Digital Marvel Reaction Smeared Across Internet, Mainstream Media Landscape

You can read what people are writing about the Marvel launch of their Digital Comics Unlimited effort at places like the Washington Post, Wired, the BBC, PC World, Journalista and ComicMix.

Here's a few notes and initial thoughts of my own.

* the best news thus far is in this Doug Wolk interview with Joe Quesada and John Dokes that Marvel plans on paying royalties; I'm sort of confused as to why this has to be a plan-to answer rather than something you'd have in place from the start, but it's not the answer I expected.

* the big unanswered question for me is how a project with these price points can serve as a feeder system and offer unique value. Of all the feeder systems in which I participate in terms of sampling other media, none of them cost me $60 a year. The pair of unlimited access models to which I subscribe didn't come with huge, potential exceptions. I suspect this either appeals to a new kind of customer that's neither looking for a feeder platform or unlimited access, or that there will be adjustments a half-year or a full-year down the line.

* this is doubly important because I can't imagine there won't be some people waiting for some material to come out at MDCU rather than buying it at that exact moment. Frankly, that's my gut reaction already. I haven't even decided if I can get enough professional use out of the program to buy a membership but I'm still going to wait on buying some marginal Marvel titles that I was going to buy in Las Cruces this week until after I know.

* part of me wonders if the real target won't end up being people that have started to wander away from weekly comic shop consumption: readers that might be convinced to engage with Marvel on a digital basis as a substitute for the entire going to the shop thing, not as a supplement to it. A ton of anecdotal evidence suggests Marvel specifically and superhero comics in general may be due to start bleeding customers that as they get older still have tons of cash but don't have the energy or appetite to keep up with the weekly shop visits and Internet-tracking time commitments of being a modern superhero comics fan. The convenience factor may end up being a bigger player than the first wave of PR suggests.

* am I crazy thinking in my gut that the way people approach archival comics suggests an unlimited subscription model, but that the way people approach new comics strongly favors a single-buy download model at $.99 a pop? And that adopting something along those lines represents a real opportunity but also perhaps a PR nightmare for DC?

* I know without looking that somewhere out there is a Motley Fool article talking about how amazing this initiative is.

* one secondary question for me is I wonder on what basis people will renew their subscriptions given that say, one year into the experience they'll be likely to have sampled a significant number of the archives specifically attractive to them. To rotate the archival material or roll it out slowly will likely irritate loyal customers. This puts a lot of pressure on attracting return business according to six-month-old comics releases.

* as for the site going down, not being ready to meet on-line demand can be charming when it's one dude in his garage, but it's dumb to spin it in that way for a huge corporation.

* this is basically a note to myself, but I've been struck by the fact this seems like a Perelman-era initiative in a way, in that some of the PR rhetoric assumes a kind of broad affection for consuming Marvel product rather than emphasizing the laser-like exploitation of specific comics properties.

* one thing that seems to have been ignored in the press coverage I've read thus far is that King Features Syndicate went to an on-line pay model a couple of years back at about 25 percent the cost of Marvel's that features much more of its current product as well as work that is in equivalent media to the on-line sales they make to newspapers. That seems to me a much more daring and significant move -- to match it Marvel would have to not be delaying things six months and would have to have been offering digital comics for sale through store sites both before and after this launch. Where Marvel distinguishes itself is in a greater utilization of its massive library, but that's hardly a sexy press hook.

* I found the press roll-out aspects of this project kind of creepy in general, and far more controlled than usual, but I don't really have more than a vague feeling about this. I'm asking around. If I do come up with something, I'll report back here. Doug Wolk tells me that the massive interview linked to above was put together Monday, so my cranky suspicion that it was conducted pre-announcement is allayed. I probably just got up on the wrong side of the bed.

* I hate it when other people backseat drive huge corporations, but I have to admit I was sort of expecting them to initially offer a monthly subscription that could then be used as credit for an upgrade to a yearly.
 
posted 1:03 am PST | Permalink
 

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