The Image title UMBRA by Steven Murphy and Mike Hawthorne will soon be available on cell phones:

uclick, a leader in mobile entertainment, has announced an agreement that will bring the critically-acclaimed comic book series Umbra, by Stephen Murphy and Mike Hawthorne, to mobile phones throughout North America, UK, Australia and South Africa.

The first weekly installment of Umbra will launch in June through uclick’s GoComics Mobile Comic Reader, available on all major carriers, including Sprint, Verizon and Cingular.

[Murphy Quote] “I’m very excited to be able to offer Umbra to an expanded global audience through uclick,” said series creator/writer Murphy. “This story, with its imperfect heroine, exotic locales and blurred division between dream and reality – not to mention Mike’s brilliant artwork – really resonated with fans in print, and it’s been fascinating to see it make a smooth transition to mobile.

“Mobile fans will read it in weekly installments, which I feel actually adds a level of tension to the already-intense storyline. I think they are definitely going to enjoy the ride.”

Originally published as a three-issue mini-series by Image Comics, Umbra is a mystery set in Iceland during the year 1999. The story’s protagonist is a young, self-medicating police forensic scientist named Askja Thorasdottir whose first big case involves the discovery of a strange skeleton hidden in a glacial cave. Umbra joins a GoComics mobile line that boasts several popular titles from a wide range of genres, including the sci-fi fantasy hit Godland, the webcomic- turned-comic-book PvP, the Manga and anime horror epic Guilstein, martial arts adventures starring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and many more.

“One of our goals with the GoComics Mobile Comic Reader is to offer comic book fans a mobile experience that reflects the diversity of the comics medium,” said uclick Manager of Product Development Harold Sipe, “and Umbra certainly does that. It’s a finely-crafted detective story with dramatic artwork that plays out beautifully on the mobile screen.”

For more information on uclick’s GoComics mobile line, visit www.gocomics.com/ comicbooks or text “COMIC” to 26642 on your mobile phone.

We’d been getting some PR, and heard a few rumblings that indie publisher Silent Devil was changing its business model, and an email to FORMER editor in chief Christian Beranek confirmed this. In addition to his stepping down as EIC, they are de-emphasizing publishing and emphasizing the Hollywood-esque aspects of their company. Beranek writes:

Yes, Silent Devil is no longer accepting new submissions. We’re going to fulfill our commitments to our current titles and then start concentrating on stuff that my brothers and I can control the rights to. We’re busy producing films with various companies, so we’re working to phase out SD as a publisher and begin publishing under other people.

Our goal was always to be a production company. We just saw so much great stuff out there [and] wanted to help get the word out about those titles.

As for myself, I am way too busy with freelance writing to be objective. I have my own goals that are now coming to fruition, including writing the screenplay for Dracula vs. King Arthur with Kickstart Productions.

Currently we are going to continue publishing Devil’s Panties, Dracula vs. King Arthur, The Death series and a few new titles already on the slate.

According to its website, Silent Devil has been around since 1996, and while they were always modest in goals and achievements, they were certainly one of the better established “mini publishers” of straight ahead genre material. In baseball terms, it was a “farm team” where people got some chops while producing some entertaining material in its own right.

So, if nothing else, this is another nail in the coffin for the comics pamphlet, the format in which most of Silent Devil’s books originated. It just isn’t profitable any more, even on a very modest basis, unless you’ve got a movie to back it up.

We also got the following PR from Beranek, announcing the launch of a new comics on the web venture called Comflix Studios. You can read it all in the jump.

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Todd Allen, a frequent source of commentary on webcomics, e commerce and so on, has launched a column at Comic Book Resources, and already he’s putting things in some context:

Want to work in comics? If you’re already using your skills in a different field, you might be startled and dismayed by the salaries in comics. Point in case: Devil’s Due recently posted an opening for an “Online Web Store Manager” (as opposed to an Offline Web Store Manager, I suppose). Go ahead and take a look. You’ll find they want a lot of territory covered for a whopping $11/hr. Finally, a comics position that makes an assistant editor look like a high-paying job. Passing this listing around e-commerce and interactive types has produced a combination of laughter and disgust. A typical response being a creative director saying “we pay our interns $14/hr.”

