From the time I was a little kid until almost a decade or so ago (was it really a decade since I was a college sophomore? Yeesh), I was an avid comic collector.

As a kid, I bought pretty much any superhero comic I could get my hands on—particularly anything with Spider-Man, Batman, Captain America, or Superman on the cover.

As a young teenager, I discovered ElfQuest and learned the joys of longform comic storytelling—something I had never quite gotten the hang of with superhero comics. And by the time I was the aforementioned college sophomore, my comics intake consisted pretty much entirely of Strangers in Paradise, Books of Magic, and brief flirtations with Cerebus and Sandman Mystery Theatre, as well as Bone (which I loved, but I got into way too late at the time).

And then it stopped.

It wasn’t that I outgrew comics. It was just that… well, I was a college sophomore and money was in short supply. As important as comics had been in my early life, they weren’t quite as important as having something to eat other than Ramen noodles. Especially with all of the major publishers constantly raising their prices and increasing the number of ads, and with indie publishers having to raise their prices even higher just to stay afloat. Suddenly, 24 – 36 pages of comic entertainment didn’t seem all that important when the price hit somewhere between $2.95 and $4.95 a pop.

Plus, there were these:

If you’re a comic geek, those probably look familiar. They’re longboxes. And those aren’t the only ones I have. So, here I have massive amounts of moldering paper just sitting around in longboxes. I’m scared to touch any of them because 1) they might be valuable, and 2) they might have once been valuable, but now be in poor condition, which would be kind of heartbreaking.

Which also means none of them get read any more. Which is why I have come to love the idea of digital comics. You can read them. Again and again. Enjoy them consistently, and not have to worry about longboxes taking up floor space or comics getting damaged. Sure, your digital edition doesn’t gain value as a collectible, but wouldn’t that mean you just get the comics you love reading?

And here’s my current dilemma. My relationship and my love of comics is currently in a boom-bust-boom-bust cycle. Even as I rediscover time and again how much I love the medium by seeking out trades of comics written by people like Garth Ennis and Allan Moore, I keep having my love of comics smacked down again and again by an industry firmly entrenched in 1996. Witness the state of digital comics today:

Marvel Comics: The so-called “House of Ideas.” Once upon a time, they were the young upstarts who dared to take on the entrenched superheroes of yesteryear. In 2007, they launched their digital comics subscription. Comics had to be read on your computer screen in a proprietary reader, and nothing could be downloaded. New comics were posted twelve months after they had hit the stands. Critics and fans alike laughed. It’s two years later. Swine are still earthbound. Hell has a significant lack of snow days. Catholicism has yet to select a Pope who does not share their religious views. So, of course, Marvel has done nothing different except to change the lead time to a mere six months.

DC: The house that Superman built. The old war horse of the comics industry, but a company that lately has been given to flights of re-invention. And by “lately,” I mean, “ever since the early 90’s when Marvel took the lead in the market.” They arguably began the mainstream “For Mature Audiences” trend with adult-themed stories in Batman, Superman, and Swamp Thing, then solidified themselves in that market by introducing the Vertigo line with comics like Sandman, Preacher, and, um, Swamp Thing. A while back, they offered some Vertigo previews in PDF format. Aside from that, DC seems to be waiting for this “internet” fad to blow over.

A quick note: Not every situation from every medium applies to every other medium. I heard somebody recently say that DC and Marvel didn’t have full archives available because “It’s tough to clear the rights on a lot of those old comics. You have to pay the creators.” This is true about music used in the original WKRP. But while DC and Marvel were creating comics as we know them today, they habitually screwed over their creators with binding work-for-hire contracts. DC and Marvel own pretty much everything published up through the end of the 70’s lock, stock, and barrel.

Image Comics: Rogue creators from DC and Marvel split off to create Image—a company founded on not ripping off the creators. Of course, they’ll be absolutely thrilled to avoid any further innovation. Image Comics offers the first issues of their series as free digital comics. Read them online—without a proprietary reader—and then rush to the store and buy paper. Yes, only the first issues are available digitally. Anything beyond that and you’ll need to shell out for a print edition.

And now, a sample of independents.

WaRP Graphics: Publishers of ElfQuest who, lately, have not had that much success with the print world. This past year, they finished putting online every issue of ElfQuest ever published. They’re intended to be read in your browser, but unlike Marvel they’ve actually been released at high resolution, and not in a proprietary reader. And they’re free. Still far from perfect, but a damn sight better than the big boys.

