Overwhelming Pity

Well, it’s official: Image Comics has announced that they’re going to make their most popular characters, including Spawn, The Savage Dragon and Witchblade, available via an alternative distribution channel. They’re taking the big step away from the comic store and into the arena that most teens are most enthusiastic about and are likely never to stray away from: Pogs!

Whoops! Sorry, flashed back to 1994 there… actually, if you replace “Pogs” with “digital downloads”, you have exactly the same story that broke earlier this week… including the likely longevity and outcome.

Image announced that starting this week they’ll be releasing all of their books, including Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead, Invincible, and Those Other Books You Don’t Care About, as day-and-date available downloads from Graphic.ly.

Graphic.ly isn’t a platform with which I’m familiar, so I decided to check it out. And I have to tell you: compared to Comixology, which I tried the other day, Graphic.ly’s digital reader is VASTLY superior in that it allows you to actually be able to read the book. It blows things up to readable sizes and automatically follows from panel to panel to keep each image at maximum size and legibility.

This is not always a good thing. Because after literally 15 seconds of poking around to see what kind of books Image would be keeping company with, well, I found:

MISTER MOTHERFUCKING T.

Oh yes. A company called Mohawk Media (Hmm. Wonder who financed that project?) came out with a licensed Mr. T comic back in 2008. They released 4,000 copies before the imprint apparently vanished due to reasons unknown and I’m sure having nothing to do with the fact that their flagship book was Mr. T in a year that wasn’t 1985.

Actually, make that 4,001 copies, because thanks to the good folks at Graphic.ly, the new, classy home of Image Comics downloads, Crisis On Infinite Midlives is… proud? To present an exclusive preview of the already-canceled MR. T!

Available only through the new online home of Image Comics, folks!

…yeah; I think I’ll stick with my local comic store owner, who knows me by name and asks me politely if, while in the store, I would kindly stop pitying fools.

Sorry, I meant peeing on fools.