He also looks at emerging sales channels for comics. Worth a read.
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Although this looks like one of those simple new media tech acquisition announcements, we hear quite a few people were interested in the Bomb- xx system, and the examples we’ve seen of it at work have all been quite well done. At the very least, it’s more sign of the coming iPod/YouTube/cartoon alliance apocalypse. You can hear me now and believe me later.

MTV Networks Music Group, a unit of Viacom’s MTV Networks, today announced an exclusive deal with Gain Ltd, creators of the proprietary system Bomb- xx that develops extremely engaging audio-visual experiences, to develop new media versions of comic books, graphic novels and children’s books. Each experience will be customized across multiple media screens, including computers, portable video players, portable and console gaming devices, and mobile phones. Gain Ltd was co-founded by Jeff Shuter and Daniel Viney.

“Some of the best characters and stories come from comics and graphic novels, but until now distribution channels have been very limited,” said David Gale, Executive Vice President, New Media for MTV Networks. “Gain combines the original format of comic books, graphic novels and children’s books with the emotional excitement of a great movie that fans can see on-the-go or on-demand, but always in high-quality.”

MTV Networks Music Group’s vast array of television and digital platforms will allow for extensive distribution of Gain’s unique content, beginning with MTV. Various projects will bring together comic book publishers, creators and distributors to create and market existing and original content produced to maximize distribution and build a broader fan

base from the traditional niche market for comics and graphic novels. In addition

forthcoming projects will be distributed across other new media formats outside of the MTV Networks’ brands.

“Comic books historically have ignited people’s imagination and intuition to piece together and decode the story as it unfolds on each page,” said Daniel Viney, co-founder, producer and creator, Gain Enterprises. “Our mission has always been to curate new proprietary formats that enhance the user experience and spur even more intrigue in the story.”

“What’s unique to our product is that each experience is highly music- based with animation that is much like choreography to a dance,” added Jeff Shuter, co-founder, producer and creator, Gain Enterprises. “Every moment and beat is highly charged to keep fans engaged in the storyline. The goal is to transcend the conventional comic book experience and we are excited to work with MTV Networks to continue forming connections between the traditional comic book and new media worlds for the benefit of audiences everywhere.”

Gain founders, Viney and Shuter, made their mark with their Bomb- xx adaptations of comics for major movie studios, including Fox Atomic’s first film “Turistas” and the recent “28 Weeks Later,” as well as Lions Gate’s “Saw 2.” Gain also created original works for the Weinstein Company’s movies “Arthur and the Invisibles” and “The Protector,” and an adaptation of Marvel Comics’ “Ultimate Spiderman.”

Gain Enterprises was co-founded by Jeff Shuter and Daniel Viney with the mission to develop hybrid forms of content and entertainment for the new media space. Both Shuter and Viney serve as lead producers and creators.

Comics Comics #2, the most excellent alt.comix zine by Dan Nadel and T. Hodler is now sold out…but you can download it from their blog:

So if you missed out on getting your own copy (and unfortunately, this one really does work best in its oversize paper form), you can now finally enjoy:

Peter Bagge on Spider-Man!

An interview with PShaw! (He has posted a nice color variation of this issue’s cover on his own site, by the way.)

Part one of a far-too-long essay on Steve Gerber’s cult ’70s Marvel comics (Howard the Duck, Omega the Unknown, etc.)! (By the way, don’t forget to read the article’s accidentally excised footnotes.)

Kevin Nowlan on color separations!

Dan on Dave Sim’s Collected Letters 2004!

And….MORE.

Download it here.

The native are restless. Or at least the artists are. In our previous item we mentioned Bryan Talbot and ALICE IN SUNDERLAND — it took him five years to finish it, and that’s a long time to be working on anything. The one downside of the graphic novel boom is that creators have to sequester themselves for years at a time, and sometimes they have to sequester themselves from a paycheck as well. It started with Becky Cloonan:

So we’re seeing this huge boom in “OEL” books right now, believe me I think it’s great. Many people are seeing more publishing opportunities and this 5×7 format has really taken off (my favorite size is still 6×9 for gn’s though). But I have a bad feeling about it– some people say the market is getting over-saturated– and I agree to a point. However, I feel that the biggest problem is that most artists weren’t meant to work this way, that is drawing 150+ pages at a time.