Aardvark Vanaheim: Love it or hate it, Cerebus is a significant work in comics history. A truly longform epic with a main character who aged in real time (most of the series). And creator Dave Sim certainly didn’t make any friends with his snide commentaries and constant bashing of the industry. So, certainly this rebel who constantly called to tear down the system that exploited creators and idolized merchants would jump at the chance to do away with the middleman and the archaic print distribution system for his new series, right? Oh, what’s that you say, Dave Sim’s official website for glamourpuss? “You can only buy glamourpuss in really, really good comic book stores (like these ones listed here) No single copy orders, no subscriptions, no exceptions?” Oh. Well. Settles that, then.

Boom! Studios: Boom! Studios sprang onto the scene in a big way by offering free downloads of their… first issues. But in cbr format! The most open and easy-to-use digital comics format—essentially the medium’s version of mp3. Of course, their follow-up to that was to encourage people to rush to the stores and buy more paper.

There are plenty of pirates stepping in to fill the gaps. And plenty of comic artists complaining about it—only to later be exposed as pirates, themselves. Whether they’re downloading gigabyte after gigabyte of Torchwood without sending the BBC a dime, or just drawing other creators’ characters at conventions.

So, where are the sources for (legal) digital comics downloads?

Well, you could try the fine folks at Modern Tales and their affiliate sites, all offering free, no-DRM .cbr files from their creators. The selection doesn’t change much, but they’ve got the right idea.

There’s Drive Thru Comics. Most of their content is in .pdf format, but their prices are reasonable. Too bad they don’t have much in the way of publisher support—but they do carry Girl Genius by Phil and Kaja Foglio.

There’s Pullbox Online, which has the iTunes Store of digital comics interfaces (although they’ve skipped the pesky DRM phase), but has almost no support from publishers. Good ideas often have a hard time catching on.

Speaking of the iTunes store, if you have an iPhone or an iPod Touch, you can buy comics through the app store now. There’s the excellent ComicZeal which will let you download Golden Age (read: public domain) comics, and which can be fed with cbr files. And then there’s the seemingly infinite offerings from iVerse, who wants you to buy an app for every single issue of a series for $0.99 a piece (first issue free!).

The fact is that the comics industry, at a time they should be moving forward into a digital future by leaps and bounds, is still struggling with a mid-90’s mentality. They still want the digital to be a means to move paper. But paper was popular solely because it was the best distribution method of its time. Now digital is the medium that offers the most convenience and durability.

Don’t get me wrong—there will always be a market for paper comics. There’s a feel to a comic book that you don’t get reading it off of an iPod. But if comics companies are going to survive (and there’s some doubt to that), then they’re going to have to learn that digital is not a means of promotion—it’s a means of distribution. A fast, easy, and inexpensive means of distribution.

In the past few years, I’ve been told I needed to defend the “position” that the works of Bram Stoker, Jules Verne, and Mark Twain are in the public domain by people who wanted to stop somebody from adapting one or the other.

First of all, all of those authors’ works were published prior to 1923, which makes them public domain in the United States. This is because anything printed in the U.S. prior to 1923 is in the public domain.

The original U.S. copyright lasted for a 28-year period, which could be renewed once.

The current copyright law – thanks to Sonny “Look Out For That Tree” Bono – is that copyright lasts for the life of the artist, plus 70 years.

This means that if the copyright of works by Stoker, Verne, and Twain were subject to the Bono Copyright Extension (which, I would like to remind you, they are not), then Stoker’s works would have been in the public domain since 1982, Verne’s since 1975, and Twain’s since 1980.

But they were public domain much, much earlier than that because they were published prior to 1923 and the Bono Copyright Extension never applied to them. The maximum any of these works could have lasted under copyright was 56 years, and most of them probably only remained under copyright for 28 because—as was the case with H.P. Lovecraft’s works—nobody ever thought to renew the copyrights.

Again: However you slice it, these works are in the public domain in the United States. Plain and simple. Close the book, drink a cold glass of water, go to bed.

Then, tonight, I had one of my friends text me while I was waiting to hear a speech.

He said, “I need a simple, easy-to-read source on copyright. Somebody on my project is insisting Poe’s stories are copyrighted.”

Yeah.

Poe died in 1849.

1849!

1849!

Even if the Bono Copyright Extension applied (and it doesn’t), that would mean his work had been in the public domain since 1919.

Copyright hawks and lawsuit-happy professional organizations like the MPAA and RIAA have created a mythology of perpetual copyright, and it is destroying our ability to build on our cultural foundations. Kids today are terrified to build off of Edgar Allen Poe – a man who has been dead for over a century and a half. How long will it be before somebody is insisting that Shakespeare’s work (he died in 1616, for those of you keeping score) can’t possibly be in the public domain?

Behold, the non-Euclidean geometry of (D – Nebraska) Sen. Ben Nelson’s mind as he reads what can only be a thank you note to Mutual of Omaha.

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said Friday that he will oppose legislation that would give people the option of a public health insurance plan….

