Hey y’all! Well, I guess these digital comics things must be takin’ off pretty well if I have to write about them so much - literally every time I write one, within a day or two there is a new development, like, say, Top Shelf Comics entering the market, or, you know… Mark Millar saying things.

Before I get into any of this, I want to emphasize that I have nothing against Millar as a creator. I like some of comics a lot. Others, they’re not for me but I’m glad to see them do well because that helps everyone. I bear him no ill will, but sometimes he says things I just don’t agree with.

Most recently, he spoke to Comic Book Resources about digital comics, especially day-and-date releases. Along with a pretty bold ad for Kick Ass 2 #5, he said (bold text is my emphasis):

I think digital could be a useful tool, but I’m increasingly concerned for friends in retail that they’re going to get shafted here. I really think day and date release is a disastrous idea and makes no economic sense at all to comics as a business. It’s potentially ruinous for comic stores, and in the long term it’s not going to do publishers any favors either. I see the attraction on a very superficial level. They think they’re cutting out the middle men and all the guys taking a piece of their gross, but there’s an equivalent number of hidden costs in digital too, and it’s short term thinking to obliterate the life-blood of the medium. Retailers are as big a part of comics now as the characters or the creators. They’re not just an outlet. These are carefully crafted communities and owned and staffed by people with a genuine passion for what they’re doing in a way that the ‘Amazon Also Recommends’ box isn’t quite going to match. I’ve got an awful lot of friends on the retail side and so many of them are hanging on by their finger-nails right now. Even a five or ten percent dip could be enough to put huge numbers of comic stores out of business. I know two huge American retailers, like really famous stores, in this position, and once they’re gone these guys are gone forever. Retailers stuck with us through the ’70s collapse and the ’90s post-speculator boom. Shouldn’t we be showing them a little loyalty now? Everything from the chair I’m sitting in to the keyboard I’m typing on has been paid for by royalties that retailers have made me, so I feel quite passionately about this.

What Millar says is his main concern - the success of his friends in retailers - is a valid one. And if publishers were trying to obliterate retailers by offering day-and-date digital sales, I would agree with him that it’s kind of a dick move. Here’s the thing, though. Marvel and DC still offer retailer-specific support above and beyond the fact that they’re still letting them sell comics every single day. They send promotional items. Hell, they gave stores twice the copies of Point One that they ordered to help them out. And I can still go to a comic book shop every week and buy comics that aren’t available digitally because the back catalogs aren’t complete yet.

However, let’s put this in perspective. Digital sales are a completely additional alternative to buying in a store. I still buy comics every week specifically because of the “carefully crafted communities and owned and staffed by people with a genuine passion for what they’re doing” that Millar describes. Some people don’t have a comic book store close to them! When we talked to Gail Simone in the summer, she pointed out that digital comics allow her to buy things she otherwise wouldn’t always be able to, because the nearest store is over an hour away. Those aren’t sales stolen from retailers. This is a situation where without digital comics there wouldn’t be some of those sales, period. Digital comics let people be readers if a comic book shop isn’t an option.

Or if a good comic book shop isn’t an option. Yes, some comic book shops really are great communities. The one I shop at is, and this whole site exists because Brandon and I are friends because he is an amazing retailer. But I’ve had stores try to charge me 1000% the labeled price for a comic, I’ve had stores ignore me and I’ve had stores lie to my face. For some people, stores like this are their only retail option, and they shouldn’t be forced to give a jackass their business just because that person is in the same industry as some of Mark Millar’s friends. Not every retailer is deserving of loyalty and of being the only option readers have. Retailers aren’t owed exclusivity. The reason there are so many bad retailers is because of exclusivity in the first place. Day-and-date digital won’t hurt the good shops that give readers reasons to keep going in, but it will hurt the bad ones who lie to, steal from or otherwise disrespect their customers and I’m hard-pressed to think that’s a bad thing.

Further, Mark Millar talks about how retailers deserve loyalty because “Everything from the chair I’m sitting in to the keyboard I’m typing on has been paid for by royalties that retailers have made me,” and this is absolutely a backwards idea to have because it is absolutely, factually wrong.