“But look at all the graphic novels coming out from Japan!” Yes, look at them! And they are all first published in small, 10-20 page chunks in a weekly or monthly magazine. (Not to mention most artists have assistants there– hmm it’s not much different than the so called “assembly line” production you see on mainstream American comics.)

Corey Lewis also chimed in:

But how fucking honestly reasonable is it to ask ONE DUDE to produce a roughly-200 page OGN in the span of a few months? IS THIS SOMETHING WE CAN REALLY DEPEND ON? I’m dying every fucking second. I have no studio. I have no “people”. Sharknife Co. Ltd. ™ is all one guy. It takes a shit ass load of energy and intelligence to construct an entire universe for this shit!!! I’m not complaining!!! I FUCKING LOVE TO DO IT. But without instant success, piles of royalty checks or some kind of media tie-in deal, the OGN format is amazingly hard for a young BASICALLY “freelance” artist to commit to.

A few days ago Tania del Rio piped up, and working on the monthly Sabrina comic, she had a different take.

But now that I’ve been working on Sabrina for 3 years I can definitely see the advantages of this format. Not only do I get the gratification of seeing my work on newsstands consistently, I have a steady paycheck. Every week I turn in pages, and every 2 weeks I get a paycheck. It’s nice! As long as I keep doing my work, I don’t have to worry about when my payment will arrive (a rarity in the world of freelance!).

I’ve also been lucky in regards to getting fans and loyal readers. Rather than putting out one graphic novel, and trying to maintain my audience’s attention for the next year until the next one comes out, I’m fortunate that new issues of my work are available at any given time, and that each month, I gain new readers. For every issue I get feedback - I can tweak a future storyline if I realize my fans aren’t digging the direction I’m going in, or sometimes I’ll deliberately do the opposite just to stir the fans up! (Hehehe)

Tintin Pantoja points out the economics of multi-formats:

The real money is in reprints, in the trade collection and merchandising.
You only really start to seriously profit from your comics after they’ve been reprinted and exploited several times, in different formats. I know it’s pretty cynical, but look at it this way: a comic artist has only so much time to work on a comic. Comics are notoriously labor-intensive. Sure you can have your $15 super-glossy-cardstock full-color album-sized masterpiece, but why not subsidize it by another edition of the same comic, but this time printed on toilet paper, selling for $1?

This is exactly Phil Foglio’s strategy: Girl Genius comes out on the web, as a black and white phonebook-sized newsprint ‘omnibus’ , and as a full color hardbound collector’s album. My argument here is that to make money, creators have to be a little more flexible in terms of formatting. That way one can have the art and the money too. Sure, the omnibus looks like crap (compared to the albums anyway) but they’re pulling in newer readers. We need a cheap disposable and serialized format AS WELL AS a prestige format, even if one or the other isn’t the bext format for your book.

Vanessa Santone also comments, while wondering if the Shojo Beat-like anthology can ever take off here.

I would love to see a low-price monthly anthology, but the industry doesn’t seem to be going that way. Shoujo Beat is $5.99 an issue. I assume that Shonen Jump is about the same. But nobody seems to want to try it with original comics in American. There’s an interview with Kurt Hassler on Newsarama (which I haven’t read yet, ’cause I’m lazy), about Yen Press. They’re going to be publishing a monthly anthology, containing translated Japanese comics, and original American comics. I’m hoping that if things go well with Yen Press, other companies might try following suit.

As a creator, I would love to get my comics out to people every month. (But then again, I’m not published, and I’m slow as fuck, so who am I to talk?) On the other hand, I don’t think OGNs are necessarily a bad thing, either. After all, comics are books, and prose novels don’t come out on monthly, one chapter at a time, schedule. I’m kind of torn on the subject.

Vanessa is torn…WE’RE ALL TORN! Unfortunately, the pamphlet long ago ceased to be a “satisfying chunk.” The monthly comics ARE essentially one-story serializations of the graphic novels. Go back and look at that Web 2.0 business plan Joey Manley was talking about. With the monthly print anthology — Yen and Viz aside — still failing to find any traction here, monetizing web serialization for the eventual print collection appears to be the most likely business model for the comics of the future, whether its in the iTunes/Eyemelt model, or the Penny Arcade model.

As all signs point to Marvel and DC ramping up their online business plans, the delivery system is really going to become more and more important.

