The other day I had an epiphany:  if we don’t adapt, print media is dead. In fact, it’s already dying.  The thought came to me as I sat at work, a local comic book shop, and thought back to when I had excitedly told my boss about Comics Monkey and what they were doing in response to Diamond’s latest move, which effectively stabs small press comics in the face.

In theory, Comics Monkey is an excellent idea–print on demand, and based entirely on a comic’s merit as opposed to its company name.  It means a lot for small press and independent comics who will soon no longer have a place or chance with Diamond. For those who have only dreams of seeing their books and ideas on real store shelves, Comics Monkey opens us several doors that could make those dreams a reality. It is an especially cool idea if local comic artists in a store’s area get in on this, because curiosity for local talent is very likely to sell a few books, and if owners are concerned about whether or not those books will sell, they could literally order three or four books at one copy each–a very small investment to test the waters with no risk. No benchmarks, no thresholds, no minimums, no fees; a tall order with no pressure that could very well bring comics into a new era, provided that Comic Book store owners actually hear about it, and actually show an interest in it.

This became very clear to me as I talked about Comics Monkey with my boss–a middle aged man who has been running our store for over 20 years now. He’s always been rather industrious, and first opened the store at age 19 with no experience and no college education. His business savvy is seeing that, despite the Canadian economy’s current condition, we’re in no danger of shutting down, and that comics in our little corner of Canada are still selling. However, that savvy is very deeply grounded in real time–as soon as I said ‘online’ his eyes glazed over, because outside of the fact that our store has a website, like my parents who are only a couple of years older than him, he’s still quite wary of anything that comes out of the internet. He’s old fashioned, and despite the various warnings that all is not well in the comic book and print industries, getting him to go for an idea like Comics Monkey is going to be like pulling teeth.

So, no matter how brilliant and low risk an idea like Comics Monkey is, the onus is really all on comic book store owners, which is quite worrying.  If stores themselves do not adapt we could quickly be facing an age of online comics, as print comics go the way of the newspaper.  This movement is already underway as an age obsessed with reading manga scanlations continues to fail to become interested in the North American comic market.  Back when Marvel was young and what could be depicted in comics was totally PC, the advantage to being PC is that comics appealed to everyone. As the years have passed, comics have certainly aged alongside their readers, and now when I wander through the trades at work, I’m hard pressed to find much of anything aimed at kids that isn’t comic book spin offs of  kid’s TV shows. It doesn’t help that some more notable kids titles are being cancelled, either.

The majority of kids who come into our store make a beeline to the manga shelves and show little to no interest in the rest of the books we have to offer. From conversations with them and their parents, it is apparent to me that most of them use the internet for absolutely everything, and I am never surprised that these kids, who will not touch out Marvel or DC comics with a ten foot poll, are very into webcomics of many genres, not limiting themselves to Manga and Manga look-alikes. When I spoke on and attended some panels featuring Lar Desouza last summer, even though there were other guests on those panels, myself included, most of the turnout was for him. Kids and teenagers today are excited about webcomics and want to make and read them, both of which are free.  Webcomics are obviously doing well enough that some webcomics artists are able to live off of and support families with their work.  When you’re working on a webcomic, all revenue goes to you, and for a lot of people, that’s really appealing. There’s no middleman to pay, and no worry that your creative rights to your works could be compromised, or that you’re selling your soul.

It’s a completely different world online, and services like Comics Monkey really have the ablity to brigde the gap between print and web comics, so my conclusion is that if something like that is going to work, more than it is on comic store owners, it is on us to get the word out. Be excited about it–add your books to the service, talk to your local comic store owners, be a part of community comic events. We may just be able to get this to work.