In my previous articles on comic books, I highlighted the challenges facing the industry and the need for change to ensure its survival and growth. I argued that digital comics are a crucial part of the industry’s future and that publishers must embrace digital platforms to reach new audiences and adapt to changing market conditions. Increasingly, professionals in comic book production and sales are being forced to recognize the importance of digital comics. Despite this, the biggest names in the North American comic book industry have failed to effectively compete with digital comic upstarts. In this article, I will revisit the concept of digital comics and explore the reasons behind the industry’s struggles to adapt to the digital landscape.
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Key takeways
Digital comics are designed for digital platforms, while digitized comics are essentially just scanned pages from printed comics.
Digitized comics don’t make good use of the unique features and opportunities of digital platforms, such as vertical scrolling, interactivity, and accessibility.
Digital comics are much more popular than digitized comics among comic readers.
Webtoon, Tapas, and Bilibili are examples of successful digital comic publishers that offer a variety of content and monetization models.
Digital comic books vs digitized comic books
It’s important to distinguish between digital comic books and digitized comic books. Creating comics for digital consumption isn’t as straightforward as just putting a JPEG of a comic book page on your customer’s screen. These aren’t so much digital comic books as they are digitized comic books. Simply scanning and displaying pages or panels from printed comic books is a half-hearted approach that undermines the potential of digital platforms. Unsurprisingly, apps like Comixology, Marvel Unlimited, and others fail to gain reader interest when they aren’t taking advantage of the unique artistic and storytelling opportunities offered by digital platforms.
Below, I’ve compared the search interest in comic book apps from two of the largest North American digital comic book distributors to a popular site that serves “whole page” comics in digital format.
All three platforms seem to have a similar level of consumer interest according to search trends. Of course, a good skeptic would point out that readcomiconline is a “pirate” site that offers the newest comic books for free. This should skew things in readcomiconline’s favour, leaving paid services like Comixology and Marvel Unlimited struggling to compete. But look at what happens when I compare all three of them to legitimate digital comic publishers Webtoon and Tapas.
None of the previous three platforms—Comixology, Marvel Unlimited, or readcomiconline—even come close to competing with Naver’s Webtoon in attracting comic readers’ attention.
When it comes to attracting comic readers’ attention, digital platforms that cater to vintage comic book publishers like Comixology, Marvel Unlimited, and readcomiconline are struggling to keep up with platforms like Naver’s Webtoon and Bilibili, which encourage digital comics to be natively designed. For example, when measuring TikTok trends, #webtoon has amassed over 20 billion views, while #naverwebtoon has 241.4 million views, and #bilibilicomics has earned 153.4 million views. By contrast, #marvelunlimited has only 18.1 million views, on par with #tapascomic’s 20 million views, and #comixology has just 5.4 million views. Furthermore, even when we compare the number of users who have rated each app on the Apple App Store, Webtoon outperforms vintage comic book publishers’ apps, with Marvel Unlimited and Tapas following from quite far behind.
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Rethinking page design for digital comic books
The popularity of digital comics on platforms such as Webtoon, Tapas, and Bilibili can be attributed to a combination of accessibility and content design. Digital comics offer unparalleled accessibility, with the ability to be read on any device, including mobile. Reading them through a digital comic publisher’s app is simple, requiring only a few taps on the reader’s phone. Most of these apps don’t even require a login. Additionally, the most popular digital comic publishers offer a “freemium” product. This usually comes in the form of providing paid early access to free content or initially limiting the number of titles that can be read for free. This approach to monetization could be adapted to vintage comic book publishers’ digital apps as well.
In terms of content design, digital comics offer a unique reading experience. They are presented as a scrollable waterfall of content, designed to be read from top to bottom rather than left to right. This format allows for more verticality in storytelling, creating new artistic opportunities for comic panel design. Many digital comics already take advantage of this format, incorporating unique visual elements and panel layouts. Additionally, this scrolling format keeps readers engaged with the content, similar to popular apps like TikTok and Reddit, which employ the same model to retain their audiences’ attention.
Although some apps like Google Books have attempted to make digitized comic books easier to consume by integrating a feature that allows word balloons to be automatically zoomed, not all comics available on the platform make use of this feature—and when they do, the text often looks low-quality.
Rather than simply digitizing the traditional comic book page, vintage comic book publishers must embrace a native digital approach to developing their digital comic book series. This may involve creating a new universe or digital-only imprint to cultivate the necessary creative, editorial, and operational talent. By doing so, publishers can properly leverage the unique advantages that digital platforms offer, such as the ability to experiment with new formats and storytelling techniques. This approach requires a willingness to adapt and innovate, but the potential rewards in terms of reaching new audiences and expanding the art form are significant.