UPDATE: Joey Manley happens to have added a very long list of articles on webcomics and digital comics content right here. Great resource for anyone thinking about these things.

UPDATE 2: Now Tom Spurgeon has weighed in with a long post, but here’s the money quote for us anyway:

* I can’t for the life of me figure out why all the comics companies haven’t pursued this more aggressively. All comic books should be available in digital form by now. When the notoriously conservative newspaper strip business is years ahead of you, you’re moving too slow. My only guess is that media companies may be resistant to change by nature and it’s only when an undeniably effective application drives the business in a certain direction that businesses follow. It’s worth noting that what we have in comics right now isn’t a breaking through a wall driven by a super-great way of reading comics that is years ahead of what we thought possible, but a slow thinning of a membrane in areas like speed of downloads and screen size that make reading comics through existing applications increasingly pleasurable.

As of this writing (a mortifyingly late hour) our reading comics on computer poll stood thus:

I like it BETTER than paper! (724) 53.47%
Pixels or pulp — doesn’t matter to me as long as its Bendis! (72) 5.32%
Only in an emergency. (558) 41.21%

That was a BIG come from behind victory for paperless reading. As of 6 pm it was more like 74%– some 500 souls — preferred paper, but somewhere along the way, either 600 people came along who liked onscreen, or someone set up a poll-voting widget or whatever. The poll was completely unscientific, but you can make of it what you will.

We have a bunch of “new media/tech” blogs on our RSS feed, but we only get to read them once a week or so. We checked them out today to test the pundit zeitgiest. Dealing with snippets of fact like we do, sometimes it’s hard to put together a coherent big picture. we can only get a pointilistic view of the world sometimes. But all of it points SOMEWHERE.
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While all this was going on, a friend of ours happened to IM us with a link to ComicBookLover , which is apparently state of the art for reading those downloaded comics:

Boxes of comics in the garage? Or are you a more serious collector? Even if insured for the risk of theft or flood, nothing can compensate for the time spent building a collection. A digital collection won’t be the same as curling up on the sofa with a paper comic, but it will provide some comfort if you can’t afford to lose your comics.

There’s something about that picture that amuses us — whether it’s the rounded corners or orange lighting or the blinds and cables, it gives us this FORBIDDEN PLANET/Univac vibe. In other words, that photo makes it look like something powered by Gilligan on his coconut bike.

(Has anyone come up with a name for “early computing” era nostalgia? Punchcardpunk?)

We haven’t tried out this “Comic Book Lover” software yet. As we’ve mentioned many many times, we just don’t like reading full size comics pages on screen. (We had to proof an entire 88-page graphic novel on screen the other day and it was sheer hell, but that’s the way it’s done now.) Webcomics are fine, because they are sized for monitors. Sure, someday everyone is going to have 30-inch cinema display, but that day is not quite yet.

As we all know, comics publishers are becoming increasingly aware of the fact that everyone is downloading everything, and many people don’t want little pieces of paper in their homes, either. AT Newsarama, busy Chris Arrant talks to Dan Vado about SLG’s venture into downloadable comics, Eyemelt.com:

I actually spent time and a little money looking at DRM systems. I almost settled on one and then read that it had been hacked by some kids in a daycare somewhere. I am of course kidding about the daycare kids, but DRM systems are a huge obstacle in the download environment. [snip]

The formats we choose were based on the need to remove as many obstacles to buying downloads as possible. We sell PDF’s because most computers have some sort of built-in PDF reader on them, so the customer does not need any additional software. The CBZ file is a little better than the CBR (these are the file formats most commonly found on the illegal download sites) in terms of working in a cross-platform environment. CBZ needs a special reader and our site has links to places where you can get free comic reading software.

NRAMA: Since eyemelt.com was launched, a major comics torrent site has stopped trafficking in SLG comics. Did you have any conversations with them to do this?

DV: No, they did that on their own. That site has always maintained that they would stop making files available from their site when publishers started making their content available for download at an affordable price.

Over at the SLG blog, the issue is confronted even more directly.

Will it be the same for comics? Well, it’s a bit different, since reading a comic as a tactile experience is different from reading it on screen in a way that listening to a CD and an mp3 are not (though we all know of people who insist on vinyl!). But it’s certainly something that I think will become the norm as more and more people grow to find reading comics on a screen a natural experience rather than a “Boyhowdy, that’s not the way it was done when I was a lass!” one.

