9/2007 UPDATE: Well, it’s late 2007 and still no iTunes for comics. Meanwhile, digital piracy is going stronger than ever, thanks to dedicated scanners and forums. It’s sad, because I think comics have so much mass market potential. We’ll see if Marvel and DC can come up with something that will satisfy both consumers and the direct market.

Which is?
People are downloading comics left and right, which a posteriori means there’s a big demand for the convenience of digital comics. It’s not a pie in the sky thing, it’s happening right now and all the cool kids are doing it. For the most part it seems like these people are the most rabid comic book fans or on their way to becoming such - or live in foreign countries where they can’t get a fix. New comics are scanned and distributed online as they come out. Not like a couple of them: all of them, excluding tiny indie releases. There are established file formats (.cbz and .cbr, respectively renamed .zip and .rar archives) and readers for all platforms. Marvel has a clue and is putting out CDs of their stuff but that’s not enough.

Advice
The market is just like the mp3 file sharing scene before the iTunes Music Store. Someone (Diamond seems logical) needs to set up computer server infrastructure, distribute a free iTunes-like program for comics that implements an ID3-type tag, and sell new books at cover price and back issues at a discount. Scanning isn’t an issue because you just obtain and downsample digital files from the publishers. Et voilà: books never sell out, people who would be embarrassed to go to a comic book store will buy comics, and many acres of trees are saved. Goofus will still pirate books, but Gallant won’t.

Digital Rights Management
Companies would be within their rights to want DRM-protected files, but why not trust the people who are pelting you with money for your product? Because corporations are paranoid about shrinkage? If you’re going to implement DRM, which will be cracked anyway, be sure it allows for ‘lending’ of books to friends over the net.

In the meantime
You want those comics, don’t you?

Torrents
New comics can be found at The Pirate Bay; they’re released in giant DCP packs. DCP stands for Digital Comics Preservation. It’s unlikely you’ll want to read every new comic that comes out - there’s tons of garbagio out there - so use a BitTorrent client like Azureus that allows you to deselect files you don’t want.

DirectConnect
The premiere outlet for the sharing of back issues is the DirectConnect network. I use the DC++ client under XP; there’s a Mac port but it looks shaky. You connect to a hub and start sharing; some hubs require a minimum share size of some number of gigabytes. To avoid pissing anyone off I won’t name my favorites but all you have to do is go to the public hubs window of the console and search for “comics.” It’s not brain science. And you will be amazed at how much material is available - these scanner guys are quite serious about their mission, which is to scan and preserve everything, and virtually everything you might want is scanned, everything from Love and Rockets to the New Universe’s Kickers, Inc. Oh god, I’m such a nerd.

That’s it, basically
N.B. I personally am buying a lot more comics and discovering great titles I missed, like Ed Brubaker’s Batman: Turning Points, Warren Ellis’ Iron Man, Otomo’s Domu, etc. Mainly I’ve downloaded comics for the purpose of archiving stuff I physically own, so I can put the paper copies in storage. No small thing!