This is the unfortunate side effect of one person or one group of people having a "vision" and trying to force it upon everyone whether it makes sense or not.





And THAT is part of the thinking every U.S. company and CEO is promoting nowadays. The question is always how can we satisfy the stockholders' return THIS QUARTER? As in they don't expect to have jobs, or a company, after that, as in everything after December 31st, 2011 does not exist. They just want to retain enough value not to get fired, and to possibly have someone buy them out after that so that same question is someone else's problem next quarter.

Besides comics, it's leading to a whole lot of short-term products and thinking. It's the reasons most companies no longer do R&D, the reason why banks don't want to loan money (you can't pay it back in 3 months? get lost!).





It's not so much planned failure as a lack of a plan beyond a certain point.





I sincerely hope they're joking about that part: 1) There is no paper or ink or shipping cost involved with e-comics - people are not stupid, and can figure out this is a bad deal. And 2) even collectors will realize this is a bad deal because they can't wrap an e-comic in plastic, archive it for 5-10 years, and have it double in value - in fact, e-comics are worth NOTHING after you buy them or years later.





Exactly what I said. Too many people don't understand how it works, and they figure e-print is for "convenience", and people will pay extra for that convenience. There are magazines and books, and especially newspapers, which cost MORE for e-print editions right now. Yes, it is convenient, but it's also not (paper is still far more portable) and digital is also less archivable.





The higher the cost, the more likely the piracy. Apple taught the music industry that lesson positively after several other upstarts failed. Make the product convenient and cheap enough, and the vast majority of people won't bother pirating it. Really, if they price comics at $1.99 US each, the piracy will drop to a trickle.

Alternately, I kind of get the feeling that e-comics are not taken seriously by the D.C. or Marvel brass, and they figure they'll pay lip-service to this "new fad" and make people pay extra for it, until it fades into the sunset and they go back to their old model.





People will always seek a better deal, even when it looks a little shady. They'll weigh the risk, and then take action. This is why there are always those fake Rolex watch stands in big cities that people are fooled by. People pay their $50, they look at the watch and wonder if they threw away the money, but hey, it looks enough like a real Rolex that the $50 might be worthwhile. Or they buy burned DVD's off a street stand because they're only $1 each, and so what if the quality is bad. After all, they probably won't get arrested for it.