We’re still months away from DC going day-and-date with their entire DCU line, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not already quietly experimenting with digital comics. In addition to the Planetary Omnibus that I wrote about last week, DC and ComiXology have also – without any fanfare at all, it seems – released a special digital variant for Flashpoint #2 that features not only the entire comic content of the print edition, but also the uninked pencils for the entire issue as well, as well as upgrading the fifth issue of the 1978 Firestorm series with the entirety of the unprinted – well, until the recent print collection, that is – sixth issue at no extra charge.
This makes me wonder whether we’ll see more digital-only variants when DC goes all-in with digital in September: Will each issue be available in pencil-only variant? Will there be digital-only collections before the print collections get released (or solicited)? If these releases are tests that are judged to be successful, can we expect more re-releases of existing material with added extras?
DC has definitely started pushing around the potential of digital releases in the last couple of weeks; it’ll be interesting to see what – if anything – comes from all these experiments.
July 14th, 2011 at 4:09 pm
This is really interesting. Something like including some of the source material would be good, particularly if it’s something out of print or fairly old — that way it wouldn’t really impact retailers.
It would also be interesting to see if they try any kind of “family” groupings, where a single price gets you every title in a family of books.