This week on The Watchtower, we tackle all the issues, and we start by donning our Eyepatches and Peg Legs to talk about Piracy!
The popular website for scanned comics HTMLcomics.com was shut down this week by a coalition of publishers, retailers, and creators. Is it OK to download comics? We’ve almost all contributed to piracy in some way, shape or form, but does it change things when it’s a comic?
Also, X-Men: First Class has had to deal with scheduling conflicts that have made it impossible for Bryan Singer to be in the director’s chair. Who can fill his shoes? And will they kick enough ass to do a good job? Find out!
All this plus The Forecast, Questy’s Rant Farm and of course, and in-depth review of Iron Man 2!
1:49 pm on May 14th, 2010
Marvel have a decent portion of their comics online, on their Marvel Online Unlimited site.
And have done for at least a year; its something like $15 dollars for maybe thousands of comics,so digital distribution has at least been attempted. I’d pay much much more than that as a monthly fee to be getting some of the content they release every month.
That being said, I do take part in comic piracy; their archives aren’t complete, and it can be very irritating to have a missing 10 issues in a lot of series. On the subject of Marvel’s iPad app, its just the reader they use for the online Unlimited service, by the sound of it. I’d agree its a lot more fun than reading with a .cbr reader.
I have to agree on the idea of publicity you mentioned briefly: I got into comics from pirated (Ultimate Spider-Man if your curious) because (living in the UK) I didn’t know there were comic shops I visited. I started with the digital service on their website, torrenting the new comics if anything sounded good, and then found out I was walking past a comic-book shop everyday. So now I’m buying legit. And a few of my friends have followed suit. Although I’m not so optimistic as to believe that’s what all the pirates are up to.
7:48 pm on May 17th, 2010
No worries Donnie, I have not had a chance to see the movie either, only cause im broke and unemployed.
Internet downloading im on the fence about. im not on the fence when it comes to comics, or movies, mainly cause i don’t want to see just about any movie that comes out anymore. but music, i might get like one song from an artist and if i have the money ill get the album. for those artists i find who put effort and thought into their work i reward them by buying their music. but other times i just want to hear one song that was catchy without having to pay money just for the one song. I am against comic piracy but im also against bad comics.
On the issue of the rant farm that Donnie made about the joker and how he re invents himself. i agree that it would have been better to have the riddler but i would not see him as a master of disguise, but even still, i figured they would try to pull the bruce wayne bit. but it was a good shocker and a bad one. its amazing how well he cleaned up after getting shot in the face.
and here is a site with april sales figures for deadpool. http://www.deadpoolbugle.com/2010/05/april-2010-deadpool-sales-data.html so it shows that deadpool has been on a steady decline for the past while and Deadpool team ups is going down quite a bit. over the past month of April deadpool makes up 5% of marvels sales.