I love comics. But how I read them has changed over the years, from all single issues as a kid to all TPBs in college to all-digital…and then back to single print issues. And now back to digital-only again, but this time for good (I think).
Reflecting on the notion of pulling or subscribing to single issues in this, the fourteenth year of the pandemic, it feels a bit like starting to buy CDs again. Would I start buying CDs again? Nope. There’d be no point.
Everything except the smell and feel of a printed comic, and the implementation of double-width splash pages, works better for me in digital format.
Looking back
From the early 1980s until 2000, I read all of my American comics in print as single issues. In 2000, when Preacher ended, I switched almost entirely to reading TPBs. It wasn’t until 2019 that I started up a pull list again.
That lasted about a year, until the pandemic hit and I fully committed to digital comics in March of 2021. I was subscribed to 12-15 X-Men books every month, and that eventually burned me out; after a break, I came back with a leaner subscription list that stayed steady for a few months. I transitioned back to print in February 2022, when comiXology went from awesome to pretty crappy overnight.
And then in May of this year I realized I just wasn’t going to read single issues in print again. Never say never, of course, but I canceled my pulls and went back to digital-only. Most of my big-two reading these days is older runs on DC Universe Infinite or Marvel Unlimited, and it’s incredibly rare for me buy TPBs anymore.
Manga
On the manga front, I was almost exclusively a tankōbon reader from childhood through the end of 2020. Subscribing to Shonen Jump online in 2020 was a seismic shift for me, and I’ve done about 90% of my manga reading digitally ever since. (Series I’m attached to in print for one reason or another make up the other 10%.)
Inevitability
Like music, and then novels, and then movies, as much as I love holding a comic in my hands the convenience of digital options outweighs that love 95% of the time. My eyes aren’t getting any younger, and it’s hard to argue with backlit pages I can read anywhere, zoomed-in as needed, without having to manage, store, and haul around hundreds of pounds of stuff every time we move.
I don’t think my love of print will ever vanish entirely; that connection runs too deep. But nowadays I mostly buy print comics as slabbed books, or intending to send them to CGC, so I can hang them up and enjoy them that way.
Look upon this trend, my creaking RPG shelves, and weep
This reckoning is coming — slowly, but inevitably — for my RPG collection and reading habits as well. I passed the tipping point where my PDF collection outnumbered my print collection years ago, and the amount of time I actually use my print RPG books in play has diminished steadily for the past 5-7 years.
For now, I still buy print RPG books that are special in some way, because they’re gorgeous, out of nostalgia, or because they offer usability advantages in some specific cases (mainly modules, sometimes, or handing books to other people). But I’ve thinned my print RPG collection by 40% over the past couple years, and I don’t miss a single book from the culling.
The intersection of convenience and usability is the ultimate reaper.
As my eyes have got older I’ve found that I enjoy digital comics just for the sake of being able to zoom in. I’ve attempted to read and buy older comics but find the colour bleed to difficult to read nowadays.
That said I’m still a fan of nostalgia. For the most part with music I purchase vinyl and consume new music on Spotify. It’s been a long time since I purchased a CD. I’ve often considered getting back into cassettes as there’s a lot of great yard sale deals.
I guess for me it depends on the situation. For rpg books most of what I use and have is pdf, however my dead tree format is slowly growing mostly as a collection.
In the end I’m all over the place.
Great post Martin.
I’m glad you enjoyed it!
Amen on the eyes front. I’ve picked up a few books in recent months and immediately rejected them out of hand because tiny typefaces are not designed for older/bad eyes (like mine). I could get readers…or I could just buy it in a format where I can guarantee legibility.
If you happen to stop back by, I’m curious what segments of your RPG collection are growing most in print.
These days I buy every RuneQuest and Dune book and not much else. My last purge showed me just how many books I’ve bought in print that I really didn’t need in print.