Marvel Digital Comics: Tales of The Black Freighter

I’m guessing that Marvel’s been feeling a little left out by all the publicity surrounding DC Comic’s New 52 and their decision to make all their comics available for digital sale the same day as print, because late Friday afternoon Marvel issued a press release announcing that Ultimate Spider-Man, one of the few comics that Marvel DOES offer for sale the same day as print, had “the best first day of sales for a new release to date!” on their iPhone and iPad apps.

Awesome! How many copies did you sell, writer Brian Michael Bendis?

Nothing frustrates an author more than his work not being able to get into the hands of the people that want it, and now with the Marvel Comics app we can!

Okay… how many people got their hands on it digitally? You: Marvel SVP of Sales David Gabriel – how many?

We’ve been pushing to make Ultimate Comics Spider-Man our top release to date, and the results we’ve seen both here and in print certainly show us that we’re heading in the right direction.

For the love of – Why won’t you just tell us how many digital copies you’re selling, Marvel and DC? What are you so worried about?

We’ve been doing the day and date comics for about a year now since the launch of Ultimate Comics Thor #1, and each subsequent release has not only seen increased sales within the app, but we’ve also seen a great trend in which the print comic reorders increase exponentially.

Okay, I get it – you’re trying to send a message to comics retailers like my local comic store owner, who knows me by name and asks me to remember that wandering around naked is technically not “cosplaying Dr. Manhattan”, that digital downloads aren’t competition, they’re actually HELPING the sales of print comics!

So it doesn’t MATTER how many books they’re selling digitally, because it SOUNDS like Marvel’s priority is to use download as loss leader to help print sales! Which means – good news, downloaders – that Marvel intends to give pirates a pass! Right, Marvel and DC?

We got legal letters from both Marvel and DC Comics who have been working together to send us these legal threats [to remove comics torrent trackers]. We are currently dealing with the legal issues and they have given us 3 days before they are forced to take anymore action.