Something leapt out at me from this interview with Brian Michael Bendis talking about the Death of Spider-Man. Namely, the part where he talked about retailers’ benefiting from the success of the death issue:
A lot of my friends who own stores are hurting, and being able to help out and give them a good day made me feel good; that was really important to me. Issue #160 wasn’t available digitally, so you had to go buy it. By the time you read this it should be available digitally, but today it wasn’t. So my retailing buddies were emailing me and saying there were some really quick sell-outs and some extra foot traffic in stores. That was great to hear.
Great to hear unless you’re Marvel Comics, of course. Because, you see, Ultimate Spider-Man #160 should have been available digitally. Marvel announced late last year that “every issue of the hotly-anticipated DEATH OF SPIDER-MAN will be available day & date on the Marvel Comics app, available via iTunes for the iPad, iPhone & iPod touch,” after all, and so having the writer of your top-selling book give interviews where he not only points out that that didn’t happen, but tries to paint it as a positive… Well, that’s got to hurt.
I wondered if Marvel had actually rolled back the day-and-date delivery promise at some point quietly because of earlier problems getting digital releases out on time (Read on through that thread; Jonathan Hickman says that the problem with Ultimate Thor‘s late release – #3 was three weeks late – was between ComiXology and Apple, and on Apple’s side), and so checked with Marvel, only to be told that, no, Death of Spider-Man was all day-and-date release digitally. Except, you know, when it isn’t.
Wonder if DC has worked out all of these kinks before their September relaunch…?
June 28th, 2011 at 11:30 am
Ummm.. Not sure what Bendis was talking about, USM #160 was available on Wednesday last week, I read it Wednesday and it was great.
Comixology and Apple seem to have worked out the kinks and it there hasn’t been a late day an date release in two months.
It may have been the Marvel app, but the Comics app had it on time.
June 28th, 2011 at 1:53 pm
Problem is that it doesn’t help the numbers – Marvel already made their money, and sales numbers on the print copy because that reflects sales to retailers. Digital sales are all-new.
June 28th, 2011 at 4:55 pm
Like people were scrambling to read it digitally and then rushed to the comic stores when they couldn’t. Give me a break.
June 29th, 2011 at 10:04 am
Same here as Andrew. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to make it to my store last week, so I bought it off Comixology (along with Ultimates vs Avengers), day&date.