tonyc3742

I think it's very cool.
I've got the "Totally Mad" set as well, and enjoy it. There are lots of series I'd like to catch up on or read, but I'm so far behind I wouldn't know where to start, and I am also not interested in making the financial or time investments in buying the series.
I think you will always have people who will want to buy the 'paper' copies, and this kind of thing would work more as an archive.
I don't think e-books/comics will replace paper, nor do I want them to, but it's an interesting option. But the use of PDF is somewhat annoying--pdfs are good at times, but sometimes they're cumbersome. I think the way the Mad series did it was pretty good, it was a proprietary display that framed the image, so you lost some screen real estate, but you just hit space bar and it went from panel to panel for you, though you could always manually move around.
Of course, the next question would be what about upgrades-- ten years from now, will they have a '50 Years Of' release, and the people who bought 40 yearswill have to double dip? Or with a serial number in the original purchase, you can download the updated years for free or low-cost.

darkside

Got my 40 Years of Avengers, 40 Years of Xmen and 44 Years of FF yesterday. Very happy with the purchase. I agree Adobe is a pain in the ass, but only because of them scanning two pages at a time. However, I adjusted to it very quickly and it is really a minor issue at best and considering you are getting hundreds of comics for $40 I have no room for complaint. Also since these are just PDFs they will probably work our lifetimes and then some since Adobe isn't going anywhere and PDF is going to be widely supported for a long time. With the old Totally Mad CD-ROM set you had to install their software to read the mags. If Windows ever changes to the point that you can't install that software anymore you are out of luck for reading the books. With PDF you can read these on almost any OS.

As far as upgrading to the issues made after the discs are pressed I agree that will probably be an issue as I doubt they will sell add on discs down the road. However, I am not a fan of Marvel after about 1995 so for me I am happy just to have all the issues archived to that point. Once they started rebooting the Universe and trashing all the history of Marvel I grew up with I stopped caring. The fun in these series is going to be in reading the classic issues.

I'm definitely buying all the future DVD-ROMs and hope that DC will follow. I would love to see this done for golden age books as well. Granted I'm also filling this in with stuff for Cdisplay, but will gladly buy the discs if Marvel sells them. I just don't know if they will bother to put series like Tales to Astonish, Marvel Team-Up and Strange Tales on a DVD.

Billyspunk

Can you print out a certain issue off of the cd? Like if you want to read Amazing Spiderman #14 can you print it out?

Blade

I received FF and X-Men a week or so ago. Haven't had much time to really browse through a lot of them, but what I did look at looked pretty good.

As for Adobe...I don't have a real problem with it and on a 19" LCD screen, it's pretty easy to read with the page just filling the screen. My only real complaint is that it opens windows everytime you click on a link. Not really a big problem.

You can't cut and paste from within the program, FYI. It's password protected and not even the printscreen stuff works. I'm sure there are programs out there that can get around this though. I haven't tried printing them yet.

File size is about 5GBs and it works just fine if you copy it to a harddrive.

I'm waiting for Amazon to start carrying the Avengers disc as I have plenty of gcs for them.

darkside

I've read from '61 through '63 on all three series (well only FF started that early, but you get the point). Its silly, but I'm trying to read everything close to the same months they were released. I hate when I get ahead in Avengers and it references something that happened in an issue of FF I haven't read yet. I also have torrents of the Tales to Astonish and Journey into Mystery comics of the same era and am reading those as well.

So far I am absolutely loving these. The PDFs no longer bother me at all. I have my widescreen laptop set to 1280X800 and both pages are very clear and readable so I have minimal scrolling around. I am learning a ton of stuff I didn't know like the fact Steve Ditko came up with the idea of the box in the upper left corner displaying the faces of the heroes and the Marvel logo. Its also a blast to see Stan and Jack learn as they go on these and the letter pages are wonderful. Seeing Marvel build an audience as the series got better and better and reading as everyone catches all of Stan's screwups in every issue. They really caught lighting in a bottle in the early 60's and even they didn't fully understand it at the time. Kirby's artwork also gets better and better as the years go by. Its obvious though they really missed the mark with the X-men. Can't wait until I get to the Clairemont and Byrne years on that series.

I really can't wait for the Spiderman, Hulk, Captain America and Daredevil DVD-ROMs.

resinrats

I'll have to pick these up. Always wanted to read them but didn't want to spend thousands to get the issues. I do prefer physical comic books but this is good enough. Hopefully they expand to other series as well (Capt America, Hulk, etc) Maybe DC will put out Superman issues like this.


