how I learned to stop worrying and click ‘buy’
A comic book fan weighs a few of the the pros and cons of digital comic books.
It’s taken me a few months to get back into digital comics but I finally did it. Not only did I become lost in the wonderful world of Absolute and Omnibus editions I fell behind a few months and had to catch up. Well, sort of. I used to make a weekly trip to the local comic book store and if the previous issue was missing I had no choice but to skip it and trudge forward. With digital comics the choice is a little harder. Do I purchase the missed issues and spend a day reading old books or do I miss a part of the story? I still want to enjoy reading weekly comics so I decided on the latter. It turns out missing a few issues of Fantastic Four and Batman didn’t kill me!
My tastes have changed as an adult reader and I want to experience different kinds of stories but superheroes are such a big part of my reading habits I didn’t want to let go. After falling behind it took me a while to realize what I liked about these high octane tales. Current comic books can be read a lot faster than comic books of the past because the story telling method has been streamlined, dissected, and perfected making new comics seem a little thin. With fewer dialog boxes and what seems like entire issues of splash page art, current comics read better in the digital format than on paper.
Availability has become just as much a nuisance as a luxury to fans with the uncontrollable urge to read. As I scrolled through six pages of available comic books online I wondered if I’d ever read them again. I could just as easily wonder this about the cardboard boxes filled with past reads but they are nowhere near as accessible or easy to find. While digital comics may feel wasteful or gratuitous at times due to high prices and no resale value I am placing higher entertainment value on them now. Superhero stories are not always disposable but it’s okay if they are.
In the end it was a pretty easy decision to make I just had to bite the bullet and realize how unnecessary reading every issue is. I buy what I want to read each week digitally and if I miss a part of the story so be it. The paper books on the shelf are far from complete but the ‘Buy Digital Comic’ button will always be there if I can’t live with my decision to skip an issue or two.