Comixology Takes Another Shot At 700 Comic Giveaway

[Earnest Cavalli]

Comixology Takes Another Shot At 700 Comic Giveaway

Comixology learned from last month's catastrophic failure, and this time the company is dead set on giving you 700 Marvel Comics #1 issues totally free of charge.

Almost exactly one month ago we reported [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122621-Marvel-Offers-700-Free-Comics-Crashes-Comixology] on a promotional effort gone horribly awry. Marvel Comics had joined forces with online comic distribution firm Comixology to give readers 700 different first issues from Marvel's massive catalogue, only no one predicted the massive turn out of eager comic book fans hoping to download all 700 issues at the same time. Comixology's servers buckled under the stress and both the site and its mobile apps were unavailable for nearly 72 hours.

Undaunted, Marvel and Comixology reassured fans that they would get their free comics, but there would be a bit of a wait while the two firms figured out how best to distribute such a massive amount of free reading material. Apparently the duo has sussed out a solution to the problem, as Comixology is once again offering users an unreadably massive amount of free comics.

Unlike the last time however, Comixology has instituted a few caveats to the deal to make sure that everyone gets their fill of Marvel's books and nobody's servers go up in smoke. Here's how it works: You must have a Comixology account (which is free), and you must visit this promotional page [https://promo.marvel.com/] by April 9 at midnight - if you aren't in front of a calendar, that's tomorrow. Once there you'll be able to click a "Sign Up" button which will drop your name into a virtual hat. Then, on April 11, Comixology will begin contacting people with information on how to download all of those free comics. This staggering system prevents an overload of Comixology's servers, while also ensuring that anyone who wants free comics can have them. You may have to wait a bit, but it's not like you're paying for these books, so the wait won't kill you.

Comixology's promo page also includes a disclaimer advising people not to worry if they don't hear anything on April 11. There's no apparent time frame for how long the firm will be contacting people about their free comics, so you may have a bit of a wait ahead of you.

Source: Comixology [https://promo.marvel.com/]

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[Baresark]

I would like to start out that I have loved comics since I was 7 years old. They are an amazing storytelling medium and home to some of my favorite moments. As a devout comic lover, here are my criticisms of everything that is wrong with this:

1. I don't think anyone even understands that having access to that many #1 issues is almost meaningless. Marvel or DC have never ever put out a #1 issue that was a self contained story. This is not a boon to comic lovers, this is the guarantee of getting some more money from you, which will bring us to point 2:

2. The price of a digital comic issue is identical to the news stand price. This is complete bullshit as they have effectively eliminated two of the most expensive parts of getting an issue to the readers (printing and distribution). They are, as I'm sure most will agree, far over priced.

3. When it comes to older issues and story arcs, they don't even off you the discounted price of buying them in trades. You have to buy each issue individually. Say you're feeling nostalgic and feel like reading Maximum Carnage. You can certainly get them through comixology, but you will be buying all 12 issues of Maximum Carnage at the individual new stand price rather than the discounted TPB (trade paper back) of $10. That is even more expensive for modern story arcs as the average price of an issue is $2.99. If you wanted everything having to do with the Blackest Night storyline (using DC as an example here because it's the same across both companies), you have to pay the price of the cover price for 79 total issues of comics.

TL;DR - Comixology is a great idea that is delivered terribly, and 700 #1 issues is useless from a story stand point.

 

[Tragedy's Rebellion]

It's great for people in countries who haven't got access to paperback comics. At least in my country I haven't been able to find anything that isn't Spider-man and X-men and even then they have to be ordered online. It kinda sucks because I want to feel them in my hands, but eeehh life makes fools of us all.

 

[Therumancer]

I would like to start out that I have loved comics since I was 7 years old. They are an amazing storytelling medium and home to some of my favorite moments. As a devout comic lover, here are my criticisms of everything that is wrong with this:

1. I don't think anyone even understands that having access to that many #1 issues is almost meaningless. Marvel or DC have never ever put out a #1 issue that was a self contained story. This is not a boon to comic lovers, this is the guarantee of getting some more money from you, which will bring us to point 2:

2. The price of a digital comic issue is identical to the news stand price. This is complete bullshit as they have effectively eliminated two of the most expensive parts of getting an issue to the readers (printing and distribution). They are, as I'm sure most will agree, far over priced.

3. When it comes to older issues and story arcs, they don't even off you the discounted price of buying them in trades. You have to buy each issue individually. Say you're feeling nostalgic and feel like reading Maximum Carnage. You can certainly get them through comixology, but you will be buying all 12 issues of Maximum Carnage at the individual new stand price rather than the discounted TPB (trade paper back) of $10. That is even more expensive for modern story arcs as the average price of an issue is $2.99. If you wanted everything having to do with the Blackest Night storyline (using DC as an example here because it's the same across both companies), you have to pay the price of the cover price for 79 total issues of comics.

TL;DR - Comixology is a great idea that is delivered terribly, and 700 #1 issues is useless from a story stand point.

To be honest I think these virtual comics stores exist largely to cover some legal gray areas more than anything. Especially when international laws get involved the question of when something becomes "public domain" can be a touchy one. Especially when your dealing with things like comics, or old video games, which you might not be able to obtain at any price. The old arguement that "if they won't sell it to me, how is it stealing if I download it?". This carried a lot of "Abandonware" sites before things like GoG started buying up the "official" rights to games that companies were not maintaining. Comics also became a hot torrent item, and justified by the simple arguement that a fan could not obtain those issues by any other mean than scans if they just wanted to read the stories in many cases.

Digital comics stores make these items availible for purchuse and close that entire area of arguement, both morally, and depending on where you are, legally. You can't argue the inabillity to get a copy of "Issue X" just to read as a justification for downloading it.

On a lot of levels this could have been a cool idea and benefitted everyone if it wasn't for the business aspects of things, and admittedly more than a bit of greed. If Marvel had say put their entire back catalog of books on sale for like a dime apiece everyone would have been happy. The problem with that is that those selling physical copies of books, to many people who ARE readers were afraid of being undercut, if someone just wants to read the story why pay them the ever-increasing cost of a comic book, if they can just download it? What's more with the rapid rollover of this kind of print media, especially with popular titles, even a delay of a month or two would just lead to comics nerds waiting a month or two to download the books rather than pay the price for the print media. Then of course on top of this you have the bean counters drooling over the prospect of getting people to pay top dollar for comics they weren't previously making money on as well.

I'm familiar with the arguements about it, from a number of perspectives (this is just the basics), and I can see it from a variety of angles. In general, following comics, especially "seriously" (meaning your not just following one or two specific titles) is a crazy expensive hobby, even if you go digitally. One of the reasons I really don't do it anymore after I was pretty much forced out of work and onto social security (gaming, which is also crazy expensive at a hobby level, is pretty much my remaining entertainment). I still manage to read a number of comics second hand and keep up with some things though. It would have been awesome if going digital meant you could pick up pretty much any storyline/arc/character for a song at any time, but that isn't how things developed.

I do tend to agree that 700 #1 issues doesn't strike me as being a big deal. I suppose those looking to read stories exclusively might find it useful though, largely because #1 issues are still bought out in droves by speculators and fanboys. If you say jumped into a given title after it had been around a while, actually reading the first issue might prove difficult, so being able to see how it all started digitally could be nice. Mostly I think it's just a giant gimmick to try and get people to read more comics online, where they can charge big bucks without the printing costs
and pocket all of those huge gobs of cash. The digital generation (Generation Y) is kind of primed for it, as is the market with the success of super-hero movies in recent years.