Augie DeBlieck’s thoughts on the matter (discussed at the SLG blog) are ever here and the whole column is well worth reading:

Basically, I get ticked off by the self-righteous “The World Owes Me” type of fan who wants to give Dan Slott a hard time because he dares to ask his fans to buy his books legally, and not download them off of some torrent network. The fact is, Slott is right. If you enjoy his books and want to see him doing more work, the only way that’s going to happen is if Marvel’s coffers get a little fatter. Right or wrong, Marvel hasn’t opened up its current library for digital download. Those scanned in copies of their comics floating across the internet are illegal. That’s copyrighted material that you don’t have the right to download, read on your computer screen, keep a copy of on your hard drive, and then e-mail around to your friends.

UPDATE: Well it’s turns out Steven Grant has also been pondering the topic du jour:

This is actually a place the companies can capitalize on bit-torrenting: selling advertising. If you’ve ever taken a magazine survey, one question they always ask is: how many other people read your copy of this magazine? Why? Because they count those people in their ad statistics, and extrapolate statistically from your answer how many other people who don’t buy the magazine read it. If, say, TIME’s survey reveals that their 100,000 readership shares the magazine with three people on average, they’ll figure their ad rates for 300,000 readers because what they’re really selling is exposures to each ad, not number of copies sold. Similarly, if three people buy a copy of, oh, THUNDERBOLTS, scan them, and distribute them via bit-torrent to 100,000 other people for free (does anyone have any idea what average bit-torrent download statistics are?), that’s 300,000 exposure per ad Marvel could claim on those three copies, theoretically. (I’m sure there are other governing factors I’m not aware of, but maybe not.) This ad rate thing is the same reason that magazines offer free or very cut rate subscriptions, particularly specialty magazines for targeted audiences. (I keep getting free subscriptions whether I return the offer cards or not, most of these magazines are so eager to get their “subscription” and ad rate levels up.)

So many news stories and essays are coming across our desk that deal with downloadable comics, internet copying and getting your entertainment for free, that we’ll be devoting most of today’s posting to that topic. Not that we have any answers. Downloading reached critical mass many years ago, and every time we walk by the empty halls of what once was our Mecca on Earth, Tower Records, we see the power of digital downloads.

To get things started, we’re going to run a POLL! How exciting is that? (It’s VERY exciting since we’re not sure if it’s going to work or not!)

Manga publisher Dr. Master has joined the ranks of publishers offering digital downloads via IGN’s Direct2Drive site. D2D already offers games and movies and has been slowly moving into the comics distribution business.

DrMaster Publications Inc., the publishing arm of DGN Production Inc., today announced an agreement with Fox Interactive Media’s digital retail store, Direct2Drive (http://www.direct2drive.com), to distribute its popular comic content to readers via digital download. The agreement will make Direct2Drive the exclusive home for downloadable DrMaster content, including upcoming new releases.

“Television, movies, comics and anime…Direct2Drive pulls no punches,” said DrMaster marketing director, Shawn Sanders. “Their download service has pioneered digital distribution for video games and exclusive content — including comics — and DrMaster is proud to add its content to Direct2Drive’s considerable content offerings.”

Initial titles from DrMaster available on Direct2Drive will include Volume 1: issues 1 and 2, of the new action adventure, Chinese Hero: Tales of the Blood Sword, which is available now and debuted on the site one week after its printed launch in retail stores. Direct2Drive will also be the official launch partner for, Purgatory Kabuki, an original manga tale that will be released in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Downloadable content from DrMaster on Direct2Drive will be delivered in high-resolution, full-color documents via Adobe Systems Incorporated’s Portable Document Format (PDF), enabling users to download, view and print the e-books on any standard Windows PC.

§ Local paper profiles cartooner:

Brian Ralph sits at a table in the sun outside Donna’s in Baltimore’s Charles Village and fidgets with his paper coffee cup.

The 33-year-old has messy hair, and wears a short sleeve shirt and blue jeans. His hand with the solid silver wedding ring rests on a yellow comic book with a frightened monkey on the cover.

“The thing I was really into was comics,” he says of his years in college.

