iPad Links: Wednesday, May 26, 2010

This has been Shit Week.

Shit Week is expected to continue until at least Tuesday of next week.

This Links post is ginormous and is behind the break. I did not get to do a sweep of the Net because, as I stated, this is Shit Week. I will probably not get to sweep the Net until the end of Shit Week.

When Will Comic Publishers Learn?

Comic Publishers: It’s Time To Take Digital Seriously

And who can afford it anymore, either? How do I justify $3.99 on a comic? I can’t, at least not in the numbers necessary to justify the trip or to follow the stories going on at Marvel and/or DC. For example, it cost $12 just to buy the three Bendis-penned issues at the end of “Siege.” […]

I’m solidly a wait-for-the-trade or wait-for-a-review-copy kind of guy now. With Amazon’s discounts, trades and hardcovers are affordable. Plus, my lifestyle currently doesn’t give me as much time to read comics as it did just five years ago. So I don’t need a stack of a dozen or more comics a week anymore. Those three or four hardcovers next to my computer will keep me busy for a while, thanks.

Let’s play with some numbers: A standard Marvel Premiere Edition hardcover at Amazon is six issues for $16.50, or $2.75 an issue — $1.25 less an issue than buying it on the stands, in a superior format. “The Invincible Iron Man” hardcover I reviewed last week is $26.39 for 19 issues right now — $1.39 an issue. The “Iron Fist Omnibus” is $47.24 for 20 issues, roughly, or $2.36. Over at DC, the first volume of the “Starman Omnibus” series is $31.49 for 17 issues, or $1.85 an issue. The more modest “Y The Last Man” Deluxe Edition, Volume 1 is $19.79 for 12 issues, or $1.65 per issue.

You want me to drive to the local comics shop to pay $4 for a comic…why?

There’s a big fat bag of money out there waiting for them to scoop up from people like me who stopped reading comics and would not only like to read some of the new ones but also get e-reprints of some of the ones we used to own.

Comic books used to sell in the millions. The sales figures today aren’t really even worth mentioning when compared to over a million iPads out there (probably near three million by the time Jobs does his WWDC keynote).

DRM Can Always Be Defeated

So, British Petroleum — aka BP — which has dumped jillions of gallons of raw oil into the Gulf of Mexico has a live cam.

And guess what?

It has DRM on it!

On a Windows XP system, this means any screensnap taken and pasted into MS Paint saves as a blank, black screen — high irony in this case, no?

But DRM can be gotten around.