NEWSARAMA.COM: MARVEL LAUNCHES ONLINE COMICS INITIATIVE?

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NEWSARAMA.COM: MARVEL LAUNCHES ONLINE COMICS INITIATIVE?

MARVEL LAUNCHES ONLINE COMICS INITIATIVE?

In a story published at USA Today.com
Monday evening, the apparently official word of Marvel’s new online
publishing initiative (hinted at by Marvel Publisher Dan Buckley at the New York Comic-Con last February) has been revealed.

Called
the comic book industry’s “first online archive of more than 2,500 back
issues, including the first appearances of Spider-Man, the X-Men and
the Incredible Hulk.”, Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited will
offer the archive in a high-resolution format on computer screens for
$59.88 a year, or at a monthly rate of $9.99, at Marvel’s website.

According
to the national daily, “Subscribers will be able to access the first
hundred issues of key titles, turn pages with a click of the mouse or
navigate a battle against Dr. Doom frame-by-frame with a ‘Smart Panel’
viewing feature. The user can zoom in on details of art by Jack Kirby
and Steve Ditko from the 1960s or catch up with today’s The Ultimates and New Avengers.

“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,” Marvel
President Dan Buckley, told the publication. “Our fan base is already
on the Internet. It seemed like a natural way to go.”

To
help market the initiative, To Marvel will reportedly offer a free
sampler of 250 titles, and to protect current sales of comic books, new
issues won’t be on the Marvel site until six months after they are
published.

Asked
why people would pay for superheroes when newspaper websites have been
unable to charge for content, Buckley said, “You can get the news
anywhere. We’re the only ones who have Spider-Man.”

“If
they put their monthly comic online at the same time, they’d be cutting
their own throats and undercutting the retailers,” writer Peter David
told USA Today. “The material is owned by Marvel, and they can
do whatever they want with it. This is just another means of reprint
when you come down to it.”

“About
90% of the comic books sold today are scanned and put online within 36
hours,” Newsarama’s own Chris Arrant is quoted in the story.

“Our
quality is much higher; the library is huge and will never go out of
style,” concluded Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada. “This is the
legal way to do things.”

Updated 11.13.07 - 5:15am - The AP version of the story has been released as well, and reads:

LOS ANGELES (AP) -
Marvel is putting some of its older comics online Tuesday, hoping to
reintroduce young people to the X-Men and Fantastic Four by showcasing
the original issues in which such characters appeared.

It’s a tentative
move onto the Internet: Comics can only be viewed in a Web browser, not
downloaded, and new issues will only go online at least six months
after they first appear in print.

Still, it represents
perhaps the comics industry’s most aggressive Web push yet. Even as
their creations — from Iron Man to Wonder Woman [Newsarama Note: Marvel does not publish Wonder Woman]
– become increasingly visible in pop culture through new movies and
video games, old-school comics publishers rely primarily on
specialized, out-of-the-way comic shops for distribution of their
bread-and-butter product.

“You don’t have that
spinner rack of comic books sitting in the local five-and-dime any
more,” said Dan Buckley, president of Marvel Publishing. “We don’t have
our product intersecting kids in their lifestyle space as much as we
used to.”

Translate “kids’
lifestyle space” into plain English and you get “the Internet.”
Marvel’s two most prominent competitors currently offer online teasers
designed to drive the sales of comics or book collections.

Dark Horse Comics
now puts its monthly anthologies “Dark Horse Presents” up for free
viewing on its MySpace site. The images are vibrant and large.

DC Comics has also
put issues up on MySpace, and recently launched the competition-based
Zuda Comics, which encourages users to rank each other’s work, as a way
to tap into the expanding Web comic scene. Company president Paul
Levitz said he expects to put more original comics online in coming
years.

“We look at anything
that connects comics to people,” Levitz said. “The most interesting
thing about the online world to me is the opportunity for new forms of
creativity. … It’s a question of what forms of storytelling work for
the Web?”

For its mature
Vertigo imprint, DC offers weekly sneak peeks at the first five or six
pages of upcoming issues. The publisher also gives out downloadable PDF
files of the first issues in certain series, timed to publication of
the series in book or graphic novel format.

The Web release of
DC’s “Y the Last Man” sent sales of that book collection soaring at
Bridge City Comics in Portland, Ore., the shop’s owner Michael Ring
said.

“They really do tend to be feeder systems,” Ring said of online comics. “They give people that initial taste.”

For Marvel, the
general public has often already gotten its initial taste through
movies like “Spider-Man” or the “Fantastic Four” franchises.

The publisher is
hoping fans will be intrigued enough about the origins of those
characters to shell out $9.99 a month, or $4.99 monthly with a
year-long commitment. For that price, they’ll be able to poke through,
say, the first 100 issues of Stan Lee’s 1963 creation “Amazing
Spider-Man” at their leisure, along with more recent titles like “House
of M” and “Young Avengers.” Comics can be viewed in several different
formats, including frame-by-frame navigation.

Ring expects
Marvel’s effort to put a slight dent in the back-issue segment of the
comic shop industry, where rare, out-of-print titles sell for hundreds
of dollars on eBay and at trade shows.

Though most comic
fans are collectors, some simply want to catch up on the backstory of
their favorite characters and would no longer have to pay top dollar to
do so.

About 2,500 issues will be available at launch of Marvel Digital Comics, with 20 more being released each week.

News of the new Marvel initiative began appearing online Monday afternoon, via an AP wire story and sources like the CBC.ca
website, prompting Marvel Comics to request any version of the story
citing the AP or CBC be removed from websites due to the CBC version in
particular being “filled with inaccuracies.” It is not immediately
apparent what was inaccurate about the CBC version of the story.

Look for more details as they become available.

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