Digital Comics

[Nick G]

Hello everyone,

My name is Nick and i work for Egmont in the UK. As I'm sure you're all aware, we currently hold the rights to the fantastic comics put out by Fleetway, and i was just wondering whether anyone would be willing to share there thoughts regarding digital comics. As way of disclosure, I'm afraid to say that I'm in absolutely no position to make promises about anything so I can't guarantee that any particular title would be resurrected from the archives (or that any form of digital activity will go ahead at all) but I'll be reporting everything back up the chain of command to the people that matter.

So then, I suppose what I would really like to know is that does anyone here read digital comics? if not, could you be tempted? I know that for many people a huge part of the experience comes from having the actual physical collection itself, but would you ever see digital as a way of obtaining rare comics that were too expensive or too difficult to find?

Thank you for your time

[felneymike]

Only if they're in some "plain" format and not exclusive to Kindle/iPad etc. I'll never own one of those!

Printable would be good too. Maybe the half-tabloid format could be optionally shrunk down to A4 and laid out so that anybody with an A3 printer could have a paper copy. Of course it'd need some sort of subtle but clear watermark to stop people printing copies of issue 1 on brand new office paper then putting them on Ebay as ones they "found in a wall"

BUT if there was any option to knock a load of this material out cheaply I'd most like to see some phonebook sized whacking greattm volume in the vein of weekly anthologies in Japan, except monthly and for a tenner. Phone companies give books away for nowt but 500-odd pages of "classic British stories to shut the kids up for a week" for £10 could possibly sell quite well.

[Niblet]

Hi Nick

I would certainly be interested in digital versions of gems from the Fleetway archive. Digital versions of comics as they were originally printed would be the ideal, and whole runs of titles would be good, rather than a 'best of' selection.

Personally, I'd prefer to have them on disk or as downloads rather than accessing them online. Assuming whole comics are made available, it would be good to have the contents listed in each file name, such as Buster 75-09-13 18 Rent-a-Ghost.jpg which is the way I named the files when scanning my (small) Buster collection, that way you can search easily for a particular strip.

Having the original comics is good, but as you say they can be hard to obtain, take up storage space and can deteriorate over time. It's much easier to find a particular strip among a bunch of files, than looking through stacks of comics - that's one of the reasons I started scanning my comics.

To us fans of British comics it seems that Egmont are sitting on some pure gold from our comics heritage - we want to see it, no matter what form it takes. Hope this idea takes off.

[davidandrewsimpson]

Sorry, but I have no interest in digital comics, regardless of content.

[Peter Gray]

I have the Mad cd Rom with every issue and New york magazine DVD Rom
They are good to see lots of issues and focuss on one story/artist..so I did like that aspect..so I'm up for this..

though paper can't be beaten..
I think a nice printed book...like an annual would be good..
I liked the Buster special you brought out recently...good mix of adventure and comic pages..loved that to be monthly as suggested..

If you need any help with info on artists characters...our thoughts just ask..

[Sir-L]

Hi Nick

I would certainly be interested in digital versions of gems from the Fleetway archive. Digital versions of comics as they were originally printed would be the ideal, and whole runs of titles would be good, rather than a 'best of' selection.

Personally, I'd prefer to have them on disk or as downloads rather than accessing them online. Assuming whole comics are made available, it would be good to have the contents listed in each file name, such as Buster 75-09-13 18 Rent-a-Ghost.jpg which is the way I named the files when scanning my (small) Buster collection, that way you can search easily for a particular strip.

Having the original comics is good, but as you say they can be hard to obtain, take up storage space and can deteriorate over time. It's much easier to find a particular strip among a bunch of files, than looking through stacks of comics - that's one of the reasons I started scanning my comics.

To us fans of British comics it seems that Egmont are sitting on some pure gold from our comics heritage - we want to see it, no matter what form it takes. Hope this idea takes off.

Everything Niblet says...

[colcool007]

Either in printed or e-format would be great. E-formats would be cheaper and I, for one, would look forward to having say a full run of Battle on DVD-ROM. Or Tiger or Hurricane or... I think you get the picture.

[jakob1978]

I am a massive fan of digital comics, I read and subscribe to Commando on the IPad, and many American comics (on both IPad and my IPod Touch).

I would love to be able to download comics to a mobile device, or to my computer, that would be my ideal preference. my second preference would by buying on DVD-Rom, and my least favourite (but would still be most welcomed) would be some way of reading online.

[stevezodiac]

Its funny but I was looking at someone reading a novel on a kindle on the tube yesterday and it got me wondering if comics would ever be available among the vast library. I have nothing against Kindles personally. I have a dozen or so cd roms of US comics - complete runs of titles and I think we comic fans would want the digital version to be consecutive/complete issues.

I think my pie and chips might be ready now!

[Niblet]

Just another thought...if there are any pre-publication dummy versions of comics, or unused material, in the archives that would be a great to have as a bonus in a digital release.

[paw broon]

The only way I can view digital comics is on my computer. I really have no interest in reading on a phone, although a kindle might be good if it could handle colour. I read a lot of digital comics on pc using CDisplay or Gonvisor but they are downloaded public domain files from Digital Comic Museum or goldenagecomics.co.uk. I would be interested in a lot of the Fleetway archives, particularly older material and, as I've mentioned on here a few times, there are many European reprints of classic British comics and strips out now, but not available in English. A lot depends on whether you have faith in the British market and the only way to find out is try it. Can't be terribly expensive for you to put out electronic files at a cheap to reasonable price.
Can't beat paper for that all round experience but for stuff that is otherwise hard to find, I'm for it. Get going.

[blaing]

Yes, I would certainly be interested in a DVD-ROM version of any of the old Fleetway titles, but if this does become concrete, then please then make it available worldwide. (I would certainly buy it.)

[intune]

Hi -

It would be great to access them through a website that would let you `page turn` as if it were a real comic. It would be great to have the ability to zoom in and out, and perhaps have some supplimentary information about the artist, character and comic they appeared in.

Personally I'd also find it useful to have an iphone/ipad app, in the style of Marvel's, in which with a tap, it almost animates/zooms to the next panel.

Hope something comes of your exploratory research.

[big bad bri]

i aint really interested in digital versions as i will never own am ipad or kindle but i woulbe up for the manga type phone book size every week or two as felneymike suggests.perhaps do another experiment like you did with the buster & roy of the rovers you did a while back but different titles and more pages

[Raven]

I, too, only view digital comics on my computer. I prefer physical copies, but I could certainly be tempted to read digital versions, especially bulk collections of consecutive issues. For me, discs featuring a lot of old British comics would be especially ideal, like the CD-ROMs Marvel have put out, featuring hundreds of consecutive issues of their biggest characters' titles. Volumes of Valiant and the like would be very appealing - the fun comics, too (or character-based volumes, like a complete Leopard from Lime Street).

There's a problem, though, isn't there, Nick, in that the great majority of the Fleetway archive (the physical bound copies) was got rid of, and also all the original artwork was sold off to a dealer. So what of the vintage, desirable, hard to get material of yore do you actually have to work from there? The so-called 'Best of Buster' Egmont special magazine a while back rather came across like two or three '70s copies of Buster randomly bought from Ebay and stuck together!

Buying back all the original copies then working from them to produce digital copies of rare old classic material would presumably be a very time consuming, slow and costly process. So how do *you* see it working, in the sense of you actually getting hold of the raw materials?