Marvel comics...online!

[Doctor Setebos]

The AP is reporting (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071113/ap_on_hi_te/comics_online) that Marvel is planning to put old comics online for free for a small subscription fee, starting today! The goal is to boost kids' interest of Marvel properties through telling the origin stories of their favorite heroes, and get them to buy more comics."You don't have that spinner rack of comic books sitting in the local five-and-dime any more," said Dan Buckley, president of Marvel Publishing. "We don't have our product intersecting kids in their lifestyle space as much as we used to."

Translate "kids' lifestyle space" into plain English and you get "the Internet." Marvel's two most prominent competitors currently offer online teasers designed to drive the sales of comics or book collections.There will initially be 2,500 comics available, with another 20 released every week, all "virtual console"-like. Check them out at http://marvel.com/digitalcomics/ (probably later, when the site isn't giving a MySQL connection error).

Ooooo - Astonishing X-Men #1!

[Citizen Philip]

I want my cake!

http://slasherp.nexcess.net/htm/reviews/stills/creepshow_04.jpg

And other undead things that have been brought back to life.

The bottom-line is: 'Please watch more Marvel movies."

[Codicier]

"kids' lifestyle space" Such delicious marketing-babble.

[Devilturnip]

It seems to be broken right now.

[alexander|thegreatest]

Should I live inside or outside the US to make the most of this intriguing offer?

[Wombat]

I just looked at the site, and unless I'm horribly confused, it's not free, it requires a subscription fee, although you can look at a free sample of 250 comics.

[KSmitty]

Nice, I was wondering when they would take the first steps towards digital. There are the DVD/CD compilations that you can buy in bookstores, but this is a significant number of comics available online for free.

[Doctor Setebos]

I just looked at the site, and unless I'm horribly confused, it's not free, it requires a subscription fee, although you can look at a free sample of 250 comics.Yeah, I read part of the information wrong. The OP has been corrected.

[Johan]

Subscription fee? Not as interesting, and not as smart in my opinion.

Put the old stuff up there for free to increase interest in the old stuff and, as a result, drive sales of the new stuff.

The fee is foolish and will hamper the growth of the idea, I believe.

[Doctor Setebos]

Subscription fee? Not as interesting, and not as smart in my opinion.

Put the old stuff up there for free to increase interest in the old stuff and, as a result, drive sales of the new stuff.

The fee is foolish and will hamper the growth of the idea, I believe.I couldn't agree more. That's part of the reason I was confused in the first place. I couldn't actually believe they were charging a monthly/yearly subscription fee for comics - some of which are decades old.

I hope this fails hard for Marvel and they see how stupid this idea is. Let's shine more light on the efforts over at Dark Horse Presents (http://www.myspace.com/darkhorsepresents).

[Syl]

Considering I do most of my comic reading online, this is potentially a way to get me to actually pay for them.

...and nowt hat demonoid is gone, they'll be slightly more difficult to find.

...Why do I kill the industries I love so much?

[Andruil]

Hmmmm..... to be honest I'm tempted. This means I could read the original spider man comics and whatnot right? I've always wanted to but never actually spent the money to buy comics.

[agentgray]

This is interesting and somewhat cool.

However, the kids who want to read comics are already getting them online for free. What Marvel needs to do is focus on brick and mortar stores.

I would imagine the "average" kid has a healthy fear of walking into the "average" comic shop.

[Mozgus]

I'm interested. I as well would like to read some of the originals. Good find. Now if only the site came back up...

[Infinity]

If it has a full search engine and sorting system then it will work nicely. This way someone can, when a new Marvel movie is announced, read up on who the heck somebody is ahead of time if they so desire, and Marvel can even guide users to their site to read up in the movie ads. E.g. who is Nightcrawler and how did he get that way?

[GrinR]

If it has a full search engine and sorting system then it will work nicely. This way someone can, when a new Marvel movie is announced, read up on who the heck somebody is ahead of time if they so desire, and Marvel can even guide users to their site to read up in the movie ads. E.g. who is Nightcrawler and how did he get that way?

Only they'll be stunned and confused when they discover that the movie has decided to "recreate" the character into something more 12-19 tween/teen market friendly.

[Thumper]

Hmm, does 21 years old still count as a "kid" nowadays? I never got into the whole comic book thing and I feel, deep down inside, that I have failed my nerd brethren by avoiding this particular medium. I very well could get into this, and a small subscription fee won't hamper me a bit. Getting all that stuff for free would seem like stealing.

[Grimgrock]

The site is either down or very slow. I am interested though and would like to know more.

[GrinR]

I want to subscribe SOLELY to support this trend. Too bad the trend currently seems to be servers that are down.

[mrbandersnatch]

Servers are up atm but whenever I try to register (£30 for a years access? Well worth it) I get told that the "username already exits"....damn me for trying such popular names as "dxrtz22kd" and "mrbandersnatch99".

Seriously though this is just the sort of thing they need to do if they want to bring us "old timers" back to the medium....well that and reducing the ***** price so that I can go out and buy 10-20 comics per week (like I used to do when I was a KID) without having to take out a second ***** ****** mortgage!

[KingGorilla]

Subscription fee? Not as interesting, and not as smart in my opinion.

Put the old stuff up there for free to increase interest in the old stuff and, as a result, drive sales of the new stuff.

The fee is foolish and will hamper the growth of the idea, I believe.

Or, ad support them. But if the comic industry wants to cater to their 300k fans left buying, and leave the masses to PDFs on pirate bay, no loss to me. Maybe by 2070 they will get the memo about just how much people read online, and expect it for free.