If you're a comic fan like me, but didn't happen to be born somewhere in the 1930s, then there is a lot of back story that is simply unavailable to you. It is all well and good to get a few back issues, maybe a year or three, but just try and navigate your way back past a decade. It's nigh impossible, simply because of the rarity value placed upon those issues.
We're nearly 70 years on from Superman's first appearance, not much less for Batman, and then a skip and a jump will get you to Marvel's introduction in to the comic book world.
So it is no surprise that Marvel is making their first tentative leap in to the world of online comic book sales.
The online world of comics has, for the most part, been an entirely illegal experience. For the intuitive web surfer, the rarest of rare comics are available to download to your hard drive. There is no need to go scouring comic book shelves, online auction sites and fork out hundreds of dollars. All you need is a decent download limit, a bit of patience, and the entire collection of Batman, the Flash or Spider-Man is yours for the taking.
Whether you are comfortable committing that act, though is another question, and one that Marvel Comics is hoping to prevail upon. For as of November the 13th, Marvel Comics is putting up various back issues to some of their fan-favorites.
The first hundred issues of key titles such as Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and the X-Men will be amongst 2,500 comics published online at Marvel's new Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited. Access will be available at $9.99 per month, or at a yearly subscription rate of $59.88.
"We did not want to get caught flat-footed with kids these days who have the tech that allows them to read comics in a digital format," says Dan Buckley, Marvel's president. "Our fan base is already on the Internet. It seemed like a natural way to go."
It is a natural progression for Marvel, to begin to target the new group of kids, most of whom are dedicated to their MySpace's or Facebook's. And, to bypass the opening hesitation of having to pay for comics online, a sampler of 250 comics is available.
Readers will be able to navigate page to page, within a browser window, or even go frame-by-frame, if the need or whim arises.
This is definitely the largest step in to the online market by any comic retailer, though not the first. DC Comics has put issues up on MySpace, as has Dark Horse Comics. DC's mature audience titles under Vertigo often preview 5 to 6 pages online, to get people in to the mood, so to speak.
And DC has also experienced success in comic book sales. The web release preview of its massively popular hit, Y the Last Man, drove people to comic book stores to get their hands on the book. "They really do tend to be feeder systems," Bridge City Comics in Portland, Ore., the shop's owner Michael Ring said of online comics. "They give people that initial taste."
Whether this will be a successful move for Marvel, and one to spark off a new rivalry on the internet between DC and itself, is yet to be seen. But following in the plodding steps of the music and TV industry, who have only just begun to realize that providing online content is a good thing, Marvel are sure to make this pay off.
Joshua Hill, a Geek’s-Geek from Melbourne, Australia, Josh is an aspiring author with dreams of publishing his epic fantasy, currently in the works, sometime in the next 5 years. A techie, nerd, sci-fi nut and bookworm.
