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Holy cyber-synergy, Batman!!

Online comics, moving into their second decade, are growing with Flash-like speed.

But those who study and make a living in the comics business say that, unlike music providers being marauded by illegal downloaders and cyber-pirates, the Internet has been more of a trusty sidekick than an arch-villain.

For now.

“The whole thing is in its infancy,” said David Bryenton, owner of Warp One Comics and Games, in Edmonton.

“(The Internet) may present new challenges, but in the 23 years we've been here, there have always been challenges.”

The American comic book giant Marvel took the next step in the digital age last month when it announced it was putting back issues of Spiderman, X-Men and others on its website for a nominal subscription fee.

The site is not competing with Marvel's core hard-copy business. Only copies at least six months old are available online.

The move was seen in part to boost sales, but also to counter fans scanning and distributing comics on BitTorrent and other file-sharing sites.

Comic shop owners, however, say given the nature of the industry, the pirated comics are more like a sales tool than a business rival.

Bryenton says comics have so many titles and so many editions — and so many issues that end in tantalizing cliffhangers — it's difficult to rely on pirated downloads to get the latest fix of what you want when you want it.

“It hasn't been a negative impact to us. You get a large exposure on the Net, and then a lot of those people want to see a hard copy and will come in.”

Even cartoonists who draw comics exclusively on the Internet will eventually publish hard-copy collections that are snapped up in stores, he said.

George Zotti, manager of Silver Snail Comics in Toronto, said even for those who like to get all their information on a computer screen, the Net still leaves comic lovers cold.

“Until everybody gets up to speed on large monitors where you can see the whole thing and everything is as crisp as the printed page, I don't think it's going to go anywhere,” said Zotti.

There's still something, he said, about the look and feel, and even smell, of a comic book that will allow it to flourish in the era of bits and bytes.

Bart Beaty, a University of Calgary media studies professor specializing in the comics industry, says comics, unlike music, are a tangible art form akin to stamp collecting.

“The physical object takes on these talismanic properties and people love to collect them and trade them and sell them and put them in Mylar bags with cardboard backing and believe they might become collector's editions,” he said.

But he said web comics are finding their niche and paying their way: “There are literally hundreds and hundreds of online-only comics that are generating significant revenue for their creators.”

He cited Chris Onstad's Achewood as the new frontier. The online comic was named the No. 1 graphic novel for 2007 by Time magazine.

The strip is about cats, robots and other animals who live in a neighbourhood named Achewood, described by Time as “a grown-up, suburban, stoned version of Pooh's Hundred Acre Wood.” The strip centres on rich, happy fat cat Ray Smuckles and his pal Roast Beef, who suffers from depression.

“The art is at times crude, but it rises to moments of extreme lyrical beauty, and the writing has enormous emotional range — from aching sadness to some of the most brilliant, bizarre comedy happening anywhere, in any medium,” writes Time on its website.

“It has tons of followers,” said Beaty, adding, “The idea 10 years ago that an online website comic would have been picked as best comic book of the year would have seemed inconceivable.”

He also cited the web comic Penny Arcade — a strip about video gaming — that has four million visitors a month and draws thousands to a yearly convention.

The Net, he said, can also be the best way for new talent to break into the biz: “If you have a good product and you put it on the web, there's a pretty good chance it will finds its audience.”

It can also be the best place to grow your comic store, said Zotti, who estimates 10 per cent of Silver Snail business — comics, figurines, etc. — is now done online.

But if business is fruitful for graphic novelists, it's not as peachy for newspaper strips that have been the staple of the industry for generations but are now being shrunk, cut and squeezed.

Beaty said it's not convenient for him to check his favourite strips daily in the paper or on the Internet, so he bookmarks them and once a month clicks to catch up — in a single bound — on a month's worth of “Doonesbury” and “For Better or for Worse.”

“There are new ways of finding this material out there,” he said.

Just spin your web. Any size.

Catch your strips, just like flies.

Look out! Here comes the Cyberman.