Warren Ellis has some further comments on Marvel’s digital strategy:
Are they then, like DC, looking to digital as a way to increase reach? Well… not yet. I believe they have done some original digital comics. (By which I mean company-0wned Marvel comics created for digital-first release.) But I’m not sure there was any great plan to their release. One of the things I like about Marvel is that they move pretty fast and are capable of an entirely random “hey, let’s do this thing for five minutes†move. The whole Marvel Architects cascade-of-events structure they do these days are frankly as organised as Marvel’s ever been on the macro-scale.
Read the whole thing here
Warren Ellis is, in my opinion, bang on here. Until one of the big boys really step up and do something amazing with their digital releases, no one is going to take the ‘digital’ bull by the horns. For better or worse, there is a lot more options in the digital market as far as publishers are concerned. This has diluted the market and therefore the market share.
I think that that this is the better option for the consumer as you get a lot more options because of the size of the digital library. Just look how many publishers Graphicly, iVerse and Comixology distribute.