Cat quietly escapes bag: Marvel has an app for the iPad

[Batmatt Beyond]

The USA Today reviewer mentions it in his glowing review of the iPad. CBR has a wee bit more.

The big question: Will digital and print versions be available on the same day?

[Cavaliere (moderator emeritus)]

On the one hand, storing my comics will be a major problem in my house very soon. On the other hand, 500$ is a lot of dough to shell out for a digital reader. Yeah, I know that the iPad does other stuff but the main reason the technology appeals to me is for comicbook reading.

[Alan M.]

Batmatt Beyond said:

The big question: Will digital and print versions be available on the same day?

From what I understand, there'll be a six-month delay between print and digital, and it will only be available for select (i.e. popular) titles.

[Cavaliere (moderator emeritus)]

Alan M. said:

Batmatt Beyond said:

The big question: Will digital and print versions be available on the same day?

From what I understand, there'll be a six-month delay between print and digital, and it will only be available for select (i.e. popular) titles.

So much for that, then. Wake me up when they're released at the same time, with a full catalog, and no expiration on the issue's purchase.

[Dagwan]

Marvel has refused to answer any retailer questions about the app. "Wait for the official announcement"

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"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." -Groucho Marx

Check out the Secret Headquarters (my store) website! It's a pretty lame website, but I did it myself, so tough noogies

Listen to WOXY.com, it's the future of rock-n-roll!

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[Batmatt Beyond]

Mark S. Ogilvie said:

I've been hearing good things about the iPad, but at the moment it would just be an expensive toy and I don't have the money. Also marvel hasn't produced much that I like in years so there is no real incentive here. But it might be the wave of the future. Still once the power goes out I can't read and iPad with a candle and I've done that with comic books in some power failures.

Mark_S

Well, if your iPad battery was fully charged, you could read for a few hours. :)

[Ana Canino-Fluit (Anacoqui- mod)]

Interestingly Cory Doctrow (of BoingBoing) went on a rant about the Marvel App in his anti-Ipad review "Why I won't buy an iPad (and think you shouldn't either)".

"I was a comic-book kid, and I'm a comic-book grownup, and the thing that made comics for me was sharing them. If there was ever a medium that relied on kids swapping their purchases around to build an audience, it was comics. And the used market for comics! It was -- and is -- huge, and vital. I can't even count how many times I've gone spelunking in the used comic-bins at a great and musty store to find back issues that I'd missed, or sample new titles on the cheap. (It's part of a multigenerational tradition in my family -- my mom's father used to take her and her sibs down to Dragon Lady Comics on Queen Street in Toronto every weekend to swap their old comics for credit and get new ones).

So what does Marvel do to "enhance" its comics? They take away the right to give, sell or loan your comics. What an improvement. Way to take the joyous, marvellous sharing and bonding experience of comic reading and turn it into a passive, lonely undertaking that isolates, rather than unites. Nice one, Misney.


I found that argument odd...how is the back issue market is going to be killed by this app? It has already been mortally wounded by Trades, I find it hard to believing someone is describing it as huge and vital...

I sympathize with Doctorow over DRM-ed or locked content and the limitations that make digital content much less portable than print versions. I am just not sure what incentive is out there for companies to put their content out, and allow people to freely swap them



Dagwan said:

Marvel has refused to answer any retailer questions about the app. "Wait for the official announcement"

---

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." -Groucho Marx

Check out the Secret Headquarters (my store) website! It's a pretty lame website, but I did it myself, so tough noogies

Listen to WOXY.com, it's the future of rock-n-roll!

---

[Alan M.]

Well, in a sense, I agree with Doctorow. If comics are only going to be buyable and readable on the iPad by publisher-specific apps, that's no good — not for my immediate interests, or for the future of comic books in general. For the iPad to be a revolutionary product for comics, there has to be a cross-publisher universal format for the files, they need to be DRM-free, and ideally the format and reader should be non-proprietary.

The problem with that would be, business-wise it's in no one's best interest (at least in the short term) to be the ones to lead the charge on that. To create a reader that you can read your competitor's comics on? To make digital comics that can be reproduced and redistributed with minimal-to-no effort or cost? Those aren't smart business moves. They're beneficial to the greater comic book culture, sure, but the share-holders aren't interested in that.

[Batmatt Beyond]

Click here for Marvel's official announcement.

[PowerBook Pete, the Mad Mod]

Batmatt Beyond said:
Well, if your iPad battery was fully charged, you could read for a few hours. :)


Up to 12 hours, I've read.

I think Marvel's $1.99 price point will be a problem, too.

[Batmatt Beyond]

PowerBook Pete said:

Batmatt Beyond said:
Well, if your iPad battery was fully charged, you could read for a few hours. :)


Up to 12 hours, I've read.

I think Marvel's $1.99 price point will be a problem, too.

I'd be willing to pay 2 bucks to read some titles that I wouldn't otherwise buy in print. Not that I have an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad on which to read them. :)

[PowerBook Pete, the Mad Mod]

If there were an issue I was really looking for, and it was priced well higher than $2 in the back-issue bins, I would pay this price. I do have an iPod Touch, or iPad Nano, as it's often called now.

[Mark Sullivan (Vertiginous Mod)]

It looks to me like an early adopter product more than anything. Apparently it's the first viable electronic comic book reader, so it's proof that the technology finally has arrived. But without a more open reader system, I don't see it as a game changer. That would be more of an issue for me than the price (and of course I hardly read any Marvel titles, so I'm not the target audience anyway).