I have recently discovered the utilitarian delight of being able to read comic books on my computer. I have a confession to make: I've been downloading comics on the Internet and viewing them using CDisplay. For the most part, however, I'm downloading comics that I already own. The problem is that they're back in Texas and I am presently in Idaho. The only comic book I have up here is V for Vendetta and I've sorely missed comic book reading -- even reading stuff I've already read. Over the past week I read Watchmen. Next week I'm thinking maybe Hitman and Demon.

Reading comics on the computer is actually less undesirable than I thought it would be. One reason I never really considered doing so before was how much I don't like reading long tracts of text on a monitor. I guess I hadn't considered that I prefer reading comic strips online as compared to on paper. While I don't prefer reading CBR and CDZ files in comparison to paper, storage certainly is a lot easier!

Part of it has me considering the commercial viability of digital comics. One of the justifications the comic book companies give for price hikes competing in frequency with the post office (Comics were $1.25 a piece when I started collecting, they're $3 now) was how expensive paper has gotten. Not to mention comic book dealers and their financial troubles (they sell less, therefore need to make more per unit). So theoretically digital comics would alleviate a lot of the problem.

Unfortunately, however, I don't see it happening any time soon. The most immediate issue is copyright management. People have largely been able to hack through most DRM systems and I don't see that changing anytime in the near future. In many ways, I shudder to think of the limitations of a system that can truly prevent illegal copying. Eggs and omlettes.

Unfortunately that leads to the standoff between the companies and its potential customers that benefits nobody. People that honestly wish they could get comics digitally aren't able to. Comics that would almost certainly like to deliver them can't without fear of losing control of their product. Ironically, by not offering anything few really know what they're missing out on (I didn't until a week or two ago), they're in the clear. If they were to actually serve their audience and develop a system that let people read comics but prevented them from being copied and spread out, they would become villains in the eyes of many for protecting art that deserves to be free (as in unpaid for, not liberated).

See Also: Loonyblog has this and this to say about the general subject.