Making the Move to Digital

[jjreason]

Yeah the first one I tried didn't blow my hair back, but the second was him trashing the talking dinosaur for having an origin story that didn't make sense - that was priceless.

[Rollo Tomassi]

Yeah the first one I tried didn't blow my hair back, but the second was him trashing the talking dinosaur for having an origin story that didn't make sense - that was priceless.

I have yet to NOT convert anyone to getting ATOMIC ROBO after reading that FCBD issue. That was inspired writing. My second fave AR moment was him on the Mars mission. First with the time delayed messages. Then making the giant rock message for Stephen Hawking.

[jjreason]

Just finished that & it was funny

For what it's worth, I have combed the free comics on comixology and have found some good stuff - all 5 issues of Batman Black & White, Crisis #1, 52 #1 for example, all in my comics free of charge so I can browse them when I like. I would suggest going to make your profile, grabbing some free books & seeing how it works.

[jjreason]

They certainly offer a lot of books now for what seems like a reasonable price - $4.99 per month if you buy a year's worth - and they have added many, many comics to their library. Anyone considered popping for this?

[RoIIo Tomassi]

In light of the comiXology site crashing after Marvel announced its 700 free books, I thought revisiting this topic might be in order.

It's satisfying to know my "servers" never crash. I just walk over, open the box, and "download" the issue by pulling it out of the sleeve.

But I did get the Marvel App awhile ago, and have snapped up quite a few free offerings over the year. Eventually I stopped because my phone doesn't have infinite storage space and a lot of the free stuff I was loading I already had the hardcopy of anyway.

I looked through the first 100 or so of the 700 and saw only six or seven I didn't own. A couple HTF Deadpool Annuals, a couple of those Oz adaptations, etc. The selection was very good though. Lots of obscure oneshots and such.

If I had an iPad with a lot more storage I'd probably get as many of those free issues as I could. I wonder if Marvel and ComiXology will make them available longer after what happened.

[Tom Foolery]

Amazon is buying ComiXology.

Discuss.

[jjreason]

I still check comixology with some (TM) regularity (once or twice a month maybe). I haven't spent any money there in a long, long time but keep checking the free books & grabbing whatever looks interesting. Recently they made everyone change passwords which caused a bit more fuckery than you'd think it would - I had to go through the process a couple of different times to get the change to be accepted (might have been a browser cache thing or something, still a chore). As long as they don't change a bunch of stuff or make it any less useful, I don't think Amazon buying it will be a big deal. It will never compete with paper comics for me, just doesn't feel the same (ie I can't read them in bed as easily).

[jjreason]

Comixology provided me with a $5.00 gift card for no reason. I used it to cheapen up a purchase of Atomic Robo volumes 6 & 7, reduced the total price to $10 and some change. Very pleased with that, as you would expect. Free money is fantastic!

[anarky]

I haven't looked myself, but the recent changes to Comixology have really pissed a lot of people off. Apparently, there are no more in-app purchases, and comics must be stored on a cloud rather than the device.

[jjreason]

Not surprised about them removing the in-app purchases, I can only imagine how many parents were shrieking after the kids one-touch bought & downloaded the next, oh let's say 700 issues of spider-man.

(We got into a similar situation here with Tom buying "chef bucks" in-app, for real money, not knowing he was doing so a few years ago. We had to ask apple to refund about $35 to our Visa - they send EXPLICIT instructions on how to turn off these purchases and advise you that if it happens again you're fucked).

[jjreason]

Found the actual "good" use for comixology - filling gaps for reading. I'm trying to go through "AvX" right now, leading up to the last set of X-Men relaunches, and I was missing an issue of Avengers X-Sanction - solved by Comixology for $1.99. I then used it to grab the Axis issue I couldn't find & was able to finish off that chunk as well. That's nearly 30 comics read (or in the process of being read), which gets them out of my "to be read" area, which makes me very happy. That area is out of control.

Again, for what it's worth, I'm happy to give you guys my account info any time you want to log in & have a look at how it works, I have about 140 books on there - most of which they gave me for free.

What I'd really, really love though - is for it work like ITUNES. If I could prove I owned the paper issue, I should be able to have it added to my library the same as adding a cd to my itunes. That would be way too awesome though.

[Tom Foolery]

Most modern Marvel books have a little sticker on a page near the end of the book (usually with an in-house ad for an upcoming series) that peels off and under it is a code so you get the digital version of the comic for free. Or maybe not free. Since I don't bother with digital stuff I've never looked at the fine print.

EDIT. Yup. It's free. I just looked thru half a dozen of this weeks purchases and they all had it on the page with the Spider-Gwen ad. The code is good for up to the end of the year the issue was originally released.

[Diabolical]

Or...

[jjreason]

I do appreciate the fact we get free copies of new books. That's been the case since Avenging Spider-Man #1 or thereabouts. I was peeling the stickers for a bit there after my store guy told me got a minor kickback for every issue registered through the program (you have a chance to name the place you bought the comic when you enter the code). Then I stopped because I got hinked out about them not being near mint any more if I peeled & discarded the sticker.

I more meant that I wish there was some way I could prove to them that I own ASM 238-300 for example, and be allowed to access them on Tom's ipod at bed time.

[jjreason]

*Blows the dust off* I'm not sure exactly when this started, but I see Comixology has started down a path similar to Netflix with respect to getting exclusive content, available (at least initially) only in the digital realm. The book that brought my attention to this is Kaare Andrews IRON FISTS, a continuation of the great-starting-but-bad-ending Iron Fist series he did a couple of years ago. This one involves Danny mentoring Pei (a young girl monk he met at Kun Lun) as she starts high school, over here in New York. She was a pretty good character. I would likely have been suckered into buying this book if I had seen it on the shelves. Now, I will wait & see what kind of deal I can get on the digital collection once all 6 issues have been released, as $2.99 US for a digital issue is still too much, in my opinion.