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Thursday Runaround – Beau Smith Belongs In A Museum?

NurtureWatch: SFGate wants children to grow up to be geeks.

I've witnessed hundreds of people — including a lot of kids — ask to take pictures with WonderCon-goers who dress up for the convention, and I've never seen anyone act like a dick. I've never seen a fight at a comic book convention, or even an act of aggression. There are weird people and maybe a few annoying people, but no one is mean. It's a magical world without a**holes. In short, it's an environment I want my kids to be around.

MuseumWatch: Beau Smith's collection of original art is displayed in the Huntingdon Museum of Art, in the exhibition Lit Graphic: The World of the Graphic Novel.

iPadWatch: The Financial Times may love a comic over a book on the iPad, but The Huffington Post gives the Marvel App price point a kicking.

Sure, at $1.99, a digital copy of a new issue is around two bucks cheaper than a physical copy. It's just that as a comic book reader (and former collector–there is a difference) I can't say I'm impressed by the value proposition. Marvel was already offering an "all you can eat" subscription service on Marvel.com that allowed readers to access their entire online catalog through a web interface. Not so with the app.

I'm always acutely aware of how pricey my comics habit is when compared to other forms of media, and in the new marketplace those comparisons are laid bare. For $1.99 at the iTunes store, I can get an episode of Caprica or Mad Men, entertainments that give me the same soap opera-like fix that ongoing comic series provide. Or I could get two games for my iPhone that might eat up days of my life. As for the pirates–who like to justify their theft in part by saying that the companies charge too much for their wares–the price isn't low enough to kick in a serious case of geek guilt.

Although the price pales in comparison with the print product. As IGN Comics points out;

Comics face problems in two critical areas when it comes to expanding an audience and ensuring a healthy readership – distribution and price. Left unchecked, these challenges will ultimately break the medium. Every day we receive e-mails, comments and even Tweets from readers bemoaning the cost of books and the difficulty in acquiring them.. It wasn't too long ago that new titles cost less than $2. Now $3 is the pricing norm, with $4 creeping up on an alarming number of major releases. It's not uncommon to see $5 tags on oversized or anniversary issues. There is no other way to put this – the industry is going to price itself out of existence.

Always a good excuse to link to this Bleeding Cool report on comics inflation….

iPhoneWatch: Osamu Tezuka comics are to hit the mobile phone market in China, with Astro Boy, Black Jack and The Three-Eyed One now available on the iPhone in their entirety, before expanding across other phone services.

There are around three-quarters of a billion mobile phone users in China. A good place to start…

DoctorWatch: Tony Lee with his new Sonic Screwdriver toy.

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