[Groop] Groo On CD

[Josh 'Wet Exit' Jones]

On Tue, 25 May 2004, Mark Evanier wrote:

> Well, I had eBay close down the guy selling the GROO comics on CD.

Cool, I'm glad that guy got shut down!

> I'm not a big fan of comics on computer...or at least, not of comics
> that were done for convention format being viewed on computer.  For
> one thing, you lose the page format, which is part of the design.  For
> another, it just feels wrong.

I didn't think I'd be a big fan of (conventional) comics on the computer
either, but this recent post got me curious. So I went on emule and found
one issue (that's the only one I could successfully download actually!),
Epic #13 (King Sage). It was in .cbr format, which is actually just an
archive of jpegs (.rar compression: the extension is just renamed to .cbr,
there's also .cbz which is just a .zip). They were all 150 dpi scans and
actually very good.. I got out my copy of Epic 13 to compare, and the
color was actually brighter and I dunno, "crisper" in the one I downloaded
than the one I owned (which seemed in fine condition). I downloaded this
free cbr/cbz reader for windows "CDisplay"
(http://www.geocities.com/davidayton/CDisplay) and it is pretty awesome!

It loads up the whole comic full screen (with all sorts of options to fit
to width, fit to height, etc.. but the default settings are perfect), you
can set to see one page at a time or two so you feel the same page format,
and the opening spread (the title page with Mark's poem) was scanned
as one big image so it was fine to look at and not broken up weird or
anything.  You just press space to scroll down, or use your mouse scroll
wheel, or use the arrow keys. Space or page down takes you to the next
page. You can have it go one page at a time or two (if you're showing two
pages). You can add bookmarks, and the whole thing is very fast (even on
my Celeron 333Mhz laptop). You can have it rotate all the images too if
you've got like a tablet pc or a portrait monitor. Really, I was
impressed! It was also cool because the display is actualy larger than the
comic itself, and with the 150dpi scan it was easier to see lots of the
little details in Sergio's artwork. I read the whole thing twice (even the
groo grams) and it was great! My laptop is pretty tiny and light, about
the weight of maybe 10 comics and the same size, lots of times I bring it
with me to the couch, the bed, the toilet.. and with the cbr files there
was no chance of messing up my original, no need for a light while reading
it in the dark, no wasted extra space on my desk or in my closet, and no
ads either.. :)

> Sergio and I have discussed Groo on CD Rom and decided against it.
> Part of the reason is the format itself.  Part is simple economics.  A
> lot of fans out there who like CD Roms like them because it makes it
> possible for them to get a hundred issues for five or ten bucksor
> whatever.  We are not interested in reducing the value of a hundred
> issues of GROO to that level.

I was thinking (hypothetically of course) a bit about what price would
make sense and be fair for electronic groo comics, downloadable from say
groo.com. You could pretty much go the iTunes route, and make it 99c an
issue. Maybe newer issues that are still available in stores (the Dark
Horse ones for example) would be $1.99 or something (or not available at
all). You could have discounts for buying more (e.g. all the pacific
issues for $5.99, all the epic issues for $59.99, any 10 issues get 30%
off). Overall I think it'd be pretty easy to come up with attractive
pricing that doesn't reduce the value of Groo much at all. I think people
would still buy it even if say all 150 or so back issues cost around $100
to download.

Just as a technical note, I don't think any "DRM"-type stuff would be
necessary, and I think it'd be fine to let people re-download the issues
as many times as they want from the site (in case say they wipe their hard
drive or something). That would definitely add to the value of the service
without an appreciable increase in the cost (bandwidth is _really_ cheap..
and I'd pay/handle all development and serving costs free just to see this
service come to light!), and I bet would result in more sales. I don't
think letting people make as many copies of the .cbrs as they want would
hurt sales at all either. In the end it'll just be easier and feel right
to buy them legitimately from you guys (especially since it's pretty hard
to get them off p2p services). And really, most Groo fans don't even
know anybody else who reads Groo! :)

> As I assume most GROO readers are aware, Sergio and I are not
> mercenary about this stuff, which is why we haven't flooded the market
> with merchandise and reprints.  On the other hand, we do place a
> certain value on our work and it's somewhat higher than that.

That's very clear... I'd say only maybe Bill Watterson has kept a tighter
reign on merchandising his characters than you guys!

I just think this would be an awesome, awesome service, and I dunno
"innovative," and just really cool. I'd think of it more as a service for
all those poor Groo fans who could never find such and such an issue than
some sneaky RIAA-style way to milk more money out of your fans. And yeah,
that'd be awesome if Gary donated a bunch of his foreign Groo comics for
scanning and posting too. I'd buy those!

> We actually are, by the way, starting on more GROO comics.  And there
> will be another reprint collection soon, I'm told.  On paper.

This is of course, the best!

josh!