Mark Waid had an interesting interview with the Onion AV Club this week, in which he makes a lot of good points about digital.
To paraphrase, he says comics can’t do mass marketing because large swathes of the country aren’t served by a comic store anymore. So even if you wanted to buy comics, you couldn’t. But with digital, your iPad is a virtual 7-11 with a never-ending spinner rack.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/mark-waid-on-his-personal-digitalcomics-revolution,82187/
I was also intrigued that he never set out to be a writer. The humility is charming. Mark Waid’s a creator I’ve always had a good feeling about, but never read much of his stuff. I may have to change that.
There’s lots of great bits in that interview, especially his take on the difference between Marvel and DC characters.
By the way, have you guys been reading his free webcomic Insufferable over at Thrillbent? I’m very much in tune with Waid’s vision of what “digital comics” should look like. Not just a scan of the static print comic pages, but also not the abomination known as motion comics. But rather something much closer to traditional comics, that still takes advantage of the fact that you can layer and reveal with more control and finesse in electronic form.