Nelson’s problem, he told CQ, is that the public plan would be too attractive and would hurt the private insurance plans. “At the end of the day, the public plan wins the game,” Nelson said. Including a public option in a health plan, he said, was a “deal breaker.”

Yes. That’s Democratic Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska stating that he won’t support a public health care option because it would just be too good. Apparently, our government must now be prohibited from actually helping people in need because it’s bad for private industry’s profit margins.

1. “I’m wired and I’m tired and I’m grinnin’ like a fool.”
2. “One and one make two, two and one make three—it was destiny.”
3. “She never mess with entertainers ‘cause they always leave.”
4. “Thrown like a star in my vast sleep, I open my eyes to take a peep…”
5. “Any jobber got the sack”
6. “The center of the earth is the end of the world – and I could really care less.”
7. “It’s just the beasts under your bed, in your closet and in your head.”
8. “Once I finally find her, I’ll get permission from the wife—”
9. “The burden of pity will show in the people we used to know.”
10. “Maybe you think I look a tramp, or maybe you think I’m round to steal a car.”

1. “Midnight blue burning gold. A yellow moon is growing cold.” “Stay” by Reyo Bikkin (Pink Floyd cover)


2. “I won’t be told anymore that I’ve been brought down in this storm” “Madagascar” by Guns ‘n’ Roses


3. “Now all you do is sit and dream of a fay girl green by a mountain stream.” “Teas” by Donovan


4. “Not a single luxury! Like Robinson Crusoe—I watch too much TV….” – “Doin’ Time Under the Lifeguard Stand” by Eddie From Ohio


5. “With your wings, I can learn to fly” “Sweet Young Thing” by The Monkees


6. “Heaven… I’m in Heaven… And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak….” “Cheek to Cheek” by Pat Suzuki (originally by Fred Astaire), guessed by Carl


7. “I could use an angel to guard against the shadows.” “I Could Use a Hero” by Bering Strait


8. “We grow out of the days like a moth-eaten sweater.” “Happily Ever After” by Spin Doctors


9. “You would kill all the sick ones – you would bury them deep in the earth.” “Pretty Pink Ribbon” by Cake


10. “And is her power all in her club sandwich?” “The Waitress” by Tori Amos

Using ONLY SONG TITLES from ONE artist, and cleverly answer these questions below. Make sure you send a copy to me when you respond. Do not use the same artist as I did or duplicate song titles.

All of these songs are from The Monkees:

Are you a male or female: Salesman
Describe yourself: (I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone
How do you feel about yourself? Looking For the Good Times
Describe your ex boyfriend/girlfriend: The Girl I Left Behind Me
Describe your current boy/girl situation: This Just Doesn’t Seem To Be My Day
Describe your current location: Pleasant Valley Sunday
Describe where you want to be: I Wanna Be Free
Your best friend: Regional Girl
Your favorite color is: Early Morning Blues and Greens
You know that: Tomorrow’s Gonna Be Another Day
What’s the weather like? Shades of Gray
If your life was a television show what would it be called? Cuddly Toy
What is life to you? Daily, Nightly
What is the best advice you have to give? Laugh
If you could change your name what would it be? Shorty Blackwell

So far, I am not as good as:

• Ritchie Valens


• Aaliyah


• Buddy Holly


• River Phoenix


• James Dean


• Janis Joplin


• Jimi Hendrix


• Otis Redding


• Brandon Lee


• Kurt Cobain


• Jim Morrison

But I’m apparently right at the age where Hank Williams died. And he died in my home town – go fig.

But I am apparently still a few years better than:

• Andy Gibb


• Jim Croce


• Patsy Cline


• Bruce Lee


• Mama Cass


• Sam Cooke


• Sylvia Plath


• John Belushi


• Chris Farley


• Andy Kaufman


• Jesus

All of whom died within 6 years of my current age.

According to “industry gossip” (which means: lots and lots of papers got excited about something they read, but can’t remember where), Bale may be damaged goods after his on-tape melt down.

That’s mighty funny coming from io9 – a blog that routinely reports its own bloggers’ idle speculation and pipe dreams as “the industry buzz.”

But, see, this is why they can decry the rumor mill – because this particular rumor goes completely against what they want to happen. They either want Bale to remain in the cape and cowl, or for an actor in his 50’s to be cast to play in a direct-from-the-page adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns (a comic I like and respect, but which would make an absolutely horrible movie).

With all their talk about how sexualizing and abusing men makes Battlestar Galactica a feminist series, and their near-constant backhanding of Heroes and all of its remaining fans, io9 is the type of organization that makes me completely understand why Russell T. Davies would make it a policy to ignore what the fandom tells him to do with his work. It’s… it’s like Andy Kaufman decided after his wrestling career that he wanted to start a sci-fi fanzine.

And they remain in my Bloglines… well, frankly, I’m not sure why.