Marvel Digital Comics Discussion

[Nova2814.1]

Assuming they'll charge full price on the day or release, I wonder if Marvel will follow DC's pricing model of dropping the price after a certain length of time (a month in DC's case).

They haven't followed that model to date, but on the other hand Marvel has far more 99 cent sales than DC.

[mistergoodman]

I have seen Marvel go through several iterations of an online digital comic reader over the last decade and for them to disable their prior version. I would not put it past them to do it again. But hey, go ahead and rent if you want to. I'd rather use one of my 2TB hard drives and store the files myself. Like I do for all the Gitcorp DVDs I bought while they were around. 40+ years of Amazing Spider-Man, Avengers, Captain America, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Incredible Hulk, and Uncanny X-Men all at my fingertips. Got each of them for around $30 apiece when they were still in production.

I have those disks too, which is why my digital comics collection is over 6,000 issues, all legal. Those are obviously never happening again though- the content was severely undervalued (which is why the creators got no royalties) and disks as a distribution medium are going away. (I uploaded the contents to a private Google docs account, so I'd always have instant access to them. I haven't used my computer's cd/DVD drive since.)

Marvel's prior online experiments were free. Now that they are charging per issue, I expect they'll continue to support their content, so that people will continue to buy digital content from them. Seems a safe bet. They could have limited their iPad purchases to iOs, but they support them on their new chrome web site as well. I didn't have any more storage room in any event, and I'm enjoying the content.

But I can't see myself buying many digital comics for $4 each, and so far Marvel doesn't drop the price in a few weeks like DC. Good luck with that, Marvel.

[FriendRoss]

4 bucks is steep for a digital copy... i dont mind paying it all for a physical book.... for a digital, its going to take a minute to get used to that



i was just curious though.... to the back up zelots.... what did you do with all your VHS tapes? did you copy all for record albulms... can you still buy parts for record players?


technology is always advancing, what ever medium we use now, its a safe bet tomorrow will be different... figuratively speaking



i know some of you guys still have 8-tracks and laser disks still laying around.... right?

[carabas]

4 bucks is steep for a digital copy... i dont mind paying it all for a physical book.... for a digital, its going to take a minute to get used to that...

It's still pretty steep for a physical copy. It's downright ludicrous for a digital not-actually-a-copy.

[matthew]

If you buy something, you should be able to download it and store it on your storage medium of choice. Otherwise you have bought nothing. And if you want a legal digital copy, all you really have to do is buy a cheap "all-in-one" printer with a scanner and scan your own books you have bought. Just as legal as TiVO or old VCR recordings.

And that's not inconvenient at all.

[shingi70]

Any word on if an android app is in the works? The Marvel one came out last year before the Disney deal. With the Disney deal down who controls stuff like apps because Disney just released their first android app.

[mistergoodman]

Any word on if an android app is in the works? The Marvel one came out last year before the Disney deal. With the Disney deal down who controls stuff like apps because Disney just released their first android app.

It hasn't been announced, but I'm sure it'll happen some day. It could be a challenge though, to create something compatible with ComiXology without using ComiXology's code. (It looks like Marvel is trying to cut out a middle man.)

[John Lynch]

I don't know if I'll be picking up any Marvel titles, because the pricing is all over the shop. I'm an Australian so this might be affecting the prices.

X-Men: Schism #1 is available at $5.50! The Marvel website has it at $4.99 so Marvel is giving me a special Australian $1.50 mark up. The aussie dollar is currently gives me $1.08 US dollars. If anything, I should get a discount, not a markup.

However Ultimate Fallout #2 (which came out this week) is available at $2.99, however the Marvel website says it should be $3.99.

So what price is Marvel actually using? Are they giving me a markup? Are they using the same price as the in store price? Or are they giving digital customers a discount?

Can anyone from America help me try to work out what the prices are compared with in store prices?

[Will.S]

I made a topic about this not too long ago so it's about damn time.

They have several good titles to do this with such as the recent relaunches of Daredevil, Captain America, Cap and Bucky, X-Men Schism/Uncanny/Wolverine & the X-Men, Punisher, and perhaps a few other titles that I'm missing. Heck, they can still play catch up and digitize Moon Knight and titles that have been around for only a year and move forward with them.

But Marvel doesn't have as an attractive jumping on point digitally because for one it's not across the board #1's and two the pricing is probably not going to seem like a great value if they go full price with digital. All that being said, it's a start at least.

[mistergoodman]

But Marvel doesn't have as an attractive jumping on point digitally because for one it's not across the board #1's and two the pricing is probably not going to seem like a great value if they go full price with digital.

It also doesn't help that they don't have any issues of Amazing Spider-Man for the year leading up to the same day digital releases. Marvel sells same day releases for full price, and doesn't like to sell $1.99 comics that are under a year old. Maybe that will change.

[The Sword Is Drawn]

Why the hell are we still accepting the utterly redundant phrase "Day-and-Date"?

Seriously people, it is a phrase that MEANS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

SAME. DAY. DIGITAL.

[Will.S]

Why the hell are we still accepting the utterly redundant phrase "Day-and-Date"?

Seriously people, it is a phrase that MEANS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

SAME. DAY. DIGITAL.

Hey you got no argument from me.

[starrs0]

For those of you that have the Marvel Digital Comics service I was wondering is it worth it what’s your opinion of it?

[YouthofToday]

For those of you that have the Marvel Digital Comics service I was wondering is it worth it what’s your opinion of it?

Do a search and you'll find a few threads about this.

I like it. The good thing is, even before you sign up, you can check the site to see what is available. So you can check to make sure there are things you want to read. And with like 10000 selections, you'll find something you like.

A few things you need to be aware of..

You need to be online to read them.
You can't download and save them.
Its a Flash-based viewer, so you can't use an iPad to read them, though I've heard of people using additional software to get around that.
Look at as a Netflix-type service. You don't own anything. You're paying to access their library of comics. Once your subscription ends, so does your access.

Hope that helps.

[lilyinblue]

It's a beautiful thing if you're stuck in an airport for 5 hours unexpectedly.