Every penny Mark Millar has, he has because readers bought his comics. Nothing else. Millar says that the retailer is the lifeblood of the industry. He’s wrong. People who love comics are the lifeblood, and while some of those are people who sell comics, every single one of them is someone who buys and reads comics. Without people buying comics, there isn’t an industry. The industry came up without the direct market, lived for decades without it and if pressed would find a way to live without it again. The one thing that doesn’t change, regardless of where people buy their comics, is that people love them.

Of course, Millar explains that he’s not really against digital entirely (after all, Wanted and Kick Ass sell extremely well on Comixology), he just sees it as something lesser:

The primary phase of selling would be comic stores and theatrical. This is where the bulk of the investment is recouped or maybe even recouped entirely. The secondary phase is DVD or, in comic terms, the collected graphic novel sold in book stores as well as comic stores. These fans aren’t as hardcore as the first group, but they’re a great place to recoup any money lost in the initial phase. Digital comics are like TV rights to me in that they’re the tertiary phase of all this. These are for the most casual, mainstream readers or viewers and much cheaper than the primary or secondary waves. They’re a great way of pulling people in for the next product coming out in theatres or in comic stores, but absolutely not the bedrock of your business. The fact they’re not on paper doesn’t matter as these guys aren’t collectors as such and the lower price point is very attractive to them.

Now, beyond the fact that day-and-date comics releases by and large sell for exactly the same amount as paper copies (itself a concession to retailers), something Millar is, again, factually incorrect about, this creates a massive gap in Millar’s logic. Day-and-date digital releases absolutely cannot mean the death of retailers if digital readers are casual and less dedicated as a rule - a point he argues more than once in his interview - if they are by definition people who aren’t going into comic book stores anyway. If they are two entirely different revenue streams, as Millar argues, the success of one doesn’t effect the other. Saying “Release [sic] comics digitally on the same day as a higher price point print edition [Ed Note: once again: this is factually incorrect, especially because Millar owns his Millarworld comics and can set his own price] is basically sentencing the latter to death” right after you’ve extensively described how digital readers aren’t a significant threat is massively cognitively dissonant and it undercuts Millar’s argument when he points out immediately that his own argument is fundamentally wrong.

Really, what it comes down to, as Millar himself explains, is that “It’s not really worth a lot of money yet, but it has the potential to be at some point.” He describes his approach to use digital sales of older comics to encourage readers to pay more for physical copies of his newest comics and give him more money in the process. Here’s the thing: that is a totally valid approach. Mark Millar is fully entitled to try and make the most money that he can, because that is how he affords things like food and shelter and, of course, comics. I don’t begrudge him that. What I do begrudge him is making an economic decision and wrapping it in a false morality of taking care of friends while fundamentally disrespecting readers. He flat out says that he thinks digital readers don’t mind getting things later because they’re not dedicated fans. He’d rather villanize people, some of whom buy his comics and help pay for his house, as people destroying the industry because they’re not buying comics in the right place.

The real irony to me is that Millar admits that digital could be big some day and that “As a creator it’s obviously in my interests to have my work reach as many people as possible,” but literally his entire interview before that is an argument for why he’s not trying to reach as many people as possible or building a future platform for the industry and his own livelihood. What matters is that digital isn’t giving him as much money now. By Millar’s own admission, he’s focusing on the present instead of his future, and that’s the dictionary definition of the “short term thinking” he accuses publishers of falling victim to through the crime of selling comics to as many people as possible. Every new reader is someone to nurture the art form and the industry. Period. It doesn’t matter how they go about it.

Mark Millar’s entire argument against day-and-date digital is this:

• Digital readers aren’t going to comic book shops, generally, because they’re casual fans, not real ones.
• Despite this, selling two different types of readers comics at the same time will destroy the comic book industry.
• Give Mark Millar as much money as you can.

Quite simply, it’s an argument that just doesn’t hold up, and in the process Millar is actively villainizing people who buy comics (look at his ad and try saying he’s not) because they don’t do it the ”right” way. I reject his argument and I reject the idea that if I buy a comic digitally that’s somehow lesser. I am a comics fan, no matter what.

That’s enough.