Over at #SDCC Marvel hosted a panel with their digital people:
Marvel Digital: What’s Next?! Comics…and Beyond!— Members of the Marvel Digital Media Group give you the first word on Marvel digital comics, casual games, original streaming video productions, social media outreach, and the future of Marvel’s ever-expanding digital endeavors.
Highlights included:
“It’s continuing to grow,” (John)Dokes says of digital comics.
Turning to the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch apps, (David) Gabriel says, “We’ve been testing day and dates since last October. It’s proven pretty popular. So far, they’ve actually helped retailers sell the hard copies as well.”
“We are going to be moving into more day and dates in the next six to eight months,” Gabriel added.
Starting with Spider-Island, all Spider-Man books will be going day and date, including Venom and all Spider-Island tie-ins. Taking place over the next two months.
“By the end of October and into November, the X-Men line will be moving into day and date,” Gabriel said, starting with Wolverine and the X-Men #1 and the new Uncanny X-Men #1.
Gabriel credited the success of the X-Men Schism #1 day and date release as partial motivation for the move.
Moving closer to the Avengers movie next summer, more Marvel Universe titles will go same-day digital, Gabriel said. The Ultimate books will continue to be same-day digital, including the four new #1s coming this fall.
Bang! goes my theory of only the Ultimate Comics line being day and date digital then!
This is a brave move from Marvel, but they have obviously seen the figures!
Dokes says they’re looking at ways to integrate Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited and the iOs apps.
This has been a major gripe with people ever since the iOS apps took off. Hopefully this will happen sooner rather than later!
Gabriel said they’ve heard stories from retailers about people who ended up buying comics in print after sampling them digitally.
Earlier, Gabriel called the relationship between digital comics and traditional retailers a “win/win situation” in many cases.
Good! Hopefully digital and print can learn to co-exist with each other!
