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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