Myriad Issues talks to Rantz Hoseley

Digital comics week continues -- and indeed, will continue well into next week. Today we have an interview with Rantz Hoseley, editor of Comic Book Tattoo and founder of The Longbox Project. (Next week: Leigh Walton, Paul Levitz.)

Myriad Issues: Why has taken the major publishers so long to get on board with digital comics and distribution?

Rantz Hoseley: The comics industry has never been a progressive, technologically leading industry. Ever. The comics industry originated because there were printing presses idle and they had newspaper [comics] they could reprint and not lose money. At its heart, that trend or outlook really has never changed. It’s also hard for a lot of people to grasp that for the younger generation digital ownership is as real as real ownership, and that’s a hard leap for some older people to make. I work in software development, and it was a difficult conclusion to come to within that industry, so you can imagine the difficulty some people in comics have wrapping their head around that concept.

Everyone recognizes now that a viable digital model or some kind of digital form is necessary. Whether it’s Marvel doing Digital Comics Unlimited or DC doing Zuda, it’s all market evidence that even the large companies believe there needs to be a solution. But for the comics industry, creating a solution requires that they have a level of awareness of software, of the technology and disciplines involved in creating a viable option. Having that kind of information and awareness is the only way, I think, that they can feel from a business level there’s a degree of security. Without that, the run the risk that the music industry fell into initially with digital content. They become dependent on consultants coming in and telling them what the solution is for their company. Unfortunately, those solutions usually look at it from just the point of view of “What’s good for our company?”, and not taking into account the purchasing and reading patterns of the audience for comics. Approaching the issue from that angle leads to choices that address the short term issue for their specific company, but not the industry (or for that matter, their company) in the long term as an ongoing viable solution, whether you are speaking to the financial side, or the reader/user experience.

It doesn’t take much searching on comics forums to find people saying, “well until there’s an iTunes-esque solution for comics. I guess this will do.” All couched in terms that there’s nothing that’s right yet. iTunes is not a reader, it’s a passive push-play-sit back experience. And trying to introduce other functions that take away from that core function and experience is just asking for trouble. It’s going to make iTunes unstable; it would cause the UI [user interface] to become bloated with feature-creep and clunky to the ‘pedestrian’ user... the average person who isn’t a tech head. And that immediately takes away from what has made iTunes such a success:eEase and simplicity of use combined with focus of purpose and function.

MI: What exactly is the Longbox Project?

RH: The Longbox Project is the "code name" for a publisher-independent, platform-independent solution to this issue. It approaches and addresses the issue in a way that a lot of solutions have failed to up to this point. The failure of most of the solutions offered up to publishers and readers up to this point have come from a comic point of origin without understanding software development or the user experience in terms of digital media. There have also been models that came from a software and web point of origin without understanding what makes comics attractive and interesting as medium or form of entertainment, and what the needs and desires of both the creators and the audience are. Worst of all is when they approach it from a strictly business aspect: “There’s not really comics on the web and we can make money on it.” Which always ends up being... less than satisfying, because they aren't understanding at a core level WHY the audience wants it and WHAT the needs of the content creators and providers are. So, in all of these ‘solutions’ there hasn’t been an approach that looks at it from all three angles: Content creators/providers, business viability, and the end user. Because of that, someone always ends up getting the shaft. There ends up being the "this is an ok solution till something better comes along" outlook and caveat applied to it.

The Longbox Project is a solution that addresses all of those things. There are really four factors that have stopped digital comics: First, digital visual quality and/or inferior format and user experience. Second, no security. The very valid concern that you risk throwing your IP to the world and hoping people don’t throw [your content] up on Pirate Bay or some other torrent site. Third, that the solution or approach is unproven, asking [publishers] to take a leap of faith with their valuable properties without proving itself first. Fourth, the fear that a digital solution will cause a bifurcation or cannibalization of the market. That if you have a digital option, readers will stop purchasing printed comics which will be a pretty significant blow to the industry on every level. The Longbox Project is a solution that addresses those questions and concerns, as well as many others.

MI: What do you think about the “animated” comics some publishers are experimenting with?

RH: Motion comics are basically a throwing shaky cam on a still medium. Please, what are you on? Didn’t we already see this in the mid 90’s when Flash first appeared on the ‘net? It wasn’t a good or satisfying experience then, [so] what has changed that would make the end result any different? It all feels like art and film school demo reels when they first start playing with motion graphics tools like Flash or After Effects.

