The Pull List - Week of July 7th, 2010

The following are all of the comic books I will be pulling for this week. I chose this time not to provide you with a synopsis of the books (as this week there were a couple spoilers), but I'm debating changing that in the future as it gives you the ability to choose for yourself whether you want to research the book further. It's a full week, so let's get to the list!

Happy 4th!

Marvel Using Digital Comics for Second Printings?

Chris Sims over at Comics Alliance made an interesting observation about how Marvel may possibly be using digital comics as a way to get comic books to readers after the initial first printings sell out. To supplement his assumptions, he looks at two of Marvel's recent digital offerings: Enter the Heroic Age #1 and Young Allies #1. Enter the Heroic Age #1 was originally released in May (for $3.99) and it appears that most stores have sold out of the initial first printing. Retailers have also noted that there has been no second printing available for them to order for customers who were unable to obtain a copy of the book. Last week it was added to Comixology's library of comic books for $1.99 and, in possibly more telling news, this weeks update to Comixology's library has added Young Allies #1 to the mix. This comic book was originally released on June 7th (not even a month ago!) for $3.99 (it is also $1.99 to buy it digitally).

All of this is very exciting news and hopefully could lead to digitally comics releasing at least a month after coming to print (the more popular ones, anyway). In essence this should be able to lead the way to more day-and-date releases giving customers the ability to choose how they want to read their comics. Also, if they can discount Young Allies #1 to half off after only 1 month, it may be a tell-tell sign that even future day-and-date comics could be half off the price of print comics.

In my mind, this is a +1 for Marvel and I'm excited to see the expansion of digital comic books. This shows to me that it may not take as long as I originally thought for publishers to warm up to the digital future.

Zudacomics.com is no More

Though it shouldn't really come as a surprise to most people, zudacomics.com went offline effective today. Currently, if you try to go to zudacomics.com, you are redirected to Zuda Comic's blog which contains a blog post announcing the changes.

Wonder Woman on ABC News

Wonder Woman was on ABC News at 6:30pm tonight, complete with a comment from Jim Lee and Lynda Carter (an actress who played Wonder Woman in the 1970s television series)! Check it out:


Original YouTube Link

Wonder Woman #600 Review

Warning: Review May Contain Spoilers

Wonder Woman: Rebirth

I've never been much of a Wonder Woman fan, but my twitter feed is exploding right now, so I'm guessing that a lot of people have strong opinions about her new look.

I'll admit, I've never read any of her solo books, so I feel completely out of my element commenting on this change. Full disclosure aside, I've never liked her costume because it always seemed to be impractical and a little goofy looking. Honestly, I'm digging the new look, I think it suits the type of person that I envision she is.

This new look begins starting with Wonder Woman #600 where it looks like they will also be retconning a lot of her past. Retconning I can comment on. I've never been a huge fan of retconning because it robs enjoyment out of the people who have loved and followed all of the previous stories. Sometimes it is a necessary evil though. I'm not sure if it is in this case, but it makes me interested in picking up and reading Wonder Woman for the first time. At a minimum, it always tends to give a good starting place for new readers.

I am very curious as to what prompted the change however. If it has to do with a movie adaptation I would be bothered by that. I've always thought that the comic books should always come before the movies and the comic books should affect the movies, not the other way around. At this point though, I'm willing to give DC the benefit of the doubt. Here's hoping that it makes for a good comic book, I guess we'll find out tomorrow!
For more information, check out the DC Blog post.

Importance of the Device

The most important decision that you can make, in terms of digital comics, is what device to use for viewing the comic books. After reading a lot of commentary across message boards and comments written on articles, I have noticed a disturbing trend; a large chunk of people complaining about how digital comics are not a good substitute for print comics have either not tried reading digital comics or they are using a device that isn't well-equipped to give the best experience to the user. Let's go through a few of the devices that are currently comic book enabled (I'm sure the one that I think is best won't surprise anyone):

Digital Revolution?

Ideally, in the near future, I would like to read a vast majority (if not all) of my comic books in a digital format. Currently the best way to do that is through Comixology's Comics iPad app. While Comixology is by far the best venue for your digital comics fix (in terms of quality and quantity), it leaves much to be desired (a fault with which I would rest the majority of the blame on the publisher's shoulders).