Now, I don't expect the library to be complete, they add about 25-50 books per week, which is plenty to read. There will be gaps, I'm not going to complain about that (though I might do some toe-tapping on a number of them). I'm sure there will be some complaints, however. I'm going to commit them here, as a kind of ongoing Beta-test/review. Now, you guys can see how it works for yourself to a degree, via the free samples available at the link above, but the full subscription service works a little differently, and I'm sure there are people who are curious about whether or not its worth the investment. Find your answers here.
Why do I use my time on this? Because I want this to be the best service offered to any comics fan.
I'll admit it, I spent some time pirating Marvel Comics. I love 'em. Love to read 'em. Gobble them up incessantly. And at $3-4 per issue, they just became too expensive. Especially to a fast reader like myself who can go through a comic in 15 minutes. $4 for 15 minutes of reading? x12 books a month (assuming an ongoing cross-over too). Yeah, not in the budget. Also, I was out of storage space. Before I sold my collection, I had 13 longboxes of comics, each with over 500 issues, eating up a ton of space in my apartment. So, the answer was piracy.
Over time, though, piracy has gotten harder, riskier (virus, ID theft, other BS), and frankly I want to keep my favorite comic artists paid; the best middle ground is Marvel's online service that keeps me stocked with cheap reads, and keeps Marvel paid to produce quality books.
Clean art, digital zooming, and no 'shit going out of print' problems like I just went through with Essential Tomb of Dracula #1.
As the 'net evolves and print continues to slowly die, this service needs to be popular and efficient in order to keep people interested, and Marvel Comics in print. So, here I am, as a service to Joey Q, giving pointers.
With no further ado: MARVEL DIGITAL COMICS ERROR #1
While the option to search through the thousands of books and isolate those that feature my favorite characters is great, even necessary in theory, its only worthwhile if the function is complete. If the search only partially works, I'm going to assume more books are missing than actually are, and miss out on some great issues.
This error took me about five minutes to find. Tonight, I started the sub, and immediately searched for issues with Darkhawk. Only 4? Wait, he was in Nova not 5 months ago. You know, Nova, one of the most critically acclaimed and consistently selling books in the stable. Lets look up books with Nova in them... Wow, looks like they only have Nova's 4 and 7-11 on file. Dang. Guess I won't try to read that whole series.
But wait, shits and grins lets go up to 'Titles' and click Nova. What comes up but Nova #'s 1-25.
So... is Nova just not in the other 20 issues?... of his own series? Since he's on the cover to Nova #1, I'm going to bet that he's there. And this means that Marvel's tagging system isn't up to snuff, which means that their search engine isn't actually pulling results for me, which means that in order to read more Nova books, I have to know which issues he appears in already.
... Lord help me when I go looking for Black Bolt. He's only in other people's comics. What issue of Thor was that Inhumans back-up strip in again?
So, there's gripe #1. Marvel, please go in and tag all of the books appropriately for the characters that appear in them. Obviously if Nova isn't even tagged in a book with him name on the cover, something is amiss...
That's it for now, by some stuff.
Found your blog post while searching for advice on how to find the best stuff in Marvel Digital Comics.
ReplyDeleteI have a love/hate relationship w/MDC for some the same reasons you state. Love catching up on old series I couldn't afford to buy, but the searchability and usability of the site drives me nuts.
Why don't they give a synopsis of each book when they digitize it? Why isn't every character (at least major ones) tagged? Why do I have to click on Series (wait) > then the letter of the alphabet (wait) > then a specific series alphabetical by name to see the list. Then if it's not what I'm looking for (there's only like 72 different Spidey titles) then I can't just hit back, I have to repeat the previous steps and try another spidey title.
So much potential, so much frustration.
Being a retailer of comic books as well as a reader, I view the growth of online digital comics as a distinct business killer for us down the line, but not right now, and not for awhile, as the key to entering the digital world for me still remains a comfortable way to read this material--and laptops, smartphones, and desktop computer monitors don't qualify as 'comfortable'--though an iPad, Kindle or such would qualify.
ReplyDeleteBut am I ready to pop for $150-500 for one of these? Not quite, and until these devices become as ubiquitous as cellphones, I'm not greatly concerned with their impact on my own store's sales of their print cousins.
In any case, I'm certain that in a generation print comics are going to be limited to trade paperback collections and the like, if at all. Who really knows?
I love the availability, but it almost seems like Marvel has gone out of its way to make finding comics and actually reading a full series a pain in the butt; like they don't want it to happen. It's gotten 10 times harder after their site redesign. Getting to anything takes 6-7 clicks and getting right back to something is impossible. It resets you to the top list again making you go through 6-7 more clicks. Most annoying site ever. -jason
ReplyDeleteThe gaps in series are really starting to annoy me, take the mighty avengers series for example, the series reads great until issue 29 which is the finale to a critical storyline and is inexplicably absent. The series carries on as normal from issue 30. Blatant attempt to make people buy physical comics?
ReplyDelete