Dr. Doom & Company Go Digital

If you’re a comic fan like me, but didn’t happen to be born somewhere in the 1930’s, then there is a lot of back story that is simply unavailable to you. It is all good and well to get a few back issues, maybe a year or three, but just try and navigate your way back past a decade. It's nigh impossible, simply because of the rarity value placed upon those issues.

My favorite character of all-time is Dr. Doom, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. He debuted in The Fantastic Four #5 in 1962. A brilliant scientist, Doom, once a classmate of the Fantastic Four's Reed Richards, became embittered by facial scars received from an experiment gone wrong, a failure which he attributed to Richards, beginning's Doom rivalry and obsession with the Fantastic Four leader. His ruling of the small Balkan nation of Latveria provided him with diplomatic immunity.

Now, with Marvel Comics new online initiative I'll be able to navigate a battle against my favorite villain frame-by-frame with a "Smart Panel" viewing feature. The user can zoom in on details of art by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko from the 1960s or catch up with today's The Ultimates and New Avengers.

We’re nearly 70 years on from Superman’s first appearance, not much less for Batman, and then a skip and a jump will get you to Marvel’s introduction in to the comic book world.

So it is no surprise that Marvel is making their first tentative leap in to the world of online comic book sales.

The online world of comics has, for the most part, been an entirely illegal experience. For the intuitive web-surfer, the rarest of rare comics are available to download to your hard drive. There is no need to go scouring comic book shelves, online auction sites and fork out hundreds of dollars. All you need is a decent download limit, a bit of patience, and the entire collection of Batman, the Flash or Spider-Man is yours for the taking.

Whether you are comfortable committing that act though is another question, and one that Marvel Comics is hoping to prevail upon. For as of November the 13th, Marvel Comics is putting up various back issues to some of their fan-favorites.

The first hundred issues of key titles such as Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and the X-Men will be among 2,500 comics published online at Marvel’s new Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited. Access will be available at $9.99 per month, or at a yearly subscription rate of $59.88.

"We did not want to get caught flat-footed with kids these days who have the tech that allows them to read comics in a digital format," says Dan Buckley, Marvel's president. "Our fan base is already on the Internet. It seemed like a natural way to go."

It is a natural progression for Marvel, to begin to target the new group of kids, most of whom are dedicated to their MySpace’s or Facebook’s. And, to bypass the opening hesitation of having to pay for comics online, a sampler of 250 comics is available.

Readers will be able to navigate page to page, within a browser window, or even go frame-by-frame, if the need or whim arises.

This is definitely the largest step in to the online market by any comic retailer, though not the first. DC Comics has put issues up on MySpace, as has Dark Horse Comics. DC’s mature audience titles under Vertigo often preview 5 to 6 pages online, to get people in to the mood, so to speak.

And DC has also experienced success in comic book sales. The web release preview of its massively popular hit, Y the Last Man, drove people to comic book stores to get their hands on the book. "They really do tend to be feeder systems," Bridge City Comics in Portland, Ore., the shop's owner Michael Ring said of online comics. "They give people that initial taste."

Whether this will be a successful move for Marvel, and one to spark of a new rivalry on the internet between DC and itself, is yet to be seen. But following in the plodding steps of the music and TV industry, who have only just begun to realize that providing online content is a good thing, Marvel are sure to make this pay off.

Posted by Josh Hill.

Story Links:
http://www.physorg.com/news114159050.html
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2007-11-12-comics-online-main_N.htm
http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=12370