§ Mobile phone manga downloads gaining popularity for shy fans, others:

For Japanese aficionados of this sort of stuff, there is a more convenient and discreet way to stock up on the latest stories without running to the bookstore: downloading them to a cell phone. That’s helped this type of manga reach beyond the female otome–or “maidens,” as they’re known–who are the genre’s die-hard fan base. “Women and girls in their teens, 20s, and 30s like BL for their portrayals of innocent love,” says Toshiki Fujii, a manager in the cell-phone content division at Nagoya-based Media Do. “But now those who might have been coy about walking into a shop can find what they’re looking for online.”

§ The Disney-Pixar stock scandal continues to have fall-out:

The Pixar stock options mess was more widespread than anyone knew … though the Mouse House now is doing its best to apply some significant Band-Aids. Company has acknowledged that many mid- and lower-level employees received backdated options at the toon company, not just execs. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Disney said it would issue newly priced options to those employees and pay as much as $34 million to those with backdated options in an effort to compensate those Pixar employees both for the discrepancy in the options price and for possible tax liabilities.

§ We didn’t listen to it ourselves, but we’re told by reliable source Ian Brill that The Sound of Young America: Podcast: Jordan, Jesse GO! Ep. 18: Misspent Youth contains a cue of interest to our readers at 28:49 when Bucky Sinister reads a poem about Batman.

Here’s a somewhat epochal story we’ve managed to miss until now: Downloadable animated New Yorker cartoons on iTunes.

Everyone knows that downloadable ‘toons to iPods and Wiis and cell phones and what not are the future, but even so it’s a little surprising to see the venerable New Yorker jumping into the fray. The toons are free, sponsored by advocacy site drugfree.org.

The New Yorker has partnered with RingTales, which “animated print comics for ad-supported syndication across all digital media” for the venture. RingTones has indeed animated the familiar figures of Barsotti, Shanahan and company. A trip to the main New Yorker page for the animations reveals a gallery of familiar images: bespectacled scientists, talking dogs, elephants, a kitty by the litter box — but then they begin to move and talk! A miracle!

New media thrives on quality content — and the podcast version is in the Top 20 of the iTunes podcast listing. Will it be enough to move the needle on a system of toon delivery that in its infancy?

You can read a bit more about it at paidcontent.org, and the complete PR from earlier last month is in the jump.

But before you go, here is the most famous New Yorker cartoon of them all.
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Man the announcements are coming fat and furious, as IGN’s Direct2Drive announces they will start selling downloadable Top Cow Comics.:

IGN Entertainment, a unit of Fox Interactive Media, today announced that its Direct2Drive (http://direct2drive.com) digital retail store has launched the Web’s first independent, download-to-own comic book store and will begin selling comic book titles from Top Cow Productions. The agreement marks the first time that users will be able to digitally download and own full-length comic books, and Direct2Drive anticipates the addition of content from more comic and manga publisher partners in addition to Top Cow over the next year.

The downloadable comic books will be delivered in high-resolution, full-color documents via Adobe Systems Incorporated’s Portable Document Format (PDF), enabling users to download, view and print the comic books on any standard Windows PC.

“Comic books are a perfect addition to our content library of digital games, anime, TV and movies as we continue to build the Web’s premier download store targeting the interests of men 18-34,” said Jamie Berger, Senior Vice President of Consumer Products for IGN Entertainment. “Top Cow is one of the comic industry’s most cutting-edge publishers and we’re proud to offer their content exclusively to the Direct2Drive consumer.”

”It’s never been a question of ‘will comics be available digitally’, but rather how and when,” commented Filip Sabik, Vice President of Marketing & Sales for Top Cow. “Top Cow has been looking for the right partner with which to launch online content. IGN is one of the premier pop culture sites on the web, and their model for digital distribution on Direct2Drive was the one that allowed us to deliver content to fans while not discounting our core retailer base. It’s a win win situation.”

Under the terms of the agreement, Direct2Drive will serve as the exclusive worldwide digital distributor of Top Cow Productions’ library of comics, with more than 400 total books from Top Cow available over the coming year. Top Cow titles available at launch on Direct2Drive will include Witchblade, The Darkness, Tomb Raider, and Rising Stars, with more added each week.

Pricing for Top Cow Comics on Direct2Drive will be similar to the volume pricing offered for Top Cow’s recent Compendium collections, as well as and other trade collections. Top Cow’s backlist will also be offered through Direct2Drive, with material up to a year old available for download.