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In a somewhat surprising move, Marvel Comics has released a digital comics subscription service. For only $59.88 a year ($4.99 a month) or $9.99 monthly, you have immediate access to 2,700 comics. Marvel has 250 issues available for free. Rather than focus on current and popular books, the free selections offer a wide range of Marvel history. You’ll see plenty of early issues of the Avengers, Hulk, Thor and Iron Man, as well as samples of their younger books like Runaways and the Marvel Adventures series.

The paid selection of 2,700 titles looks even better. Again, the Avengers are featured heavily, but they also have hard to find titles like the Christopher Priest run on Black Panther, the 1950 Marvel Boy,  and Tales of Suspense. The initial selection is quite smart, with lots of complete mini-series runs, Manga versions of the Marvel heroes and books targeted toward younger readers (the Franklin Richard series, Power Pack) and teens (NYX, New Mutants, X-23, Jubilee). There’s even a nice selection of vintage titles (Marvel Team-Up, Man-Thing, Ghost Rider) for the older fans as well.

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The online, Flash based reader was pleasantly surprising and fun to use. Not only can you choose from single and two-page options, the reader offers a Smart Panel feature that works quite well. Clicking the page/panel of the issue zooms in on half or third of the page and allows a good, close reading view. The issues, panels and pages all load quickly and seamlessly, which is a good thing. The reading experience is what hold many back from reading online or on the computer, but Marvel’s Flash reader makes the experience an  easy and pleasant one.

Using the Firefox User Agent Switcher, I impersonated an iPhone and the site continued to work well. If you’ve got an iPhone, browse the site and try to read one of the free comics and post a comment. Phone browsing and reading is the one unique feature that could cause the service to explode in popularity.

For this to be a success, Marvel needs to constantly add books. That 2,700 needs to double by the end of the year and continue at that pace. They’ve stated that only books older than 6 months will appear on the site. That’s not a bad decision, as it allows them to maintain regular sales and hopefully entice new readers with the digital version. I would release the new digital books every Wednesday, just like regular comics. Get the new readers used to reading new books on that day and you’ve got a better chance of getting them in the local shops to pick up the printed books.

Performance at the moment is spotty (at least on my end). Response times were slow and I experienced a few MySQL connection issues when browsing the free selection. It’s most likely due to the new launch and things should speed up and clear up in a week or so.

Marvel’s new digital comics subscription service is one I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on.

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Mark Bagley Draws the JLA and Avengers

According to Newsarama, in 2008, longtime Marvel Comics artist Mark Bagley will make a switch to DC Comics after over 20 years at Marvel.

Bagley just recently finished an unheard of (in this age) run of 111 issues on Ultimate Spider-Man (with writer Brian Bendis). Newsarama (and DC) did not name the project that Bagley will be working on, I’d love to see him on Teen Titans.

With his track record and speed, he’d be a great candidate for any book. He’s one of the few artists in the industry that can still produce a book (or more) in one month. Maybe he’ll be involved with DC’s third weekly series that will likely follow Countdown to Final Crisis and the 7 issue limited series Final Crisis, by Grant Morrison. Whatever the project, I’ll definitely check it out.

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New Joker Photo from WhySoSerious.com

Back before Halloween, I posted a link to WhySoSerious.com and wondered what would be revealed when Halloween arrived.

The Internet was abuzz when it turned out to be a location based puzzle that revealed a message. Everyone was expecting the first trailer for The Dark Knight… Instead, we got another picture of Heath Ledger as the Joker and at least two more weeks to wait.

Digging around will lead you to RorysDeathKiss and another viral campaign for others to upload photos of themselves dressed as the Joker. It’s sort of cool looking at all the photos, but the burning candle/rotting pumpkin had me excited, now I’m just interested to see what happens.

SlashFilm had a good writeup of the site and the events that followed on Oct. 31. Just read here and here.

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Swamp Thing Season 1 and 2 Cover ArtTVShowsOnDVD have announced that Seasons 1 and 2 of USA Television’s Swamp Thing series will be released on DVD on January 22, 2008. I never thought this series would be released. I created my own DVD set of this show a few years ago and it was one of the harder shows I’ve tried to locate. I went through several people until I found decent quality VHS recordings. After all of that, the quality was still lacking, so I’m really looking forward to this release.

Sleep tight naughty evildoers! Don’t let the Swamp Thing bite! Enter into a mind-bending world where a humanoid mass of plant life matter fights to protect his swamp home, the environment and humanity from various supernatural and evil threats as the comic book superhero Swamp Thing comes to life! On January 22, 2008, Shout! Factory will unleash the Swamp Thing: The Series DVD box set, packed with all original 22 original suspenseful episodes culled from Seasons 1 & 2 of the cult TV series, in the order they were meant to be seen. Special revealing bonus features include exclusive interviews with Swamp Thing co-creator Len Wein, actor Dick Durock and more!

It’s really unbelievable the amount of shows that are being released on DVD. It’s no secret that TV on DVD is popular with consumers. As the DVD format ages and the most popular shows get released, more and more rare and odd shows such as this will finally see the light of day on DVD.

Pre-order your copy of Swamp Thing: Complete First Season today.

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Dark Knight Pumpkin from WhySoSerious.com

The latest teaser for the Dark Knight (Batman 2) has appeared and it’s WhySoSerious.com. Visit the site and you see a flickering Jack-o-Lantern with a Bat Logo grin. What this all means is anyone’s guess.

WhySoSerious.com is the latest in a viral marketing campaign that started months ago to promote the film. Despite the fact that we’ve seen numerous web sites, teasers, and images; no real footage or information has been released about the film. Does the Jack-o-Lantern image mean that we’ll get to see an actual trailer on or around Halloween or does it relate to the Jeph Loeb penned Batman: The Long Halloween story, which retells Harvey Dent’s transformation into Two-Face.

More rumors are floating around that a 7-minute preview will be attached to the IMAX version of I Am Legend on Dec. 14. I hope not, because I won’t go see that film for a 7-minute preview, although many might, which is the reason it may actually happen.

Regardless, I’m eagerly awaiting whatever happens at WhySoSerious.com and in the meantime, I may have to carve a Jack-o-Lantern to match the one picture above.