LongBox digital comics store adds to Apple tablet frenzy
Apple’s upcoming tablet computer (whoops, “rumored” upcoming tablet) just got a little more interesting: there are signs that the company is getting into the digital comic book market.
Which is tantamount to saying “Apple is helping to create a digital comic book market.”
PHOTO GALLERY
Apple tablet computer renderings
Someone certainly has to. Digital distribution of comics is nearly nonexistent. Comics publishers have made attempts to move into this market, but with the same floundering lack of thought and cohesion that marked the music industry’s digital initiatives back in 2002. Individual labels had each come up with their own half-baked, useless, and mutually-incompatible systems for selling digital music, which only benefited the far more sophisticated, unified, and practical systems for downloading music illegally.
So Apple did the humane thing. Just like the British (back in the glory days), they declared the music industry a society in chaos incapable of self-rule: they annexed the digital music industry and founded the iTunes Store.
Of all of the major publishers, Marvel Comics is the clear leader. It’s less of a compliment for Marvel than it is an illustration of how carelessly the industry as a whole has pursued digital expansion. Despite its name, Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited is all about limitations. You need to be connected to a live Internet connection; the whole service and its comic-reader app are web-based. The reader is only supported by desktop browsers, so forget about reading comics on your phone.
And you can’t read newly-released books. The 7,000-issue archive keeps growing, but it almost exclusively consists of older comics that help promote the comics that ship to brick-and-mortar shops this month, or way older comics from deep within the Marvel archives.
Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited is emblematic of the industry’s approach because it’s nearly completely useless to a regular comics reader like me.
Are the consumers waiting patiently? Hell, no. They’re reacting the same way music consumers did ten years ago: they’re pirating everything in sight.
Via just two specific blogs, it’s possible to download nearly any popular comic released in the past week. Naturally, these are open, unlocked files that I can read on any device I own. I can begin reading “Deadpool #900” on my laptop and then pick up where I left off on my iPhone as I commute in to town. There’s a universal file format (.CBR/.CBZ) and readers for any computer or mobile device you can name.
So when a startup company named LongBox made the rounds of the major comix conventions this year to outline their plans for an iTunes Store-like marketplace for comic books, it had the feeling of Clint Eastwood riding into a Mexican border town suffering under the vice-like control of a corrupt governor. A great many people are thinking “Finally!” and hoping that this newcomer can finally clean things up.
I spent an hour speaking with Rantz Hoseley, LongBox CEO a couple of weeks ago. I had a mental list of every stupid choice that would cause the company to fail within the first year, expecting Hoseley to stumble over at least a third of them.
Is LongBox a web-only experience? No. It’s like iTunes or the Amazon Kindle Store. You buy books and they’re downloaded to your desktop. No Internet connection is necessary. And they’re taking a page from Kindle’s book: the store “knows” you’ve already bought Squirrel Faction #12 and will happily let you download a replacement copy if you should lose yours.
Is the content locked up in DRM? Well, yes. But it’s under the liberal terms of the scheme formally used by the iTunes Store. You can “authorize” multiple readers to unlock and read LongBox content: three at first, with the expectation that the user will receive additional authorizations in the future.
Are these real comic books? Rantz described his opinion of “motion comics” (animation built from comic-book panels and cheap effects) thusly: “I think they’re [expletive reproductive gerund] horrible.” This disclosure had a profound positive impact upon your correspondent. Even when “motion comics” are done with great expense and care (such as Marvel’s recent “Spider-Woman” offering) the overall effect is sock-puppety at best.
So no: the non-negotiable machinery of comic book storytelling is intact. When you read a comic via LongBox, it’s a user-controlled movement through time, panel after panel.
Do creators need to hew to a specific template or page layout? No. Creators are free to exploit layouts and content that wouldn’t be possible via print, but the .LBX is just as suitable for containing a 1943 issue of “Police Comics” as it is a 2010 issue of “Deadpool.”
Will publishers need to outsource their digital publishing to a company that knows how to “build” an .LBX file? Nope, all a publisher needs to do is install a plug-in into their current third-party creation apps. Essentially, a “Save As…” will package the comic with all of its required assets and send it to LongBox’s servers.
Will LongBox be a boutique store for a handful of publishers? No. The company is eager to bring the entire industry on board. “The stance of publishers has flipped 180 degrees in the past three years,” Rantz said, taking me all the way back to the seeds of LongBox’s formation. “They all think this is a necessary part of the future and an avenue that they must pursue.”
Will it be limited to big, corporate publishers? Nope; support for self-publishing will be part of the initial launch.
Is .LBX an open file format? Is LongBox going to release an open API so that third parties can support their DRM and build their own content creation tools? No and No, alas. But Apple did just fine with a closed DRM system for years. And LongBox will make “permitted exceptions” to certain trusted parties (Hoseley named design schools Parsons and RISD as examples).
