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Downloading comics?
I don't buy comics, I don't have to money/time/resources and the ones I want are hard to get. So what I do is download my comics through an IRC network. It works sooo great. I know you can get em through torrents easily, too. I was able to download the first 100 issues of Simpsons comics in my sleep one night. It's usually around 7-13Mb per comic. Does anyone else do this or am I just that immoral?
Comments
I'm thinking that torrents may be the next logical step in comics distribution. I know people complain about the high cost of comics nowadays. When I was a kid one book cost 65 cents and I stopped collecting when they hit $1.25. This was from 1985-1990 or so. I was mostly into Transformers and Spider-Man. At the height of my collecting I was regularly buying 10 Marvel titles and all their related crossovers. It only cost $10-$15 a month and I could go anywhere to get them like gas stations, grocery stores and just about anyplace magazines were sold. Now only decent bookstores and comic shops carry them and the selections aren't as good. Digital distribution could get me back in the game if it cut the costs. I don't care if Marvel sucks now, I'd buy digital copies if it was cheap.
Back in the 80's everytime the price of comics went up Marvel explained it was the cost of printing that made it necessary to raise prices. Paper got more expensive or the printing techniques got more costly. Over time the physical quality of the product did improve. My old comics from the early 80's yellow a million times faster than the books today. So although they're more durable, today's more expensive books last longer. I think too much money is wasted on the paper.
Imagine if they went totally digital and charged like $10 a week for a digital subscription? No issues with paper quality or spotty distribution. That'd work well I think. I personally don't want it to go that way because I like having the tangible book in my hands. But I only collect one or two titles. People who collect multiple books have got to have storage issues. Digital copies take very little space at all.
And as for the immorality of it all, I think the torrents only help to get people into the comics stores. Not every comic is scanned and back issue torrents only exist for the most popular series. And the comics that are scanned may or may not have all the additional material at the end like letters columns and cover galleries and such. So downloaders are at the mercy of the scanners. Like for example there's a new TF book out this week that the scanners didn't do in the latest DCP torrent. So if I want it I gotta go to the comic shop. The torrents serve at best as a taste of what's out there. I don't have the time to read all the hundreds of comics that come out each month, but having them digitally is enough to get me interested in a title and then go down to the comics store and pick them up. I mainly save the IDW Transformers titles and then buy the ones with the covers I want at the store later.
There hasn't been a DCP comics torrent since the third of the month! I expected this week's torrent to be posted by now and it's not. So don't mind me as I throw a tantrum about not being able to get my hundred free comics for the week. Lazy pirate comic scanning bastards!
-Esteban
It actually amazes me how professionally many pirates handle their dealings. I would consider many of the old "warez dens" to be more on-the-ball than many "real" professionals I've met in the course of my career.