This week has been a very busy one; what with a goodly amount of work at the office, a trip into New York City on Thursday (along with which came almost three hours of sitting in traffic), and a few ancillary things going on after work keeping me good and sleepless.
So, in my craziness, I managed to miss DC Comics’ announcement about their launching of a digital comics vendor on iTunes.
Which, if you haven’t figured out, is kind of a big, honking deal. In addition to a couple of new books, much of DC's backlist will be featured for sale on the site, meaning that...well, I don't know what it means, actually.DC has always had a wonderful backlist of titles, going back to the mid-to-late-80s, and sparked (and sustained, really) by Neil Gaiman's Sandman volumes, which are once again going back to press with new cover art.
DC understood early on the importance of collecting old issues in trades, and in that regard, they were always ahead of Marvel. With digital distribution, however, DC waited.
And waited. And waited.
And they unveiled this huge initiative almost under the cover of darkness. Marvel's big iPad app launched months ago, and Comixology and other online readers had prepared for their launches for many months.
DC, though, hung back and--one can assume--didn't panic. So what if Marvel beats us to the punch? The company didn't rush into action, and instead ended up beating Marvel to the date-of-sale punch.
From the Newsarama piece:
Justice League: Generation Lost will hit digital stores every two weeks at the same time as its print version hits stores, beginning with today's Issue #4. The digital version will be $2.99, the same price as its print version, although the first three already-released issues are $1.99.
A pretty big, revolutionary move on the part of DC. And, while the Internet didn't break in half over the announcement--one that was just as inevitable as that big hunk of rock that brained T-Rex--there have been some interesting discussions online.
Here's the best in my opinion, since it's from the point(s) of view of several comics retailers.
I'd love to hear what everyone thinks of this, and what you all think the future (um, present?) may hold.
Happy Saturday, everyone!
6 comments:
DC did NOT just abuse The Return of Bruce Wayne for a pointless mini-ad for Jonah Hex, did they?
Superman 700 had two pretty good stories; the one with Robin was nice and showcased a lot of simple, but essential stuff in the Superman-Batman dichotomy and the final one is actually really well-done as well.
I'm still a bit annoyed at Marvel for their treatment of Wolverine; he's in four, five different places at once and two different timelines. Soon, he'll be in three.
Crisis of Infinite Wolverines, anyone?
I actually decided to drop Return of Bruce in singles, and I'll pick it up once it's collected, so I didn't see the issue--were there a ton of ads?
As for Superman 700, I read it and liked it. Though I didn't like it enough to warrant the $4.99 price tag.
And, yeah, Wolverine is the new Deadpool is the new Wolverine.
It's not that it's an actual ad, which would be okay; it's that they inserted Jonah Hex into the story at the end of the issue for NO REASON and it comes across as blatant, worthless advertising for what everyone's panned as a terrible movie.
The new Green Arrow series looks promising, but ugh, I wish DC would STOP renumbering series from 1. There's no real point to it.
Oh, I see what you mean about TRoBW and the Hex ad. Yeah, that seems annoying, but as it turned out, that movie needed all the help it could get.
I also agree with the possibility of a quality Green Arrow series. It's certainly one of those, "they've taken the genie out of the bottle and now they can't put it back" dealies, but I like him being all Robin Hood in his own forest.
Cool idea, but they kinda had to destroy the character's...um, character...to get there.
I'm interested in seeing where it goes, though.
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