Marvel's online comics

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhh you beat me!

http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2007-11-12-comics-online-main_N.htm

 

Bold move on Marvel's part.

 

The subscription rate is pretty hefty. I don't think this will go over the way they'd like it to.

 

It's umlimited.

 

I understand that. It would work a lot better if there were options, though. Something like $.25 a comic book OR a $10 a month unlimited rate.

 

Can you download these comics or do they stay there on the site?
Because if I'm paying for something I want to keep it. Besides I don't collect enough to do this anyway.

 

I looked through it and I don't think you can keep them. Personally, I don't want to pay unless I can keep it either.

 

I can see what is going to happen now. All over the internet people are going to complain that this service is to constricting and a bad deal.

There will be long rants and much insulting of Marvel. Then the service will launch and be a huge success.

Oh internet I can always tell what is most popular by what is complained about the most.

I personally am not going to use this service but thats because my local comic shop is close,awsome and offers me a 30% discount. But back before it opened I would have jumped on this in a heartbeat.

 

You don't get to download the comics. They are all on Marvel's site. It's got a flash interface, which I'm not a big fan of, but overall it seems decent.

I'm probably going to subscribe to this. $60 bucks for a year isn't that much. But I don't think I'm going to subscribe yet. Looking through their listing of what is available shows that it's pretty slim so far. Yes they have 2500 available issues, but it seems to be a lot of short runs and parts of miniseries. If I'm going to be paying for this then they need to have complete series, not just pieces.

And I can't believe they don't have the Taskmaster mini up there. For ****'s sake, is that mini ever going to be reprinted in any form?

 

DBM! You're back!

 

I second that motion!!

 

I never really went away. I mostly lurk. But I have the day off, so I thought I'd post a bit.

 

Yay.

 

That's stupid, how does my friend have about 10,000 marvel comics on his pc, and Marvel only has around 2,500?

 

Well, either he's bought the DVDs that Marvel licenses (which would net him a few thousand easily) or he downloaded them (illegally,imo).

DBM, you need to take more days off. I mean, how much money do you need?

 

Buying "comics" on the internet..that isn't for me.Its for people with their damn ipods.

 

Well of course its "illegal", and from what I seen the quality sometimes suffers for it.
But the guy spends an inordinant amount on comics as is, keeping up with his favourite titles, and he was obsessed with wanting back issues, but confronted with his own financial reality.
So he took up downloading torrent packs, and seriously has about 10,000 Marvel comics, which imo, he'll never get around to reading 10% of.
I don't know how much the DVD cost, but I've heard each page has Marvel watermark on it, and if you really want to get the back issues, you'd have to be rich.
Plus for the most part it isn't money out of Marvel's pockets, as Marvel has already made their money on these titles, it just probably makes it harder on comic shop owners and collectors short on cash.

 

Quality on downloadable comics are often pretty good.

 

Newer ones yah, good quality scans, no adds, but if you go into some of the real old stuff theres lots of inconsistencies and errors.
Still better then paying, like 30k for a comic though.

 

None of the ones that I own (FF,Hulk, Cap, GR, X-Men) have that watermark. I think it was just the Spidey one (which came out first.) They're around 40 bucks for the entire run. It ends up as less than 10 cents an issue.

As far as quality, some of the ones that I've seen on Donald Thomas' site are very good quality. Much better than the ones on DVD (although I have no complaint with those)

 

All too true. I need that mini, now

 

Eh, not really interested.

 

It's one of the smartest things they've done in a long time, and it's going to make them a ton of money.

Think about it. They don't really have to make anything 'new' or 'just for online'. All they're doing is putting up their old backissues and slapping a monthly fee on it if you want to read it. It's hardly going to cost them at all compared to how much money they stand to make off it, PLUS is de-courages(is that even a word?) illegal downloads to an extent. Lets face it, downloading the entire Avengers run is something around 4g. That's a long time to download filess, as opposed to paying 9.99 a month and being able to read them all without having to store them on your comp.

Now, granted, they don't have all their comics up yet, far from it, but I can easily see a few years down the road them having nearly all their backissues put online. It's what DCP has been doing for years. They're finally catching on that Preserving the comics online is a good idea, and they realized they could make a hell of a buck out of it.

That being said, I'm not subbing, because I have a whole 200g harddrive dedicated to old comics that would cost me a fortune and years to amass, so I don't need it. But still, it's a ****ing amazingly good idea.

 

They should make it possible to download them... I suppose they don't simply because they'd end up in a torrent file?

But the fact remains that whatever they are offering is already up for grabs, so why not deliver properly.

They are trying to maximize profits I guess, anyone with a somewhat balanced life, school, friends, work, etcetera, will find it very difficult to get threw the entire run of the Avengers or whatever else, it's just a hell of a lot to read.

It be just nice to have all these things to read, at your own pace, when your frigging retired and have nothing better to do.