Marvel Puts Dozens of Graphic Novels on iBookstore

The big comic makers seem to be floundering around, completely unable to figure out how to sell stuff to their customers. It's taken a 3rd party (comiXology) to build the industry. Comics on the iPad 3 are the killer app for me. I've been holding off buying an iPad 2 in anticipation of what the retina display could do for the medium that I love. Right now, I spend more per month on guided-view iPhone comics than apps, music and movies combined.

The huge screw up on Marvel's part is that they've so far failed to get their Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited service (monthly subscription for on-demand access to their whole comics library) onto the iPad. There simply isn't a better platform for it, and yet they've been saying "we're looking into it" pretty much since the day it launched. I'm pretty sure this is probably something to do with Apple's terms about stuff sold outside the app store and conflicts with how Marvel wants to do business.

I think both Apple and Marvel (and other comic book makers) are missing a potential new market by not working together on this. Right now the MDCU service is $4.99 a month if you pay for a year in advance. Damn, I'd pay 2 or 3 times that to get an unlimited supply of high quality comics to read where and when I want. There are customers simply begging to hand over money for this.

The companies behind this need to wake up and get organized. And Apple needs to properly realize that the iPad isn't just an e-reader, or a textbook tablet. The iPad 3 with a retina display is potentially the most beautiful comic reading device I can imagine. It needs to get the support from the industry that it deserves.

al-c said:

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

First thought...very cool. After downloading and giving it a try on a 4S, not so much. Very slow and barely legible text. Can see this working nicely on a retina display iPad though...

Click to expand...

Why a Retina display iPad??? It looks fantastic on the iPad2.

I'm curious if this really interests comic book readers. I thought a big part of the experience was to own rare editions and keep them in plastic bags. No one will ever pay $30,000 for an iBooks copy. I suppose this would interest readers that just pitch it when they finish the book.

I never got too interested in comic books. I liked the ones from the 70's and before but the new ones available when I was a kid I did not like. Even with the few old ones I liked I only went for X-Men and Superman. Although I have a few other random ones.

I didn't even realize until years later that comic books where written in series with a beginning and an end. I just thought they continued on month after month like a soap opera. As I rarely got books in a sequence and never a full series. As I only liked the older ones I only got to read disparate books out of sequence from finds at the swap meet, garage sales and the comic book store. Plus older comic books were expensive for a kid.

velocityg4 said:

I'm curious if this really interests comic book readers. I thought a big part of the experience was to own rare editions and keep them in plastic bags. No one will ever pay $30,000 for an iBooks copy.

Click to expand...

As a serious comic book reader, and an active member of the comic book community, yes it does. Believe me, there is plenty of demand if the price is right. Comic book collectors are a subset of comic book readers. A few years ago, I'd probably have been in the paper only club, but now, the opportunity to access a wealth of unread stories and comics I wasn't able to see first time around fills me with excitement I haven't had since I first got into the medium.

Your point about the value of paper is entirely valid though. One of the problems with digital right now is that prices just are way out of whack. A same day issue of, for example a DC New 52 costs $3.99 whether its print or digital which just doesn't make sense. With a paper copy you can resell it a few days later, usually for 50% or more of its cover value. Or you can simply seal it in plastic and wait a few years for the price to go up. Add to that the print and distribution costs and the cut taken by the comic book store, and it just doesn't make sense that the digital copy should be the same price. What DC is doing is trying to protect the paper market, by forcing people to pay unrealistic prices for digital. I can understand their reasons, but this is exactly why digital needs to be treated differently, with more of a focus on say subscription based archive access rather than all the focus being on same day print/digital publishing.

I'm not claiming to speak for comic book readers as a whole - there are plenty of diverse opinions around, but to me this is the most sensible way for things to be handled at least for now.

guzhogi said:

It would be cool if the comics were like the Beatles Yellow Submarine book with the animations, sounds, etc.

Click to expand...

My company has been working on formatting our graphic novels (we produce educational manga) for the iBooks store using the fixed-layout format, which is what The Yellow Submarine book uses. It's a significant undertaking, though, and thus far we have only completed two of the 30 books we hope to do this with.

It's good to see Marvel's content added to the store, though. Hopefully that will drive even more comics fans to iBooks — and that they will discover our books there, too

Most of all, I'm happy that Apple has finally added a "Graphic Novels" category to the store's searchable categories.