[Reading] comics is both passive behavior and active behavior on the audiences’ part. They control how fast they read things. You start putting in dialogue with voiceover and flipping pages for the reader, then you take away their [the reader’s] control and it’s no longer comics anymore. I don’t think that’s what makes comics interesting, what makes it powerful as a storytelling medium, or what makes it seductive. I think it’s a really bad band-aid solution.

MI: Do you think smart phones and iPhones are a viable platform for digital comics?

RH: It’s not an impossibility. But by the nature of what the iPhone is, and in a sense the Kindle as well, you’re automatically at an inferior platform for most comics. Trying to maintain things like readability, detail and still have page context [from the traditional comic book format] means you’re already behind the eight ball, and trying to come back from that is not a trivial thing. Dealing with it on a computer screen, or a TV via modern game consoles is a much easier... a much more viable solution.

Aside from the fact that, in order to deal with those issues, you have to create unique, platform-specific content, I think mobile comics are a bad idea until there is a little more stability in the phone market. Between the iPhone and what companies like HTC and Samsung are doing, trying to deal with a market-wide solution right now is basically jumping into the middle of the leapfrogging that’s going to continue to take place in cell phones over the next 5 years as the companies jockey for market dominance; it’s an insane high risk approach that won’t be profitable for anyone in the long run, and possibly even in the short run if you are talking about the comic companies that comprise the print industry. I know a few people who are doing iPhone specific comics, and they are creating comics geared specifically at that platform, but they are not only addressing the content specific concerns, they are also doing it as a very small, low overhead option that is specific to one or two storylines. Having done R&D for cell phone companies, as well as game and app development, I can tell you with confidence that that approach is really the only way currently that you wouldn’t lose your shirt trying to do comics on a cell phone.

MI: How is digital distribution going to change the way comics are marketed and sold?

RH: As I mentioned, there’s the concern of ‘hurting’ the print market for comics in dealing with a digital market. However, if you use it [digital comics] right you can also use it to strengthen and actually grow the print market. Comics is a viral medium by nature. These books succeed by people talking about them, they succeed by access and people being able to recommend them. The ‘wait-for-the-trade’ mentality is completely understandable as someone who buys comics, but the fact remains that most people who wait for the trade don’t pick up the monthly books. That causes a problem in that if everyone is ‘waiting for the trade’, then the trade either may not come out because sales of the monthly are so low, or when the trade finally comes out people won’t buy it because "no one is talking about it; I guess it’s not that good."

The price of print monthlies continues to go up, which leads to people cutting back on their monthly purchases, and being less willing to experiment with new or different books that come out, regardless of publisher. If people are able to easily and affordably access and experiment with different books, that’s going to feed the ‘noise’ level in terms of people talking about them. If there are incentives to buy the trades when a series of storylines is collected, among other angles I can’t really discuss, there are definitely options and opportunities for the digital to actually increase print sales. So the question becomes are you happy with your current market, or do you want to start growing a larger market? It’s about accessibility not just in terms of providing golden oldie memories, but also being able to be on the leading edge of things.

MI: Do you think there’s any validity to those concerns that digital comics may hurt the sales of print comics?

RH: The market has shifted in terms of print comics appealing more and more towards the customers that are already there, and they’re (for the most part) not set up to bring in new people. It’s tough for people to experiment with something new when it’s $3.99, because they have a limited budget. But if give people the ability to immediately pay for the comic at price they consider negligible, and it allows them to experiment and become exposed to new comics. People like comics. They like the format, they like reading them... there’s a reason newspapers have comic sections. Exposing new audiences to comics is a huge part of the equation. Once they have been exposed to it... once they are hooked, that’s when you make sure that your connections between the serialized forms and the printed collections is firmly in place for everyone to take advantage of and profit from.

As noted, retail has already become more of a trade operation, shifting from back issues to trades. Trades are a constant renewable purchase cycle vs. the monthly books where it’s a 30 day shelf life and then they’re gone. And if [books] are made accessible and affordable to them—look at any Barnes and Noble or Borders. The manga aisles are littered with kids reading all the way through those books, and yet they still buy them. They buy the ones that hook them. The onus is then firmly on the creators to bring their A-game in their art and stories to hook them.