I started playing around with the PSP Digital Comics store recently. Mostly because I was curious, partly because I am getting ready for a long flight, so I figured what the hell, may as well see if there is anything worth checking out to make my trip go by that much quicker.
I have to admit that in my younger days (lasting into college) I did a fair amount of comic reading and collecting. These days not so much. Not sure when I last purchased a comic; maybe as an attempt to get one of my boys interested in comics. They will not touch the things, which is funny to me because comics were such a big part of my youth.
Impressions? Where are the new comics? How come the comics cost so damn much? Where are the DC titles?
I figured I would download the latest Spiderman, Captain America, Avengers, Batman, and Green Lantern, which were some of my favorites, but not necessarily in that order. I found some Spiderman, Captain America, and Avengers titles, but these were mostly older runs. Great if you are a collector, just curious about the older days, or looking for some interesting reading. The store has 25 titles from Amazing Spiderman (1963), and 46 from 2003. The problem here is that the 2003 run ends in 2008. Similar story for Captain America and Avengers. Where are the new books?
Where are all the DC titles? Green Lantern, Flash, Batman, Superman, etc. With DC Universe coming to the PS3, you would think the comic store would get its DC game on. I could not find any DC titles in the story; if they are there, they are well hidden.
Now we come to the price. I am sure that $1.99 is probably a much better deal than buying physical books, but I expected these to be substantially less. Maybe $.50 to $.99 to represent that digital media was cheaper, and significantly easier to recover costs once the actually digital copies were produced. Silly me.
The good news is that the story has a few free comics (21 as I write this article); mostly an interesting variety from different publishers. Of course it would have been too much to ask for Marvel to throw up a free comic. As I said the variety is interesting. I downloaded a Burke & Hare research based graphic novel. Picked this one up since I am going to be in Edinburgh, Scotland; doubt it will make for aside comments and small talk … you never know!
The reader itself is actually nice and makes good use of the PSP screen. I am just a little disappointed in the actual digital comics library that is available.
