EOY2007 Contest: The Second Round.

Hey, wow, we’re giving away something. Now more questions:

Luke:

What is your opinion about 2000AD being available online in pay-to-download PDF format with only a week’s delay between the paper prog and the digitial prog? (Right now there is only one prog available because it is the triple-sized year end special.)

I don’t read 2000AD, but it sounds like it’s not the worst thing in the world. If people will drop $.99 on a heavily-DRM’d pop song, the equivalent for a brand-new comic strikes me as a decent idea. (I go more into this with another question)

Also, they have to stop calling issues “progs.” It’s wicked stupid, yo.

Dan:

If you were stranded on Mars, which Paul Mantee would you choose as your partner in survival:

Cagney and Lacey Paul Mantee
Quincy Paul Mantee
Vega$ Paul Mantee
Mannix Paul Mantee
or
Robinson Crusoe on Mars Paul Mantee?

Think carefully. The answer is not obvious.

But…but…I just got that Criterion edition of Robinson Crusoe On Mars and Mantee’s resourcefulness means that I’d be covered. Plus, there’d be a monkey. There’d be a monkey, right? Right? (Please let there be a monkey.)

I don’t care what you say, I’m going with Commander Kit Draper.

(You forgot his great turn on Seinfeld as the health inspector in “The Pie.”)

Shane:

If you could change 5 things about the comic industry, what would you change?

1. More comics about Batman.
2. More comics guest-starring Batman.
3. Batman becomes an open-source character, meaning any company can use him as long as they make sure to credit Bill Finger and Bob Kane with his creation.
4. Yes, #3 includes Eros. Hello, easy money!
5. Stephanie Brown gets a glass case in the Batcave, but Tim “accidentally” knocks it into the abyss.

The Eyeball Kid:

What sea creature is your favorite in terms of: Deliciousness? Oddity? Humorousness? World Domination Potential?

Deliciousness: I can’t lie. As cliché as it is, I love a nice piece of bluefin tuna, raw, with just a bit of wasabi and soy, more than I love just about any other single item of food ever. Sashimi fuels my hate rockets better than anything else, especially once the sake flows.

Oddity: Teuthowenia pellucida, or the glass squid, enraptured me the first time I saw it on some oceanic nature show or another. It glows and looks alien and junk and is awesome.

Humorousness: Man, I have been looking for the last half hour and I can’t find the picture of that funny-looking fish that reminds me of Killroy, but that fish? Man, he cracks me the fuck up. (UPDATE: Leigh found it! Man, that fish is a riot.)

World Domination Potential: If this badass ever comes back, we’re fucked.

Paperghost:

Did you study photography at Uni or anything, or is it just something you do in your spare time? And which do you prefer – taking pictures, or writing?

I’ve never taken any sort of photography courses, but have considered it a few times. I’ve read one book – Understanding Exposure – multiple times, and that’s done me a world of good. In addition to getting the basics of exposure, apeture, and the like down to where I can fake it when I’m not making it, I get really inspired by books in the Photofile series: Elliot Erwitt, Bill Brandt, and Henri Cartier-Bresson being the ones I refer to the most. (The last, I just can’t figure out how he did what he did with what he had – frustrating and inspiring at the same time.)

I don’t prefer one to the other as far as photography vs writing goes. It’s two different sets of muscles, even if they tend to both be visually-skewed. I love photography because it’s a way of capturing a moment, but writing lets me create a moment. Both can be extremely rewarding.

Dan Coyle:

How many men were going to St. Ives?

One man, seven wives. I think I saw that on the Spice channel in the mid-90s.

Thomas:

Yeah, so we all know that CBR files are very bad and that DCP is an shadowy organization of worse repute than the Cosa Nostra, but … have you ever been so tempted by a delicious-looking torrent of Silver Age comics that you had to download? More seriously, do you think that sites like the now-neutered Z-Cult or now-defunct OiNK (which had a very healthy if little discussed comics sub-community) were hurting the already suffering comic book industry by siphoning away paying readers? Or were they introducing comics to new eyes, as some claim about music torrents and new ears?

I’ll admit to downloading a torrent of Herbie: The Fat Fury because I can not find issues of that, no matter how deeply I delve. As far as other Silver Age comics go, I am confident that DC and Marvel’s aggressive reprint campaigns mean I can legally obtain pretty much everything I want easily and at a very competitive cost.

I think that many of the people who downloaded Big Two comics from Oink and Z-Cult were unlikely to spend money on the comics anyway, thus not actually depriving the business of customers and there were certainly people who found things they enjoyed and wanted in print, but the current generation of entry-level comics readers are used to getting things digitally with the click of a mouse and not considering who gets paid. This can work to benefit the copyright holders – think about how easy it is for the average user to download a song from iTunes versus torrenting or having to deal with P2P networks. Marvel and DC should have, from the second that they got an idea that people were downloading their comics, aggressively pursued an easy-to-use web sales where new comics were cheap to obtain. (See my earlier answer that invoked the eMusic model as an example.)

With that in place, I it would seem supremely logical to craft a marketing funnel that then led to weekly or monthly emails to users of this system I just pulled out of my ass where they’d be reminded that something like Iron Man: Extremis was available to buy in stores.

So, in brief: some new eyes, many thieves that wouldn’t have paid anyway, and the occasional new customer.

I’ll answer more tomorrow, as I’ve got to go get my drink on.