ain’t sayin’ it’s right… but I understand.” And really, it’s so damn EASY to find a bootlegged copy of all the popular titles.
The question that is posed is: How elaborate of a system do we need to create for distributing these books? Because that seems to be the main obstacle hindering easy online distribution. Is DMR necessary? The books are so easy to get as it is, will having a DMR make a difference? If it doesn’t, then digital distributors should start password protecting PDFs and selling the passwords asap, because they’re losing sales every week that goes by. Apple got rid of their DMR a while ago and as far as I have heard they plan to keep it that way.
But maybe digital comics without DMR will only increase the number of illegal copies on the Internet. Who is to say. What do people think?
Oovoo link
This is just a test to see how well Oovoo will work over the web. It’s a little creepy to communicate with strangers, but seeing as how there is no personal identification I don’t think it can hurt.
So if you want to try a random web cam chat (similar to Skype), use the link below. You shouldn’t have to download anything.
Hello world!
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
Racing the iPad
When Apple first released the original iPod, many mp3 players were on the market. I’m not even sure what it was about the iPod that was so attractive and set it apart from other devices in the field. Maybe it was the design? It wasn’t too revolutionary: it was rather large, and featured a moving wheel interface that the user used to navigate through menus. It wasn’t a “touch” device, as most people associate with all versions of the iPod and iPhone: the wheel actually had a flat disc that the user rotated. It wasn’t until the second version that a touch sensor recognized a hand. I wonder if it was the size of the iPod that make it stand out. The original iPod had an actual hard drive, unlike the solid state drives that were used in the other mp3 players at the time. This allowed the user to store a whooping 5 gigs (I believe) of songs. At the time, this was a massive amount of storage. Maybe it was the system of syncing the iPod with the Macintosh (the original didn’t work with Windows), iTunes, and the iTunes Music Store. Whatever it was, I remember that there was a lot of media surrounding the release. Hey, it’s Apple: that’s what they do. They presented that thing as if they invented mp3 players. It was a minor hit, until Apple made their infant savior available to the Windows crowd, after which it became a major success.
Many people are comparing the iPad to the iPhone. The iPhone was revolutionary: it was a new concept used to complete age old tasks (making a phone call, mobile web, etc.). The iPad isn’t this: we’ve had portable digital media readers before (Kindle), we’ve had tablet PCs, we’ve have computer monitors with touch screen (Wacom even developed a horizontal monitor that you could draw on with a stylus), and we’ve had a device that an entirely graphical interface with soft buttons (the iPhone). Just like the iPod, the iPad is taking a bunch of pre-existing technologies and melding them into one concept. It’s not a new product, but it is a new way of making the product. Also like the iPod, Apple is introducing a secondary product delivery function: the iBook Store. If the iPad is successful, it is the combination of these functions that will set it apart from the competition. Assuming that Apple has a far enough head start.
And that leads to the topic of competition. Many Apple supporters, fans, and critics alike are skeptical of the success and usefulness of the iPad. Many consumers are saying that they are going to wait and see before buying. Many, probably current iPhone and iPod touch owners, are saying that they don’t have a use for the iPad. So why is it that Apple’s competitors are working so quickly to bring rival products to the market? I read weekly news articles about other tablet PCs that are supposed to challenge and de-thrown the iPad. This product doesn’t even technically exists, yet somehow Apple was able to create a market for it.
The only solid reason that I can think of for the rush to own the tablet market is simple because the alternative is too risky to take. Companies like Napster and Amazon are still trying to make a dent in the downloadable music market, because Apple had that much of a head start. The iTunes Music Store put a huge dent (supposedly) in traditional CD sales. The mp3 player market is dominated by the iPod and not including the business market (which is dominated by RIM’s Blackberry), the iPhone is the most popular cell phone available. Before Apple can hack away at the sales of Brick and Mortar establishments such as Barnes & Noble and Borders AND online retailers like Amazon, other players are trying to get into the game to get a piece of the first-mover’s-advantage-pie. Apple has proven so successful in the past, that electronics companies are willing to risk the R&D investment to create tablet computers to compete against a product that they probably don’t even think will sell. They have too much to lose if they are wrong.