Marvel is going digital… again:
Today Marvel Entertainment, one of the world’s most prominent character-based entertainment companies, announced it will exclusively distribute single issue and collected edition foreign language digital comics worldwide with iVerse, an innovator and unique voice in the mobile publishing field.This multi-year agreement reinforces both Marvel’s position as one of the leading global entertainment brands and the number one comic book publisher in the world, while also bringing its unparalleled library of popular characters and acclaimed stories to the widest possible global audience. This foreign language content will launch in late 2012 with staggered releases worldwide.
I honestly thought that Marvel was digital exclusive with ComiXology, but that’s clearly not the case; the press release quoted above even takes pains to point out that “Marvel and iVerse first partnered to distribute single-issue, English language digital comics in 2009,” adding that “the ComicsPlus app, available through the App Store and Google Play, currently offers a robust selection of Marvel Digital Graphic Novels.”
It’s not made clear in the release whether these will be all-new translations done for individual issues in their original, US incarnation, or digital distribution of existing translations and repackagings. Common sense would suggest the former, but I wonder what that would mean for existing international licensing deals – Doesn’t it put Marvel’s digital foreign language editions in direct competition with those repackagings?
