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, Bennett talks about comic downloads, motion comics, and Comic Book Wednesdays.

Last week I had one of those rare letter perfect Comic Book Wednesdays; the weather was unseasonably warm, the store busy but not so busy that I couldn't chat with customers and old friends.  There were new comics I wanted to read and even a special guest appearance by comedian Dave Chappelle (he bought a complete set of Watchmen action figures).  I tell you things were just swell, until Super-Fly Comics & Games co-owner Tad Cleveland pointed out  this posting to me on the Comic Journal website:

All of which leads us to today's whistle-past-the-graveyard moment, courtesy of Steve Bennett of Ohio's Super-Fly Comics and Games:

"If [Marvel would] undercut the suggested retail price of a print comic I'm sure some of Super-Fly's younger customers (i.e. anyone who Twitters) might be tempted to try downloads but of course reading comics is only part of the overall experience. It's also about having, bagging, boarding, sorting, storing and endlessly rereading them, so the real question (I think, anyway) is what value the owner of a download would give to it if it couldn't be treated the same way as a print comic."

Statements like this make me wish this blog had a laugh track.

It's fun being smug, isn't it?  Of course what I meant was the one major defense the direct sales market have against the potential threat of downloads is the hardcore collectors.  They're always easy to sneer at (I know people still collect variant covers but for the life of me I'll never understand why) but let's never forget they were the ones who almost certainly saved the North American comic book from extinction.

But make no mistake; I don't think we can depend on them indefinitely.  As I've been saying for years it's both graying and constantly shrinking; they represent only a fraction of the people who would be reading comics if there was only an easier way for them to have access to them.  I could enter all sorts of anecdotes into evidence but the fact we have Sony surveying PSP users as to what they'd pay for comic book downloads is probably a good indication this larger market exists.

Which leads us to the central question; will comic book downloads hurt print comic book sales in comic shops?  Eventually, almost certainly, maybe, but we still have a number of things working in our favor.  As far as I can see print still has a couple of decades before it reaches its sell by date and the fact that there are still philatelists indicates there'll probably always be comic book collectors. And since no one in the history of the world has ever found a way to stop people from wanting to own things, I imagine book shops are going to be just fine.

Regular readers know that I myself am a regular downloader of comics, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy the full comic book shop experience, which to me means having days like the one I had last Wednesday.

A couple of columns ago I pretty much dismissed motion comics as a novelty, but India's Raj Comics are getting into them in a big way.  The first release comes out in May, the 80 page 26/11 where Nagraj (the man with tiny snakes in his bloodstream instead of white corpuscles) deals with the aftermath of the recent Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Raj still plans to continue publishing print comics but 500 of their comics are already available as downloads and plan to convert their entire 3000 comic library into motion comics.  In India Raj faces stiff competition from video games and the Internet for the youth market and hope the new format will make the medium seem a little less antique.  I'm not saying Marvel or DC should do something similar but I'd surely like to see DC do a motion comic version of All-Star Superman.  Maybe it could actually make Superman seem cool to today's kids.

All of a sudden there are a lot of upcoming comics that I'm personally looking forward to.  I didn't say anything when they were first announced but I'm all for DC's new back-ups (but then I'm all for anything that adds plus value to current comics).  And I can't wait to see Wednesday Comics, Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom, The Sandman by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby, Miss America Comics #1, Young Allies Comics #1 and for only the most hardcore of comic book collectors (meaning me) is the Golden Age Marvel Comics Omnibus Vol. 1.

Last week I forgot to mention that after seventeen seemingly endless seasons there will be no more new Power Rangers.  Goodbye sweet Omegamax Megazord, may a flight of angels sing thee to thy rest.

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