Something that is picking up a lot in Asia and beginning to pick up a lot in the US is the publishing of comics on mobile phones. Comics would seem to be a natural fit for the mobile, and newspaper-style cartoon strips actually are…but long-form comics don’t fit as well onto mobile screens since the imagery often flows about the page in far more creative ways than the simple box format. It should also be pointed out that animated cartoons are an entirely different medium also — comics will not morph into manga as soon as there are enough multimedia handsets.
I spoke with Jeff Webber, the Mobile Content Director for Gocomics (a subsidiary of Ucomics that launched last week, previously the mobile offering went through carriers) about mobile comics…one main question I had was which form of comics was more popular, newspaper-style or long-form. Well, Garfield is the most popular — which shouldn’t surprise anybody — but in second place is Princess Ai, a manga published by Tokyopop, which has a partnership deal with Gocomics.
“I don’t think either one is going to be the most (poplular), they’re both just categories you have to cover” said Webber. “What we’re really after is branded names. Tokyopop is putting fullpage ads in their mobile books telling people to go get wallpapers.”
Payment-wise comics are probably among the most reasonably-priced mobile content…one daily cartoon for $1.99 a month or a six-pack for $3.99,which is pretty good for daily content sent to your handset. For creators this is a boon, especially now that Gocomics has launched a third-party site and is no longer constrained by the carriers. “We think that’s going to be a very interesting situation for us because we’re going to be able to market directly to comic fans,” said Webber. “Even the smaller ones may not have a big audience but they’re very very loyal, they’re reading that strip every day.” Aside from the cartoons supplied to portals like Yahoo and MSN, Ucomics gets 12 million visitors a month, people who “come there every single day”. That’s exactly what you want if you’re hoping people will buy on a new medium…
Manga will require a bit more dexterity — Webber said the Gocomics viewer allows people to see a thumbnail of the entire page, zoom in on a page and scroll about — but will also be priced at $3.99 a pop (probably). As with most mobile content, the truly successful will be that which makes use of the new medium in an innovative and natural way.
“The creators start getting interested and saying “I’ll do something brand new in mobile”, that’s where it starts getting interesting,” said Webber. “Where it ties in with print but you get something additional with mobile.”
Related stories:
–‘Manga’ Publishers See Mobiles As The Future
–Singaporean Company Releases Mobile Comics
–Comics On Smartphones
Subscriber content
?
Subscriber content comes from Gigaom Research, bridging the gap between breaking news and long-tail research. Visit any of our reports to learn more and subscribe.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Comments have been disabled for this post