Why would Marvel intentionally turn down the chance to make more money with the same amount of investment?

If this plan is subscription based, the readership will be underwhelming (part of the reason webcomics are enormously popular is that they’re for the most part free): It’ll be a subsection of the audience who visits the comic store every Wednesday and wants their fix of X-Ironhulkman and already pays for that pleasure.

New readers (the ones less inclined to visit a comic shop, but see graphic novels at Borders or at their library and are marginally curious) will pretty much ignore the project.

Twelve months in, Marvel’s suspicions that no one really wants to read comics online will be confirmed and they’ll shut it down without fanfare.

If the plan is free, there’s the potential that those marginally curious readers (the ones who saw Iron Man and Batman in the theaters) will check it out, enjoy it enough to follow the things regularly (lining the pockets of the advertisers) and mutate into regular consumers of Marvel products.

Or they’ll continue to ignore it. It’s difficult to say.

Right … basically, it’s more than a comic … it becomes a low-budget cartoon. Just wait … people will soon be criticizing them for that, too …

The Digital Comic is only visible electronically. Okay, yes, maybe you could print screen grabs to read, but essentially it it visible only on your screen.

You collect them on hard drives like your collection of Dexter episodes, you buy the collected season on dvd or burn your own.

But now, it can be “more” than a comic, more than a printed pile of paper with a staple driven through it. It can have sound, motion, become a flash-(ahem) based comic. A new media comic.

Me, I enjoy reading the paper comic. I read it sitting, standing, eating, lying on the sofa, or anywhere there is sufficient light. But then, I still tape tv shows on my ten-year-old VCR, which works just fine. I don’t need the latest and greatest technology all the time. Maybe the new comics, the Digital Comics, are not meant for everyone, just for the people who enjoy reading on the home plasma tv, their laptop, cell or watch.

No longboxes, no worries about damaging the spine while reading them, but no joy of collecting the tactile paper versions either.

Well actually there are a lot of online comics right now with a lot of readers (some even around 200,000 readers from what I’ve heard) so there is definitely no need for a physical presence to have a lot of readers. Comics on cellphones are also doing very very well in Japan (and those are sold).

Also, how will Marvel advertises them? The comic book locater service should be a given, but would they put up an Amazon link? Or sell them directly to consumers?

Funny thing is, I’ve often wondered if this won’t be a problem with the digital media. If all comics went digital, how long before they are forgotten? The print comic provides a physical presence, and a reminder that the comics are available. With digital comics, unless the fans are absolutely ravenous for a certain title, how long before they begin missing issues? “Ah, no hurry. I can download them anytime.” With a physical presence missing, comics could eventually move even further down the Importance Ladder.

But I don’t think I want to know what it feels like when your Heidi-sense is tingling.