Marvel Comics Digital - tell your comic book nerd friends, watch them cry, profit

About time.

Online is no longer the in-word, it’s all about Digital. I took a gander, had to stock up on the tissue boxes. I kid… I’m a man beast of manliness. I do not shed tears like the girly men do, I splash pretend like tears on my face, that’s it. The flash player is pretty clean, the graphics from the sample comics are high-quality and impressive. It is a bit disappointing you can’t download the comics and view them in a comic reader. The price is definitely more than fair. I’ve wanted something like this for a long time; hopefully, the writers will see more residuals as they currently make next-to-nothing even from legit sales and who knows how much they lose out on the thousands of pirated download. I already got a crap-load of comics in storage, I can’t afford living inside the comic book death trap and I may be tempted to use those comic books I don’t like in the bathroom. And yea, my biggest gripe is Marvel needs to offer a bigger online library, slackers. It’s a start though.

To make this post MMOG friendly, did you hear about, NCsoft bought the CoX franchise. That’s breaking news right there. I can only hope NCsoft will finally announce a flat-rate subscription for all their MMOG properties. It’s been a year since they talked about it, so c’mon, out with it already! I recently wrote about Marvel Comics Universe, the online MMOG in development that is oft-forgotten as news has remain fairly tight-lipped. For fun I decided to throw out the question: will Marvel Universe Online would kill off CoX? A few hours later news broke that NCsoft would be buying the tights out. Almost the same thing, but will NCsoft save CoX? would have been a much better title. I’m glad they did, and even better it didn’t shred the development team, yet anyway. I think pretty much every developer took a job with forming a new studio, NCsoft NoCal. The only ones who didn’t I read somewhere were a few former Cryptic big-heads that will reside with the Marvel Universe Online project. I’m assuming Jack Emmert is among them. I’m to lazy to go dig around and confirm my assumptions like a real reporter! I got a feather cap though, that’s all that matters.

From Reuters:

Spider-Man may spin a good yarn in comic books, but Marvel Entertainment Inc hopes that he finds the World Wide Web equally comfortable.

The publisher said on Tuesday that it will start a Web site that will feature access to thousands of its comic books and the famous heroes who populate them, from Spider-Man and the X-Men to the Fantastic Four and The Avengers.

Marvel will charge subscriptions — $4.99 a month if people sign up for a year, or $9.99 a month if they don’t.

“This is a major new piece of my overall publishing plan,” Dan Buckley, president of Marvel Publishing, said in an interview.

“It’s a different entertainment experience, online versus reading a book.”

Marvel plans to offer access to 2,500 comics, Buckley said. It will make 250 available for free to entice people to pay up, but for a limited time, a company statement explained.

The Digital Comics Unlimited site then will add 20 additional books a week, including a mix of new and vintage comics.

Among the older titles will be the first 100 issues of “Amazing Spider-Man” and “The Fantastic Four,” as well as the initial 66-issue run of “Uncanny X-Men” and the first 50 issues of “The Avengers.” It will feature other super heroes like the Incredible Hulk, Wolverine and the Silver Surfer.”