Anyway, the item in question concerns the venerable institution of Marvel Comics , and their recent decision to make an ambitious foray into cyberspace. On Tuesday, Marvel unveiled the industry's first serious online archive of back issues, featuring more than 2,500 full-length comic books, including the first appearances of the Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man, and the X-Men.

Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited will offer the full archive in a high-rez for $60 a year, or at a monthly rate of $10, at marvel.com. Subscribers will be able to view, page-by-page in excruciatingly fun detail, the first 100 issues of most key titles, and will also have access to recent back issues six months after they are published in print.

I could go on forever about online comics. The idea of digital distribution has been percolating for a long, long time (interested parties should check out the work of comics scholar Scott McCloud .) Comic books, graphic novels, and especially comic strips (of the newspaper variety) have been ill-served by traditional distribution systems for so long, it's criminal. Everyone agrees on the problem, but no one has yet come up with a broadly popular way to disseminate comics online in a format amenable to all.

Like I say, I could go on. I am heartened at this news, though. It often takes an industry titan (like, say, Marvel) to rattle the beehive and initiate progress on all fronts. Last I checked, Marvel.com had winked offline due to the massive run on their servers. A good indication of the interest that's out there -- and the tech headaches attendant thereupon.

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