Tue Nov 13, 2007 3:58PM13 comments ›
Tue Nov 13, 2007 — by Glenn Hauman
More on Marvel's subscription service
And a parable for our times
In an interview between ICv2 and Marvel president Dan Buckley, the following exchange takes place:
Do you plan to put up all new issues of the titles that are on the "Current Favorites" or "Young Reader Series" lists?
No, we do not plan on putting up the new issues of "Current Favorites" nor do we plan on keeping complete runs of top selling trades like Astonishing X-Men up on the site for prolonged periods of time.
Did you catch that? We don't plan on keeping complete runs up for prolonged periods of time. In other words, they plan to remove titles after you've already paid for your subscription. If those titles are too successful, you should go out and buy the trade in addition to the money you've already paid for the subscription. Nice.
And from our earlier article about Marvel's new online archive, we quoted Marvel president Dan Buckley from USA Today saying "We did not want to get caught flat-footed." What he should have said is that Marvel didn't want to get caught flat footed with the Internet again.
Marvel has never been the fastest company to adopt to the Internet. They weren't the original registrants of marvel.com, for starters. That had already been registered by a software company in Washington by 1995, and later had to be acquired by legal manuverings. Nor were they the original registrants of what the obvious fallback name was, marvelcomics.com.
I was.
I registered the domain name marvelcomics.com on June 9th, 1995, registration number NIC-950609.1106, as a favor to my friend Steve Saffel, who was working for Marvel at the time (and you should really get Steve's new book on Spider-Man
Marvel corporate, at the time, was completely clueless. Didn't want to know about licensing characters to computer companies, didn't want to hear about setting up a site, nothing. Steve wanted to grab the name for Marvel to keep it safe, and he knew I was a trustworthy fellow. A few months later, Steve left Marvel for Del Rey books, and the matter was backburnered until February of 1996, when I was contacted by some lawyers about the name. I said I'd gotten the name at the request of a Marvel employee who was no longer there, and now that they had the resources to deal with the domain, I transferred it to them on February 14, 1996. A little Valentine's Day present to Marvel from me.
So when you hear about Marvel not wanting to be caught flat-footed, and after you're finally able to connect to their overloaded website to pay for a subscription model that was passe when Hawkeye was still alive, just know that it's a grand tradition at the House of Idea.
Jump to comments (13) 
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Comments (13)
Anonymous (5:33 PM on Tue Nov 13, 2007)
Very nice to read about the history of Marvel's slow crawl into the online world. Their DVD archives are useful, but they really don't get the web. Today's site [when it didn't give pages of database errors ] is like Marvel getting into Web 1.0 when the rest of the world is using Web 2.0. Not that ComicMix seems to be that far ahead, but I suspect [and hope] that you all have more tricks up your utility belts! Show old media how it's done!
Mike Gold (6:07 PM on Tue Nov 13, 2007)
That's the goal. And we've got the talent to do it, too.
Alan Coil (7:03 PM on Tue Nov 13, 2007)
Marvel's server continues to be up and down today, so not everybody has been able to see it.
Alan Coil (8:19 PM on Tue Nov 13, 2007)
As to the complexity (or lack of it) of this site, I appreciate its simpleness. No having to wait 2 minutes while 6 different colored backgrounds load one atop the other, no endless links from here to page 2 to page 3 just to get to the newest article, no endless points where if you pass the cursor over a point, a pop up menu or ad appears, and a;; of the ads are on one side of the page so that my eyes are not distracted while trying to read.
I recently read a stat that, as of September of 2006, 44% of those on the internet were still on dial-up.
KISS is a good motto.
Marilee J. Layman (4:56 PM on Wed Nov 14, 2007)
The most recent I saw was "half."
Linda Gold (9:47 PM on Wed Nov 14, 2007)
I assume you are talking worldwide. I saw Nielsen figures for the U.S (from june 2006) that put broadband at almost 75% in home and 90% at work.
Marilee J. Layman (10:30 PM on Wed Nov 14, 2007)
No, I read it here:
http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2007/07/10/pew-47-pe...
although I see your Nielsen figures here:
http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2006/12/14/nielsen-7...
And the difference appears to be "adults" vs. "home users."
mike weber (1:09 AM on Wed Nov 14, 2007)
Someone will provide software to download the content permanently (if there isn't one already).
Anonymous (3:04 PM on Wed Nov 14, 2007)
Why are they even messing with this? Why don't they take a cue from the successful webcomics out there? Offer up new comics (stuff they're not printing) for free and sell advertising on the site. They've got the talent and the advertising base already. It would be an opportunity for them to put out stories about character who probably don't sell well enough for a print run (Cloak and Dagger, Blade, etc) and a good spot to try out new talent. Done. This isn't rocket science.
Anonymous (8:02 PM on Wed Nov 14, 2007)
Well DC hasn't done that bang up of a job so far doing new stuff with Zuda. Marvel is going to find out how important this distribution network is they just move like the dinosaur they are.
Mark Badger (12:29 AM on Fri Nov 16, 2007)
Marvels a weird mix they actually did online comics with AOL long before anyone in comics thought it was anything important. I listened to all the profoundly brilliant comics people tell me "No one will ever read comics on their computer" or "I don't like the comics on the screen" When I asked if they had ever looked at the comics I was doing with Mark Bagley the esteemed pros all admitted they never bothered to look. At one point during their bankruptcy Online Comics was the only department making money for them.
So they deserve some hipster credit, 11 years later DC is finally catching up with them.
Then they would flip out when I showed them some of the work combining Painter and 3-d back in 1996.
Of course the V-P of Internet with a Computer Science degree couldn't download an attachment from his e-mail and find it on his computer either. And he wasn't even a comic book geek, white males in power can be dumb as a brick in any field.
Anonymous (11:05 AM on Thu Nov 15, 2007)
Marvel's intent clearly is to keep tight hold on their valuable property. By creating scarcity (the evaporating subscription), it can continue to re-sell the product in many formats. Until print really is dead--a prediction that still has not come true--Marvel is probably right in a business sense to do so. But this assumes an old-fashioned business model that the Internet is turning on its head.
And that's the problem. Marvel is thinking about tomorrow with yesterday's mindset.