On The Road To Comic-Con : Interview With Brian Wood, Author Of Conan And The Massive
This article is another in the series of interviews conducted for the Technorati's Road To Comic-Con coverage. From July 12th to the 15th, nearly 150,000 people will crowd into the San Diego Convention Center to experience the largest pop culture event in North America known as San Diego Comic-Con.
We talked with comic book writer Brian Wood who currently writes Conan and The Massive for Dark Horse Comics and, who also, recently completed his series for Vertigo entitled DMZ. Wood had a lot to say about all things digital and his concerns about the changing business.
Early in the discussion, attention was given to the subject of journalism within his series DMZ, which centered on a rookie journalist struggling to cover a civil war in the United States. This dove-tailed with citizen-driven movements like Occupy Wall Street and The Tea Party, and the possibility of comics covering unfolding news events.
"The plain fact is comics are difficult to find, to purchase, and these very little money in comics for a mass-market advertising campaign," Wood began. "We'll always be a bit fringe, at least for now. But I certainly think comics are capable of covering social movements like you suggest."
Much of the change from fringe to mainstream he attributed to digital distribution. "I think digital is probably the best thing to happen to indie comics. It levels the field, it puts distribution into the hands of creators...," he continued with a thought on the hurdles digital distribution faces. "I think we have a fight on our hands about the pricing of digital comics, which overall is far too high, but we'll get there."
"I don't think DRM should exist," he responded without hesitation when asked what his thoughts were on Digital Rights Management. "Not because I am opposed to how things are currently, but we need to remove barriers, big and small, that keep people from buying digital books."
Continued on the next page
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