Last week, I wrote an extensive open letter to the industry about digital comics. Then, at Wondercon, Mark Waid—the genius comic author behind the current reboot of Daredevil, the creator of Irredeemable, and the Eisner Award winner for Kingdom Come, agreed with me. He’s selling all his paper books “because it’s about the right time to let go of the past and really embrace the future.”
Among the recommendations he rattled off were that comics should cost the same as most apps: 99 cents; they should be horizontal (since most tablets are held that way); and that digital comics will be a boon for small publishers. He’s right, of course. The same way that small bands are getting a much bigger audience and big labels are getting a much smaller audience, the internet rewards innovation and creativity over magnitude and familiarity.
Mark Waid will launch a free online comic to be funded from the sales of his comic collection, which you can bid on at blastoffcomics.com. The art will be by Peter “Irredeemable” Krause. The book will be released on a weekly basis, serialized, with fewer pages than a “regular” comic—ten screens per issue. He’s already released a one-shot digital comic called “Luther,” which you can get at his website.