On and on. Consumers can purchase individual comics a la carte or ongoing series via subscription. You can pay in real cash, or buy “bundles” of credits that come with more LongBox buying power than a la carte purchases made with real money.
Mind you, I haven’t had hands-on with LongBox yet. At this point, this could just be one of those tales that an excited CEO tells.
The initial rollout (expected sometime in November) will cover desktop apps, with agnostic device support to come. “If you have digital content, then you should be able to enjoy it on any device and in any venue.”
Which brings us back to Apple.
Comic-industry cluelessness and their inability to unite towards a common, mutual good are the two main reasons why we haven’t seen anything like LongBox before. But they probably haven’t been as serious a roadblock as the simple lack of any portable device that’s perfectly-suited to reading digital comics.
This is a form of storytelling that needs a tablet. A big, page-sized color screen with lots of resolution and a touch interface for turning pages and navigating from panel to panel.
Apple is rumored to be making one of those things. And they’re also rumored to be speaking with a great many high-profile print publishers about bringing their content to this new device.
I’m pretty sure that Apple is entering into a formal alliance with LongBox. When I asked Hoseley about what kind of partnerships the company is forming, he spoke vaguely of what was taking up most of his time at the moment: a lengthy and complicated agreement with a seriously large company operating in the media space.
I pressed him for more details while on the record. Rantz would only hint that this specific company had received high-profile coverage in both the Engadget and Gizmodo blogs in the previous week.
Reading through two weeks’ worth of coverage revealed only two big relevant stories. Both blogs wrote heavily about the newly-sneaked (or leaked) concept video of Microsoft’s upcoming “Courier” tablet/ebook concept. But at this point, Courier is nothing more than an animated cartoon of a proposal of a possible idea.
The blogs’ other big story of the week concerned Apple. These stories, relying heavily on coverage in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, claim that Apple is busily arranging alliances to create content deliverable to users of a future tablet device.
Rantz spoke at the Long Beach Comic-Con last weekend, as part of an industry panel on the future of digital distribution. Referring to a future strategic partnership with an unnamed company, Rantz said “It seems like everything is going to go through as planned.” He identified the company only as one that “all of a sudden leaves us with a multinational launch with literally millions of installed users.”
That sounds a hell of a lot like access to the iTunes Store, either in the form of software in the App Store or readable content in a hypothetical “iTunes Newsstand.”
When Rantz’ hinted towards Apple during our hourlong conversation, I duly logged it as something to keep an eye on. CEOs say a lot of things during these briefings and when you’re on the other end of the phone, you need to be cautious before passing along any speculation that makes the company look this good. Even on the record, a tissue-thin hint isn’t the same as an open confirmation.
But this public comment in Long Beach caused me to move “Apple is lining up a digital comic book distributor for a future tablet” up a notch or two on the credibility scale. It’s still a rumor, but it looks very good.
Would Apple add a new wing to the iTunes Store? I once thought that an iTunes Bookstore or Newsstand was natural and inevitable. Here at the tail end of 2009, I’m skeptical. Apple currently acts as the cop, gatekeeper, and morals squad of the iPhone App Store.
When the system works, nobody notices. When it fails — when a “shake the baby” app makes it into the Store and when a dictionary app is denied because a kid might learn what the word “areola” means — the system Hindenbergs.
Instead, I’m inclined to speculate that Apple is granting certain high-profile content creators special, advance access to the development tools for a future device. This would allow LongBox and other such distributors to release an individual app for their specific content.
One of the less-flashy new features of iPhone OS 3.0 was an enhancement to the API that allows for in-app purchases. So users of a hypothetical LongBox tablet app could easily browse and buy LongBox content directly from the device, receive subscription content, and read and manage it all from a single environment.
From Apple’s perspective, they’d get a cut of the purchase price of Power Girl #12 without having to defend the big oval cutout on the front of her uniform that exposes her highly deciduous cleavage.
Naturally, no
I've been spending 2009 trying not to acquire any information or entertainment via physical media. There are so many options for acquiring news, movies, music, and even books digitally that I've barely noticed a change in my lifestyle.
But 2009 represents the first year since high school in which I have no idea what the hell is going on with any of my favorite comics. Yup, I quickly established that anything that appears in shops on Wednesday can be downloaded on Thursday, but I have an ethical problem with that. So after a few early downloads, I now visit those sites only to verify that on-demand comic book piracy continues to thrive.
So I'm wishing
And it’d be a huge win for comic readers. I have a terrific local comic book shop (The Outer Limits in Waltham, Massachusetts…ask for Steve). But not many current or potential comic book buyers have a good local option. Digital distribution will put an Outer Limits within the reach of every desktop.
Best of all, if LongBox really takes off, I'd probably finally get to find out what's been happening in "Wonder Woman." I've been left hanging since December of 2008, when Gail Simone's "Rise Of The Olympian" story arc was just heating up.