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Just curious; do you download comics scans?
To save money, perhaps, or to try a series before making the plunge? And has it impacted your comics buying habits?
Do you delete the scans after you're done? Or keep 'em? -
I'll download stuff that's unavailable to buy through reasonable means. Abandonware, essentially.
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CommentAuthoracephalous
- CommentTimeDec 3rd 2007
I'll take the initiative here and out myself as a compulsive downloader, but only because I have no choice: I'm dirt poor, so my alternatives are 1) go to a large chain bookstore and hunker down with a stack of trades, 2) purchase said trades and not eat, or 3) download the scans, feel intense guilt but not hunger pangs. Thing is, I hate reading scans -- I like the tactile feel of a book in my hands. I'm married to a paleographer-in-training who made and illuminated a medieval manuscript from scratch, I'm talking made the paper, the board, the binding, the inks, and even cured and stretched the goatskin for the cover. (Ever smelled curing goat hide? Pray you never do.) All of which is only to say:
As a household, we're really invested in the materiality of books, so one day, when I have a job and scratch, I'll hoard hard-copies. But for now, it's a matter of doing without or feeling like a git ... -
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- CommentAuthorMark Sweeney
- CommentTimeDec 3rd 2007
Never downloaded any comic scans/torrents. I spend enough time in front of my monitor without reading comics on it too.
Wouldn't mind legal downloads to a PDA/Cellphone/iPod, but to hell with subscriptions that force you to read on your computer. -
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CommentAuthorJohn Smith
- CommentTimeDec 3rd 2007 edited
Here's my thing. I don't download indy comics. I download zero day material that I legitimately would and will never buy (*koff*Countdown*koff*) so as to keep a passing awareness of what's going on in the corporate comics. Typically we're talking one or two issues a week. As a rule I still maintain the same pull list but I have marginally cut down on ancillary purchases.
Due to piracy there are several books that I am currently purchasing that I would not have (had no plans to follow World War Hulk, for instance).
All that said, I legitimately would prefer a simple, convenient method of either owning digital copies of books or a Napster-esque pay as you go solution. I will not pay $2.99 per title. Marvel and DC have an incredible amount of IP that's just waiting to be monetized- but it has to be done correctly. Charge me twenty bucks a month for your archives and we may have a deal. Thirty or forty for zero day books included? Okay. Artists and writers are still getting paid, ad revenues could still be charged, and you have an opportunity to spread your superhero germ to a generation that only knows the characters that movies have been made of.
I don't know, that's just a scenario-- there's plenty. They simply have to redefine their business model-- it's been six or seven years since Marvel first did dotComics, it's absolutely unpossible to believe that they're just now monetizing things.
PS: And for the record, I don't do torrent sites anymore. I pay RapidShare ten dollars a month for a Premium membership and I keep an eye on blogs and a particular Indonesian message board (also use this for movies and music). -
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Vertigo, a while back, began putting first issues up on the net. I started buying the trades after reading them online.
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CommentAuthorJohn Smith
- CommentTimeDec 3rd 2007
@ Scribe, they have no good reason not to do that with their DCU books. I took a chance on Booster Gold because of some good promotion-- I was on the fence, and could just as well have saved my $3. Posting it online wouldn't have cost them my business but it would have gotten them issue 2, 3 and 4's business. -
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CommentAuthoracephalous
- CommentTimeDec 3rd 2007
I don't download indy comics.
This is a fine distinction to make, and were there ways to download indie comics, would no doubt make it. Thing is, when I sit with a stack of them in a book store and spend seven or eight hours reading them -- once or twice a month, I suppose -- I'm only making myself feel better. I'm still not supporting the artist, no more than had I checked them out of the library. (And the indie lending libraries, where you rent the books for three days, also only work to salve our consciences. After the store makes the initial purchase, that's it for residuals.)
Of course, the matter could be infinitely more complicated than that, and I'm more than happy to be corrected. -
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For me there's nothing better than having the good old analog feel of a real comic in your hands.
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I work at a comic book store part time a couple days a week. This is how I read most of my comics for free. I do still buy a couple of floppy titles, most of what I get is manga though.
I do read a lot of manga scanlations though. Though I'd say 90% of the stuff I read this way, hasn't come out in the states yet. And 80% of that most likely will never come out here. Glassmask anyone? If it is a manga that comes out state side I do make sure that when a new volume comes out here that I do buy it.
If it came down to not working in the store anymore. I would read scans to keep up with them and then buy trades when they come out. I just don't know what to do with floppies, you read them, bag and board them, then store them. Most of the time it's not easy to get back into the boxes if you want to re-read something (why I own the comics and the trades for Nextwave). Trades I find easier to keep track off and can be stored in my bookshelf. -
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CommentAuthorJohn Smith
- CommentTimeDec 3rd 2007
@ acephalous -- You're right. Actually, you know, I was just about to say that I'm not stressing out if DC loses the Countdown sales that week because they weren't getting it from me anyway-- but shit, you know, my LCS is missing out on the six bucks a week I'm stealing from the air. They're the only ones who'll fundamentally lose out of this-- guys who're putting a lot of money and time into a very narrow niche industry. I don't know, it's a tough quandary. -
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Guess I'll weigh in on this one. I go through periods about twice a year where I download stacks of comics - old and new, big name and indie - and dig through them to find stuff I like. Then I go out and buy that stuff, where possible, or put it on some ever-growing "must buy when I have the cash" list. I'm not really sure I can defend this - I know I read and enjoy a lot more stuff than I ever buy. On the other hand, had it not been for scans I would never have discovered Transmetropolitan, which was the first series to show me that comics could be more than just men in tights. On the strength of that, I've now bought several of the collected volumes when I could afford to do so, I've bought a few volumes of other interesting comics and Crooked Little Vein is on my Christmas list this year.
