So, this is something I’ve been thinking about ever since I went to the NYComic Con.  While I was there I attended a talk on the future of comics.  It had three guys who worked in syndicates, one guy who was a comic artist who was syndicated, and Brad Guigar as the lone webcomic artist in the group.  I love webcomics and happen to be a fan of Evil, Inc., so I settled in to hear what had to be said. 

Mostly what had to be said sounded like the syndicate guys really wanted to cling to the way things were done before, and Brad Guigar just sitting there saying, no, that really isn’t going to work for much longer.  I later talked to him at his booth (and bought his first book of Evil, Inc.  I was conserving resources (i.e. cash and I now have parentheses in my parentheses) for other stuff at the con, but I will be buying the others soon) and he said he would have said more but he’d look out at the audience, with half of us shaking our heads and laughing at the syndicate guys and realized he didn’t have to say anything.  We knew.

He also told me that I missed out.  Apparently the other seminar, "Webcomics: Threat or Menace?" nearly turned into a fight.  I’d skipped because with a title like that, I knew I didn’t agree.

Later that same day I heard it mentioned that Marvel, who has launched a digital comics site where you can find hundreds of old comics for something like $5 a month (major procrastination tool there.  I am now reading more comics than I could otherwise afford and comics of characters I wouldn’t have bought otherwise), say that the digital comics were only as a support of the brick and mortar stores and the paper comics and they would not be going to a pure digital format.

So here we have two different types of comics: the strip comics that follow the format from newspaper comics; and the comic books, such as Iron Man and Wonder Woman.  What is the future?

Well, in terms of comic books, I’m going to hazard a guess that it is somewhere in between.  I don’t see books being taken over completely by computers and I don’t think comic books with either.  There is something beautiful and comforting about holding it in your hand that you don’t quite get on computers.  Not to mention eye strain.  There is a reason why a lot of what is on the web is short.  Longer formats do better on dead trees.  That’s just my opinion of how I’m comfortable though.  All this is highly subjective.

However, comic books aren’t so long as to be difficult.  Getting the words large enough to be read is a little tricky.  There are some formatting issues.  They might not look much like comics we’re used to seeing and instead make their pages more wide than tall to fit the screen, but it could work well if we go with the media.  And then the printed and bound comics could come out as supplements for those who wanted them.  That would be really cool.  I already dream of a day when I don’t need to trundle off to the store and keep track of what is coming out when, but just turn on my computer and find my She-Hulk waiting for me.  This is also the business model lots of webcomics already use. 

As for daily comic strips, digital all the way.  Newspapers aren’t going to entirely die off, and probably neither will comics in them, but the future is on the internet.  It is fast and easy to access.  For at least the last few years, if a comic isn’t on the web, I don’t read it.  If you are going to put it on the web but two weeks or something after it was published in the newspaper, I won’t read it. 

Not to mention webcomics are allowed to take risks and be a lot more fresh and current than the newspaper comics.  And I’m not talking about characters swearing or otherwise non-family friendly stuff.  But for years you’ve had some of the same niches of comics.  The family.  The talking animals.  The children.  Ziggy.  And new comic artists who did something different tended to not have a chance getting picked up.  Comics are a hard market to break into.

I forsee a time when comics will primarily be on the internet.  So where does that put the syndicates?  That is a good question.  It used to be in order to espouse your opinion to the world, you needed to write columns and get picked up by a syndicate.  Now people start blogs.  To get a comic out, you needed to get it into a newspaper, preferably lots of newspapers, so you went through a syndicate.  Now there are webcomics.  The Times, they are a changin’.  And the syndicates better figure out where they fit in fast.

In the meantime, here is my personal list of daily funnies.  Enjoy!