Are you a Wizard?

With news of Wizard magazine reportedly closing down, I figure this is a good time as any to tell this story. 

When I was around 13 or 14, after I had just moved to the United States, I used to read Wizard magazine. At this point in my life, I had read some comics, but I was in no way an aficionado, just odds and ends that my dad would buy me. I knew all of the popular characters, and read plenty of mainstream stuff, but I was still very entry-level in my reading. I think I accompanied my parents to Winn Dixie (that's a supermarket), and in the magazine rack I saw a familiar figure sticking out (probably Spider-Man, this was around the time the first movie came out), and they bought it for me. Inside, I think there was a big piece on the Ultimate universe, as well as some info on upcoming movies, and some "Top 50" characters of all time. 

In any case, for the next year or so, every time I would accompany my parents to the supermarket, I would look through the magazine section. I wouldn't buy any current comics (I had no idea where to find a comic book store at that time), but it was interesting to me to read about them anyway. I particularly remember a piece on the Milligan-Allred X-Force that made an impression on my mind. The prize guide in the back puzzled me to no end, though I enjoyed going through the names to see what caught my eye. After some months of reading, I actually wrote an email to the editor, answering a question that I think was about what franchises from other media I would like to see in comics. I figured some poor intern had to read through my poor English (remember, I had lived in the U.S. for about year at the time), and deleted it from their inbox.

Apparently, they actually published it in the magazine. 

To this day, I have not seen the actual letter printed on it, nor do I remember what I actually wrote. I didn't even know that they had printed it, until one day, months later after I had sent it, and after I had stopped buying Wizard, some like-minded fan sent me an email (I guess they published my e-mail too), just striking up conversation about the comics he was reading at the time. I remember he told me in what issue they printed it, but to be honest, I'm afraid to go back and look at it. Like I said, my English was probably definitely very poor, and my knowledge of the industry in general and the comic books published at the time was laughable. Some day, someone might even find it, recognize my name and ask me about it. But until then, I'm probably better off avoiding it.

In any case, I stopped reading Wizard around that time, with my interest going in other directions like video games, music, and girls. When I went back to comics, dedicated websites like Comic Book Resources were already in full bloom, and buying the magazine was a waste of money. I was snarky about it on Twitter but I guess Wizard could still be useful if it attracted kids like me in the magazine stands of markets, stores, and so on like it did with me.

A New Way

Parts of the Internet comic book community is on fire. The arsonist? Apparently, Peter David. The whole "discussion" (because at this point it has evolved into little more than an Internet fight of epic proportions) is because the Livejournal community of scans_daily, a place where pages of comic books were posted, sometimes in very large quantities, was shut down after David supposedly reported the website to Marvel. You can read his whole entry about it here. I have talked and lauded about David in my recent post about X-Factor, and while I don't personally agree with the notion that access to pirated comics hurt sales (as an aside, it would certainly be very hard to prove if hurts or helps), I certainly agree it is his right to report violations of this kind once he becomes aware of them. While I personally did not visit scans_daily, it seems that what they were doing was in a very grey legal ground, and Livejournal is just trying to avoid a potential lawsuit. Apparently the community was very big and active, so I don't understand why they did not move to their own server, where they would have had more liberties and less worries about something like this happening. Instead of talking about the issue of Internet piracy, which would take a really long time and arrive to no solid conclusion (and maybe alienating readers), I wanted to talk about some of the alternatives that the comic industry could implement in order to avoid matters like these.

One of the biggest draws of scans_daily was that it allowed people to read (partially, apparently) comic books that they would otherwise pay no attention to. The people lamenting the demise of this community are claiming that there are no other ways to check out rare and or not as popular comics. One of the probably most underused methods to check out new comic books is actually very much free: public libraries. Libraries are increasingly carrying more and more paperback, hardcovers, and original graphic novels these days (and even more so for manga). While this obviously depends on the scope and size of your library, it is definitely worth checking out to see what they have. While the local library where I reside now has a shameful collection (it is very small and I do not live in the US, so it is understandable), the one in the city I lived before had full collections of many comics such as (Birds of Prey, Exiles, all the Ultimate books, Daredevil, Sandman, Invincible, Walking Dead, etc.) some of which I had never bothered to check out before (like Fables, Runaways or Jonah Hex, and I actually read Watchmen for the first time from the library). In addition, they had pretty much all of the Essential and Showcase books (those big, black and white ones) so you could easily read up on old stories of classic comic books. While it may take time, libraries will start carrying more and more collection of comic books. Companies (Marvel especially) are getting better at releasing the collection of both new and old comics, which is going to lead to a bigger amount of comic book in libraries, free for everyone to read and discover them. I do not know what kind of deal comic book companies have (if any) with public libraries, and it is not in their (from a marketing perspective) interest to promote readers to check out their books for free.

