Comix online

So here’s an example for other print publishers (albeit with the usual caveats about genre, amount of long-form text etc). Marvel comics has just made a catalogue 2,500 comics available for reading online. According to Macworld:

The service provides users with access to classics like the first issues of The Amazing Spider-Man, The X-Men, Incredible Hulk, Fantastic Four and others, along with newer likes like New Avengers and Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men. Marvel counts 2,500 comic books at launch, and plans to add at least 20 additional titles weekly

Apparently, it’s a subscription-based service that doesn’t offer downloads, but online reading. So, no taking away the files for use on your ipod touch. There are some free samples, otherwise the service starts at $5 a month. But when I checked it out, the server was down

Again, I think the lack of portability means that this exact model won’t work in some other book spaces - and it’ll be interesting to see if the pricing model will attract the crowd that currently gets its comic kicks via bittorrent.