You weren’t planning on doing any work today, were you? Because thanks in part to the Marvel thing, the internet is abuzz with news and commentary about digital comics.
Item: CNet says that Amazon will be debuting its e-reader today. According to the advance hype, it has a WiFi connection so you can get books on the road, and Amazon seems to have a deal with Sprint as well, in case there are no nearby hotspots. List price is $399. Simon Jones (NSFW!) is not impressed with the prototypes he has seen so far.
Item: German comics magazine Comicgate interviews Dirk Wood of Dark Horse Comics, and the conversation turns to digital comics. He discusses Dark Horse Presents, their free webcomic at MySpace, and talks about eventually implementing an iTunes model, where comics are sold online for less than a printed issue. The utility of that approach becomes clear a few pararaphs down, where the interviewer brings up retailers’ complaints of shortages of some titles, and Wood responds that it’s risky for publishers to have too many printed copies out there at once. (Via The Comics Reporter.)
Item: At Comic Book Resources, Todd Allen has a very concrete and useful column about webcomics, in which he presents some points to ponder about the Marvel DCU and then talks in more general terms about the importance of multiple links and the issue of display size. (Via Journalista.)
Item: You know all those people who complain that they don’t like reading comics online? Could be they are not just old fogies: Sean Kleefield explains why it’s harder to read from a monitor and discusses the mismatch between print formats and the web. (Also via Journalista.)
Item: T Campbell, always one step ahead of the rest of us, posts not one but 20 reactions to the Marvel DCU.
Item: At Fleen, Gary Tyrell notes that you can now buy older releases of Girl Genius as a PDF download and blurts out what has been on many people’s minds:
Somebody might want to tell DC and Marvel that this is a much more painless way to read comics electronically than the Flash-based monstrosities at their online ventures.
I just wanted to make a quick comment on the e-reader. We have been debating this new technology in one of my journalism classes. We were discussing new forms of technology that may take the place of paper products (newspapers in particular) at some point, but my entire refusal that this would never happen is the fact that there is still a eye-strain factor with all the projected technology. Not unless they can utterly eliminate the flicker of a screen from tiring your eyes out. I will always have a love for the paper products myself, that and I think the tactile feel of paper is rather ingrain, at least with current generations, and it may take a century or more before people are weened out of their paper needs.