Geoff Boucher with the L.A. Times has good things to say about Marvel’s Digital Comics Unlimited initiative:
Well, the archive certainly looks good. These aren’t photographs of faded old pages or unwieldy images that spill off the screen; Marvel has converted the glorious old artwork of Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Jim Steranko and Neal Adams into bright, burnished panels. To check out this e-resurrection, I went straight to an old favorite, issue No. 33 of “The Amazing Spider-Man” from February 1966, which has a classic Ditko cover of the despairing hero being crushed beneath machinery. The art now seems to glow from within, which is precisely what’s happening on a computer monitor. The website is easy to search and use and there’s a deftly designed zoom-in function and “smart reader” feature, too, so a reader gets a smooth progression from panel to panel that lets you follow a story in a natural flow.
Colleen Doran has also signed up for the site, despite her reservations about royalties:
Anyway, so I signed up for this Marvel online comics thing, even though Marvel announced they would only pay royalties when the site became profitable. Is this ethically dubious of me? Should I have waited? Royalties first, then sign up? Chicken before egg? Just chicken?
I dunno.
All I know is the prospect of getting to have access to lots of comics I could use for reference for only about $5 a month without having to run a 3 hour round trip into the city to get a comic every time I had to look up some joker’s costume was too much to resist. I paid about $40 tracking down reference on the last Marvel job, and for a few bucks more, I could reference EVERY job…but…would it be right?
Curse this comics temptation greater than the pull of bumping uglies, sweeter than wine…
Much more at the link, including some difficulties she had with the registration process. Overall, she says, “Everything looks good, if they can just get it running smoothly.”
What I found interesting was that Doran said she’ll be using the site as a reference. I guess I found it surprising (and maybe I’m being naive here) that Marvel doesn’t have some sort of system in place already where freelancers working on a particular character have access to images of said character. That way Marvel could ensure the character was being drawn in the right costume, and the freelancer wouldn’t have to hunt for back issues. At the very least, it seems like the DCU could be a way to do that.
November 28th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
“even though Marvel announced they would only pay royalties when the site became profitable.”
I think I’d need more details to know if that’s a bad thing or not. There have to be some setup fees involved. Somebody has to be going through all those comics and sizing them up for Smart Panel, reworking the colors, separating the word balloons, scanning in the pages, etc. What if the service had been a huge failure that just sucked down money? They need to make sure it’s actually generating money before they start handing any out. I’ve worked several projects that had royalties included, and they always depended on reaching a certain level of profitability first.
Also, what if royalties are retroactive once the profitability is established? That would mean that all the pageviews will do now will still count and the creators will get paid for them later.
I have no idea how much of that is actually happening. So whether or not the “no royalties yet” think is bad depends on all the details of how Marvel is handling it.
November 28th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
This is from a post last week.
I rarely rant, but I have to share a recent experience. I am a HUGE fan of online comics (legal ones) and can appreciate the online experience particularly in the storage aspect. When Marvel announced that they were opening the archives I was really happy. I went to the site and looked at the cost, I wasn’t impressed by the cost of the monthly … but the annual cost was very affordable. I took out my AMEX card and started to sign-up. First thing I noticed was they didn’t accept AMEX. I totally understand, many retailers simply feel that the fees don’t justify giving the customer the choice. I can respect that. However I wasn’t able to sign-up for the service. There appears to be a glitch in the software and it doesn’t recognize that Washington, DC is a state. (It gives me an error about the State code). It is true we are not officially a state, and that we do not have voting rights in the Senate and the Congress. Also, I know I say I am a DC guy, but that doesn’t mean that we are a part of DC Comics
. I have tried to sign-up from several computers, Macs, PCs, my iphone… nothing has worked. I have tried reporting the issue to Marvel, but it has been several days and I still haven’t gotten a response to my online report of the issue. Well I will keep people informed of my progress… P.S. My friends at Marvel, please forward this post to the I.T. department 
November 28th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
This is an update from this week about MDCU
UPDATE: Thanks to my Marvel friends, the “DC” issue has been resolved and I was able to sign-up for Marvel’s Digital comics.
The good news:
- Huge collection.
- Current digitally savvy fans now have a legal way to enjoy comics.
- Great cross promotion to the print version, I’d be interested in seeing sales figures (I for one doubt that I’d buy the print version)
- The scans are amazing! The color looks great.
- The site is really easy to use
- The annual contract pricing is really affordable.
The bad news:
- Many of these titles already have huge collections of digital comics on DVD.
- Sorry “direct distribution” this is going to have an impact on sales. There were some civil war trades I was considering buying, but I am now going to enjoy them online.
- Some minor glitches in the display of the “smart panel” mode, there were several instances where the bottom of the text was cut-off on my screen.
- If you want to attract new readers give them something that they would be interested in. Halo is a perfect opportunity of a title that should bring in new readers.
- Speaking of Halo the search on “Halo” gave me no results… how about programming the results to lead me to purchase the trade.
- Again if you want new readers, say ones that watched the movie… point them in the direction of “if you like this movie, you’ll love this book”. MaryJane Loves Spider-man is a perfect title to – bring in new readers.
- The stories lines are tied together in today’s comics, but the digital ones are all over the map. You have Capt. America dead in Fallen Son, and alive in the latest Capt. America posted to the site.
- Civil war is another example of it not being clear what order you should read the books.
- I have also seen some instances where the text is not crisp.
Bottom Line: Marvel’s Digital Comics is a great deal for the annual contract. It will provides hours and hours of pleasure reading; hopefully the minor glitches be improve in future updates. While the site is attractive and easy to use it is doubtful that it will attract new readers, which is the stated goal of the site.
November 28th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
I signed up for one month. I’m only doing the one month, but I feel that I got at least my money’s worth.
I haven’t had the loading or sign-up problems that other people in this thread have had. I did notice all the same problems with text being hard to read.
Also, Chris is right, Smart Panel has huge problems. It works terribly on my laptop because my laptop is wide screen. It just doesn’t scale correctly when the window is much wider than normal. I think all of the problems with cutting of parts of the image come from not sensing window measurements correctly.
Overall, I think there’s a place for this service. Here’s how I think it fits…
Monthly Comics = Movies in theatres. You get it immediately and they’re in a nice format.
MDCU = Premium movie channels. You have to wait awhile, but you get several things from you monthly fee.
Trade Paperbacks = DVDs. This also means waiting awhile, but it’s a very nice format that you can enjoy anytime, sometimes with a few extras.
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