Then there's the option of online comic books. As it stands now, only Marvel is offering a digital service (more of that in a second), but for all other companies you are mostly out of luck (I read about some applications for the iPhone where you could download comic books to it, but the catalogue was rather small). There is always the option of downloading pirated comics, which is not that hard to do or to find a place where you could do so if one were intent on it. While the legality of it all is questionable, there's no denying that it is a very easy way to discover comic books that readers may not deem worthy of a second glance while they are in their local comic book shop. Marvel's digital service sounded like a good idea at first, but sadly the execution of it fell short. The service offers the chance to read an unlimited amount of comic books for a low monthly subscription. The problem stems from the flash-based reader that Marvel decided to use, which was incredibly slow and hard to scroll through (and my connection speed was pretty good when I had the free trial), low resolution image of the comics and the fact that you could not download the comics to your computer. Additionally, the service (while still growing) did not feature the possibility to read newly released comic books, which were only released weeks after the issue hit the stands (probably until it was off the shelves). I understand Marvel's point of view in this, if the readers get to see the new comic books online, they are not going to buy the actual comic books. But if you are trying to provide this service as an alternative to buying the single issues, it is imperative that subscribers have access to the newest comic books.

And finally, my crazy idea for a new way to check out comic books: renting them. Alright, so it probably is not *my* original idea, surely someone has thought about this before? But the notion is practically unheard of in comic book circles, even though movies (and games) have been doing it for decades now. It is the same concept, and I have no idea why it has not been done for the comic book industry: a movie originally comes out in theaters (analog to singles issues), and is later collected in a format that is easier for people to digest such as VHS, DVD, or Blu-Ray (hardcovers or paperbacks). If it works for one form of entertainment, why couldn't it work for another? So here's my (very rough) plan: first of all, no reading in stores, a rule that some comic book shops already have in place, but others do not. The change may upset readers, which are used to flipping through some books while at the shop, but you can't see the movie that you are renting on Blockbuster either. The renting could be done in two ways: in-store and regular renting. For in-store you would need a place where people could read (a lounge area if you will) with seats and charge a small price (I am thinking fifty cents) for an allotted amount of time (thirty minutes should be plenty of time for most comic books, but not a long enough time to get more than a second reading) to read the comic book. Of course, this system has its flaws, such as comic book stores needing the appropriate space to handle customers sitting down to read and most people like to read in the comfort of their own home, which is where the second way of renting comes in. Just like you would rent at your local video store or blockbuster, you could pay a fraction of the price of the comic book (one dollar per rental has a nice ring to it) and you could take it home for one or two days to read at your convenience. This brings another set of problems, such as needing information (maybe a credit card number, like video stores do) from customers, so they don't run off with your rental, and the danger of customer damaging the comics (which could later be sold at a discount price if needed). In both cases, a customer could decide to purchase the rental by just paying the difference between the cover price and what has already been paid, or just directly buy the item without renting it first (which is what most of us do anyway). At the prices I have mentioned, you could read 6 comics in-store for the same amount you pay for a regular-priced single issue ($2.99), or take three issues home to read at your own leisure.

I think it would be a good business model, and it could also possible be applied to collections ($5 for a week rental), but sadly I have no idea if there is any market for it. Comic book fans take pride in also being collectors of said items, so I do not know if they would even use this system. What do you guys think? Could it possibly work, or am I just delusional?

(P.S. I apologize for such a long entry with absolutely no images, it is probably an eyesore to read, but I do not think there are appropriate images to go along with this entry)