"Consumers' entertainment habits and media consumption have changed dramatically," says Bob Chapek, president of Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, "and it's important for us to be able to create dynamic content that meets the needs and demands of today's multimedia and technologically advanced consumers."
Moving beyond the comic-book pages is not new for an industry that has fed other media - radio, cinema, television - since not long after its inception. It took to the Internet from the start, as a natural extension of its young fan base, says John Jackson Miller, a comic-book writer and industry analyst. For one thing, he notes, comic fans were quick to realize the Internet was the easiest way to show off their work to one another.
"Comic-book fans were among the earliest adopters of the Internet," he says. "The idea of comic books moving online or comics appearing online - that happened right with the beginning of the Internet."
That presence on the Internet, he adds, has been a good thing for the industry, adding to public awareness of comic books (as though $200 million-plus movie blockbusters like Spider-Man, Iron Man and The Dark Knight don't do enough of that already) and helping propel sales.
"Every year of the last eight, comic sales have increased in dollar terms," says Miller, including a 1.5 percent increase for 2008 - calculated before the recent decisions by industry titans Marvel and DC to raise the prices on some titles by $1. "That is pretty good for being in a recession."
Innovations like those behind Time Jumper can only help, says Steve Geppi, president of Timonium-based Diamond Comic Distributors.
"I see this as something that will increase the audience," says Geppi, who doesn't believe the Internet, Kindle, the iPhone or any other technical innovation will ever supplant the traditional mass-market comic book. "There's a certain thing about picking up that book, about touching it and smelling it and reading it. ... There's just something about that experience you can't replace."
Agrees Lee, "I expect that there will be a ton of Web-based and interactive material, but I think, despite all that, there will always be comic books."
Lee began penning stories for Captain America C omics in the 1940s. Beginning in 1961, as the resident wordsmith for Marvel Comics, he began a run unrivaled among his peers. Besides Spidey, the Fantastic Four and Tony Stark's armor-plated alter ego, Lee also created (in tandem with such artists as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko) Daredevil, the Mighty Thor, Dr. Strange, the Silver Surfer and a group of teenage mutants known collectively as the X-Men.