Question. When you guys say X-Men or Spiderman, is it just one title of the character or does it include all the various titles about that character(s)? Ex/ Amazing SPiderman, Web of Spiderman, Spactacular. X-Men also has multiple series related to the X-Men.

darkside

Main series only. Avengers unfortunately doesn't include the West Coast series, Xmen is only the main series and the same will be true of Spiderman. Only if these catch on will you see them dip into the other sub series. Paper will always be better, but for a tiny fraction of the paper price you can't beat this idea.

resinrats

Thanks!

tonyc3742

Has anyone heard if DC will be doing this? I've always preferred DC to Marvel, and I'm sure some of their iconic characters would sell even to non-comic fans.

darkside

I haven't heard anything about DC doing it, but I hope so. Granted I don't think you could fit the entire Batman or Superman catalogs on a single DVD.

Spiderbite

Tales of Wonder has a new dvd-rom showing. This looks like it could become a trend.



It says its available now. For $9.99 I might have to pick this up as well as I have been loving the other collections so far. I know you could probably get it on a bootleg or bit torrent for free but I like to buy the legit products when available.

Rainet

Does anyone know when the new 40 years of Spiderman on dvd-rom is coming out. For the longest time Eagle One Media said on it's website that it will be out in June, but now it just says coming soon. Anyone know? I'm dying to get my hands on one of these babies.

Ric Easton

Ditto! I just bid on the original Spidey set on Ebay and am glad I lost, since I forgot the new one (which includes the Annuals) is supposed to be "coming soon"

I just found out that these existed a few weeks ago, and am psyched to start collecting them. It just seems unbelievable that you could get almost full runs of all these series. Oh, and here's another vote for the other Spider-man books. Heck, I even wanna see Marvel Team-Up! I'd love to read Spider-man and the Not Ready for Prime-Time Players again!

darkside

I'm pretty much up for any classic Marvel series to get put on DVD-ROM. At $40 for 40 years of comics I will definitely have no issue buying them all. I frequently spent $40+ a month at the comic store in the 80's. These things are a steal.

Quake1028

http://www.digitalcomics.biz/ has all of the sets for $29.99. Shipping is just $4.95 for your entire order, so you could get all 3 sets for about $95. Awesome deal.

greydt

Looks like a nice deal - has anyone ordered from them before?

xmiyux

I bought the original Mad Magazine Collection for my wife when it first came out (we have since lost one of the discs) and it was pretty cool. I actually used it some in school when i would take the comic strips, photoshop out the words, and make worksheets where the students had to write dialog in Spanish for the strip. The kids absolutely loved it. That is what is nice about these digital collections - i would love to be able to do something similar with a page of Spiderman or Daredevil.

majorjoe23

From what I've heard, DC isn't sure they have digital reprint rights to their material, so it may be awhile before we see similar releases from them.

Rainet

Good news, at least datewise for the new 40 years of Spiderman on dvd-rom. September seems to be the release date.

http://www.eagleonemedia.com/comic_book_cd-roms.htm

Spiderbite

FYI - Best Buy is including a copy of this with a pre-order of X-men 3: The Last Stand for those who are interested.

You can also buy it for $9.99 but it appears to be a limited time only and is not a product they normally carry. I saw them with the signs for pre-ordering X-men 3 around the new release section of my store.

Spiderbite

Just updating what is new with comics on dvd-rom. These are now available (bougt mine from Talesofwonder.com):







And my personal favorite:



The Complete Captain America is announced for release next month (May 30th) and I saw that Daredevil, Iron Man and Thor have been announced but no dates set for them yet.

Moderator...if you are reading this, please move to the new comic book forum. Thanks.

Spiderbite

I figured i would go ahead & throw up some pix of what the previous releases look like as well for those who might be interested:







And I found this as well at Talesofwonder.com. I couldn't find any reviews of it anywhere but took a chance and ordered it to push my total over $100 to get free shipping. Anyone have this or looked at it before?:

musick

Iron Man DVD-ROM June 2007
Daredevil DVD-ROM September 2007
Thor DVD-ROM December 2007

http://www.gitcorp.com/pilot.asp?pg=newrelease

* all subject to change of course

benedict

I'd definitely consider getting some of these, especially if they released some of the lesser known titles.

I must admit, though, that with all the unnread books and unplayed CD/DVDs on my shelves I wonder whether I would take the time to view them all!

Trevor

I have the same problem. I have SO many unread books and comics, unplayed movies, CDs, and video games, that I could seriously quit buying now and never possibly get thru everything. Let me quickly estimate...hold on....

If I watched every DVD once, listened to every CD once, played every game for a few hours each, and read every comic/book; it would take me at least fourteen thousand hours. So even at two hours a day (quite a stretch), it will take me almost twenty years to get thru everything, if I quit buying now.

I blame my parents for giving me that "collector" gene.