When Comics Go Digital-Only, What Happens To Collectors?

Physical media as a whole is fading away to be overtaken by digital versions that offer more convenience and easier access. A minority (albeit a growing one) of people are pining for CDs, DVDs, paper books, and other similar media, but what about comic books?

Comic books are also transitioning to digital form, but you can still order a paper version of single issues in most cases. There are still stores that sell comics on the shelf, although their numbers are dwindling. Physical comics still make up the bulk of revenue, but for how long? With comics being a valuable collector’s hobby, what happens if or when comics go all-digital and there’s nothing physical to collect, grade, and store in your long boxes?

The Shift to Digital Comics

I only got into reading comics as an adult. Partly because, in conservative South Africa, Afrikaners have been historically skeptical of foreign media. I remember in the mid 90s bringing home a Hulk comic my friend from school lent me, and my dad chewing me out and demanding I return it without reading it.

Credit: Sydney Louw Butler / How-To Geek

The other reason is that comics were just too expensive, and I didn’t see the point of buying one issue a month and never actually catching up on a complete story.

Today, a cheap subscription fee gives me access to the entire Marvel back catalog, so I can read Spider-Man from the very first issue all the way to the latest. Well, excepting the last six months or so, which is the window given to physical comics before they join the digital library.

For someone like me, who wants to read comics but not necessarily collect them, this shift to digital has been great. There’s no way I could actually afford the first issue of Spider-Man after all. Much less buy all the hundreds of issues that have come out since. So these Netflix-style comic services give people like me access to the content, and it allows comic book companies to keep making money from their back catalogs.

Credit: Marvel

Price Per Month: $10
Price per year: $69
Mobile App Compatibility: iOS, iPadOS, & Android
Free Trial Period: 7 days

Why Physical Comics Still Matter

You’d think that having easy access to first editions or rare issues digitally might devalue the physical versions of these comics, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. No one is paying a million dollars for Action Comics #1 to crack it open and read it!

No, the value of these comics has nothing to do with getting access to them. After all, nothing stops Marvel, DC, or any other comic publisher from reprinting these comics. Just like classic and valuable vintage toys get re-releases. Yet, despite being physically identical to the original items, the reprints are worthless as collectibles. That’s because the value of the originals comes from intangible things. We place value on these objects because of the time and place they are connected to, not the paper and ink.

It’s the same reason something like a mass-produced hat or shirt suddenly goes up in value if a movie star wore it. It’s still exactly the same shirt as all the rest, but because a celebrity wore it, we value it more. So no matter what happens on the digital side of comics, physical comics will keep having unique value to collectors, as long as collectors keep valuing them—if that makes sense!

The Challenges of Digital-Only Releases for Collectors

Comics sealed in plastic and stored upright in boxes.

So if it becomes normal to only release comics in digital form, what happens to the hobby of comic collecting? Do collectors simply stick to comics from the pre-digital area until all the comics are collected and there’s nothing new?

That’s the real question for me, and though I’m not a comic collector myself, I always liked the idea of it. It would be sad if the hobby that has supported the comic industry for so long died out this century.

All the usual complaints about digital-only media apply. Collectors of physical comics preserve historically important media through their hobby. If a physical version never exists in the first place, nothing stops it from being deleted, altered, or otherwise effectively destroyed. There’s no sentimental value to a digital file, and none of the ritual or community building that comes with physical comic collections.

That seems pretty dire for the hobby, but the economics are hard to argue with, as printing is only cost-effective at scale, and even if comic reading itself may not be in danger, the viability of printed comics clearly is.

The Future of Collecting

In a digital-only comic future, is there any place for collectors? One option is for comic companies to do specific collector’s edition prints of comics. The same way that we now get fancy collectible 4K UHD Blu-ray releases.

It’s a niche audience, but one with deep pockets and lots of enthusiasm. However, I’d argue that this wouldn’t be the same as collecting mass-market comics. It’s too “fake” and corporate to ever have the same appeal as collecting classic single-issue releases.

A magnifying glass over a Bored Ape NFT.

Then there’s the idea of bringing some physical uniqueness to the digital world. Something like NFTs comes to mind, but honestly, the NFT experiment has failed, the market has crashed, and again it’s just not the same on a fundamental level as a physical object in the ways that really matter to collectors.

What makes the most sense to me is releasing comics physically and digitally at the same time, and printing just enough physical comics to satisfy collector demand. On-demand printing with a relatively small bump in cost per issue might make more sense than a fixed run, but that should be capped at some number to preserve rarity. Issues could even be individually numbered.

Ultimately, the solution will have to be something that actually preserves what drives the urge to collect comics. I have no doubt that there will still be many culturally and historically significant comics written in the future, and there’s a whole comics-grading industry that has its own reasons to prevent physical comics from dying, but the future of paper comics is anything but certain. Even if it doesn’t seem like a problem for the immediate future.

While I don’t know how collectors will keep doing their thing in an all-digital comic future, looking at the revival of vinyl, CDs, and other physical media among a small, but vocal group of enthusiasts makes me think they’ll find a way.