In short, I'm not really sure. -
I download plenty of comics but mostly for two very different reasons. The first is that comics are simply too expensive (at least the floppies are) for the quality of most mainstream output. Given the option to read Countdown or Supergirl for free, I'll be all over them to feed my geekiness. But I would never pay full price for them. The other reason I download is to get the old, now ignored from the 70s and 80s that I love. Oddcult called this stuff abandonware, a sentiment I agree with.
I'm split on the ethical issues surrounding downloading. Like most fans I would love to buy tons of comics each week and support the creators, but at the same time, the publishers are not supplying us with enough quality material, so buying the stuff (assuming it is financially possible) is akin to rewarding poor behavior. There is no mistaking that downloading scanned comics is a violation of copyright law, but I also am skeptical of any real negative effect downloading as had on sales. I cannot name all the comics I bought simply because I loved what I had downloaded.
And I agree that indie comics should not be simply downloaded, read and forgotten. The big two, in spite of their whining, can handle some people downloading their shittier titles. The little guys can't. If you download it and like it, don't just save it, buy it! Or just buy it in the first place and take a gamble. -
- CommentAuthorBradleySusumu
- CommentTimeDec 3rd 2007 edited
I used to download lots of scans, but now I'm going through a period of mild moralizing. Now I'll only download something if it's woefully out of print (Zenith, Moore's Miracle Man, Flex Mentallo), or if I already own it and it's hidden away in a box somewhere (Alan Moore's Supreme).
I would love to have a legal digital comics download service. I've run out of shelf space, but I'll be damned if I wouldn't pay for a digital complete run of Jack Cole's Plastic Man. -
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CommentAuthoracephalous
- CommentTimeDec 3rd 2007
@ John Smith:
my LCS is missing out on the six bucks a week I'm stealing from the air. They're the only ones who'll fundamentally lose out of this-- guys who're putting a lot of money and time into a very narrow niche industry.
My LCS rakes it in with the lending library and the judicious employment of awful advice. A few years back, when I'd finished the Cerebus phone books, they recommended that if I liked Sim, I'd love Love and Rockets. Then when I finished with those, they recommended Transmetropolitan. Now, it so happens that I did love all those books, but really, I get the sense that when I leave they'll tell the next customer: "You like Alison Bechdel? You're gonna love All Star Batman and Robin ..." -
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The tenor of the conversation here is amazingly different than it was over at Comic Book Resources, where I was one of the tenacious few who argued that all people who downloaded comics were not necessarily members of the Black Hand of Doom trying to bring down the comics industry and everyone associated with it.
For my part, I hadn't bought or read a comic in years until my freshman year of college when, thanks to those wonderful illegal scans I was able to catch up on what was happening - in addition to visiting the vast collection of Golden and Silver Age comics neither DC nor Marvel has seen fit to collect. My first exposure to Mr. Ellis was in wholly illegal, lovingly scanned form. Now? I own shelves full of trades, because, as someone earlier pointed out, there's nothing like holding them in your hand.
But I still download. -
- CommentAuthorBradleySusumu
- CommentTimeDec 3rd 2007
@ rrmonroe, I'm not totally convinced by the "indie comics should not be simply downloaded, read and forgotten" idea when contrasted to "The big two..can handle [thousands] people [stealing] their shittier titles."
A shite title is a shite title, indy or otherwise. -
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CommentAuthorJohn Smith
- CommentTimeDec 3rd 2007 edited
@acephalous
Brother, I was the same way. It's how I went from occasionally picking up Superman to, well: "You're looking for something wild? How about a book about a badass preacher, his hitman girlfriend and their Irish vampire friend while they look to hunt down God?" Preacher led to Authority which led to Planetary which led to Y and continues.
BUT, that was a good comic shop. Some comic shops are in areas where they're having to whore their store out to videogames and RPGs just to make the rent. I'm not saying that they'll croak if they lose my six bucks, but when the comic industry figures out its' next step in the digital world-- and it'll happen in the next couple of years-- then those guys are going to be left in the dust. Let's face it, who wants to pay retail? If I can crank up iComics and download Rich's Flying Friar for a buck twenty-five -- skipping over the entire Quebec/Diamond/LCS food chain-- and know that he and his artists got paid, then I'm happy and he's happy... and I'll get over the nostalgia of holding the comics in my hands pretty quick. -
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- CommentAuthorTechnocratJT
- CommentTimeDec 3rd 2007 edited
I suspect many people who are agaisnt it had our say back on a very long Engine thread.
Looks .er skyward, sure yeah, skyward - Is there an archive to link too? I recall plans but never looked to see if it was done. -
I download scans all the time but I only buy used graphic novels anyways. I do collect what I like so i can share them with friends and family and I've found that it's really freaking difficult to convince non-techies to read scans.
