Community Office Hours--Ask Jitsu Your Questions Every Tuesday Night!

[KookieSuperApe]

Hey J,

What are the chances, do you think, that DC would ever invest in one final push to get several thousand archival comics all digitized at once, as they did at the beginning of the digitization process? I’d love to see (and I think I speak for many) a big effort to get those final remaining undigitized comics digitized in a way that won’t take 40 years to accomplish, as it will with the 5-6 a week that we’re getting now.

And while we’re on the topic, I’m copying over @chaotickairos’s full comment from this month’s What’s New thread here, as their queries and feelings on the digitization topic perfectly mirror my own:

@chaotickairos

See, I get that. I get that there are issues that require extra work and I respect the team for working to improve their output. Now, if DC would actually invest in their archive team, this wouldn’t be as bad a problem. But I think that too often any critique we make gets hidden behind “The archive team is doing their best!” which doesn’t really answer the problems, like:

1. Why do you keep starting short series and dropping them before completion? (e.g. the Zatanna and Superman mini series from earlier in the year.)
2. Why is there no decent pattern to the stuff that is scanned? (e.g. why do we not prioritize series that have been requested, or series that are relevant to current events, like additional Milestone issues for Black History month, or series staring LGBTQ+ characters for Pride month?)
3. Why can’t we get issues of books that we know are digitized? For example, Milestone compendium one has been out since January, and there are 12 issues of Xombi that have been printed that we do not have available to read. Where are they? We can’t read any of the crossovers.

I understand that there are extenuating circumstances, I really do. But I think it’s a fair critique to point out just how monotonous this lineup is. It was monotonous when the four slots were solely Milestone, but swapping those four slots to Wildstorm titles that are just as long (if not longer) doesn’t solve the problem. I cannot be convinced that there is not a single post-crisis series that would be as easy to put up as Gen13, just so we can have a little variety in what we get each week.

I hope that some of these points can please be addressed. Thank you.