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.