I'm not ready for this

Amazon and Marvel team up for digital comics



With is being new comic book day, this article from last week about Amazon teaming up with Marvel to offer single issue comics is being looked at changing they way we read comics in the future.  Its not that different- especially if you have or had a Marvel.com subscription or if you ever got one of those CD-Roms that had all the issues of a particular character that were popular in the early 2000's( I actually have 3: Spiderman, Jughead, and Archie).

But moving forward, this does seem to be the movement into a more digital age where we download books and read them from your computer, phone, or tablet.  And I hate to sound like the " get off my lawn" old guy but I'm not quite ready for this. And I know I am getting ahead of myself!.  This is just single issues but there will come a time where comic book companies are not going to do both.  If this format proves to be successful, more and more books will be made available only digitally and there wont be comics to read in the traditional sense.

There is something special about new comic book day.  The drive to your local comic book store, getting the books that were pulled for you but also looking at new books that have come out that you may or may not purchase.   The feel of the books in your hand. The smell of new comics. If you have a great comic book store, there is the atmosphere of being around like minded folk and the conversations that spring from that.  This is a ritual for me and has been for the past 20 years of hitting the store on Wednesday. I am not sure if I am ready to give that up for books being downloaded to my Ipad.

But this could be me just getting old.  I used to read newspapers and magazines and now I read them on line. I used to read books, and now I download and read them from my Kindle.  I used to go to Sam Goody and buy tapes and CD's and now I download all my music( legally of course)! Hell, I am even downloading movies( legally of course) now instead of purchasing DVD's. So why don't I want to give up comics?

I think there is a nostalgia attached to this for me and alot of comic book people who enjoy getting books and collecting them.  We enjoy the store and the relatuionships we have built up with people at the store and digital comics would kill that- the same way digital books killed Barnes and Nobles. I am not ready to give that up quite yet.

So thanks, but not thanks to this version of technology.  Leave my books at the store, turn down that loud music, and get off my lawn!

-The Producer