Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, Steve Bennett continues his discussion of the relative virtues of digital comics, and updates us on Jonny Quest:

I’d like to thank Jay Bardyla of Happy Harbor Comics for taking time to respond to my last column.  I’m glad you’ve found these things interesting but am genuinely sorry if I have ever given you the impression I think ‘my way’ is superior to anyone else’s.  I swear most of the time when I write these things I’m flailing about trying to work on what I think myself.  I could be wrong; I very often am.  And you’re absolutely right; an informal poll I took of whoever happened to wander into Super-Fly Comics & Games on any given Wednesday does not (necessarily) reflect a national trend and I never meant to suggest it did.

But if you read again what I wrote I think you’ll find I don’t prefer download comics over print ones; I think I made it pretty clear, like the customers I spoke with, this isn’t an “either or” proposition.  I do like downloads something fierce alright; they threatened to consume my laptop’s available memory until I started burning them onto discs.  And now that my large binder of them has started getting unruly I’ve begun comparison shopping external hard drives so I can keep my entire “library” in one place.

In spite of which, and the fact I can read everything for free, I still end up buying comics every week.  I also still buy books about comics (most recently acquired: Supermen! and Boody: The Bizarre Art of Boody Rogers) and though I can download all the Golden Age comics I want for free I’m still planning to shell out $125.00 (!) for Golden Age Marvel Comics Omnibus Vol. 1.

Having said all that I continue to contend that my reasons why comic book downloads are superior to print ones are irrefutable; they’re why I personally prefer them but that doesn’t make any of them any less true.  Download comics can never age and or be damaged (except by electro-magnetic fields), they’re less expensive than print ones and are more convenient; and instead of having to go down to the comic book shop the comics come to you.

But what I prefer doesn’t really matter.  Not to again gratuitously quote from the movie Joe Dirt, but “it’s not about what you like, it’s the consumer.”  For the most part we still cater to a clientele of comic book collectors and they need the actual article.  Happily for us in this instant gratification world there are still people willing to go down to our shops every Wednesday, like me.  Allow me to introduce into evidence my column from March 25 titled “The Complete Comic Shop Experience.”

In it I also wrote about how it’s been the hardcore collector market that’s helped minimize the negative effect downloads could have on print comic book sales.  So you see I really do get it.  The direct sales market needs the collector’s market and if I had to hazard a guess I’d say most of our customers haven’t started “experimenting” with downloading comics… yet.  And if X number of people continue to collect comics for X number of years the direct sales market should be ok, at least for what’s left of my lifetime.

Though I would prefer it otherwise it seems inevitable that the comic book collector market is going to continue to contract, so maybe it’s past time we started thinking more about the comic book reader.  All those people downloading comics are doing it because they want to read comics -- and as hard as I try I really can’t see how people wanting to read comics can be bad for business.

It’s just a matter of getting their money.  With tongue in cheek I’ve often called the comic book industry “a unique institution,” but as far as I can see there’s nothing so one-of-a-kind about it that it can avoid what’s happened to newspapers and music and TV and the movies.  There’s a superior delivery system in place for getting comics and while nostalgia and habit will keep our customers coming to us for a while, when faced with new technologies the customs of a culture change -- go ask the Amish.

I don’t think print comics are dead, or even dying, but they have real competition and we can’t ignore that.  As to how we’re going to stay in business, it has occurred to me that most comic book shops have hidden assets: a master list of your customer’s names and e-mail addresses (and if you don’t have them, get them, double quick).  They’re almost certainly going to prove valuable to some third party but I also don’t think it impossible that the day will come when comic book retailers will be sending out downloads of comics as well as selling print ones.

Well, that’s the view from my microcosm anyway; how’s yours?

If you haven’t heard, (a) twenty-one year old Zac Efron (I’m really not trying to be juvenile and mean but I swear every time anyone says his name I hear “vas deferens”) has the lead role in the Jonny Quest live action movie, and (b) the producers are seriously debating calling it something else.  Not because it’s in any way inappropriate for someone his age to be playing Jonny, no, it’s because they’re still deathly afraid people will stick a great big = between their cartoon based movie and last year’s thud Speed Racer.

I’m such a fan of the show five years ago this news could have quite possibly driven me insane, but the smartest thing to do might be to rename it Will Power or something and revisit the possibility of a Jonny Quest movie later when there’s actually a chance it can at least slightly resemble the property it’s based on.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.