We’re especially sad about all this because we’ve been getting rid of tons of books we had around the house for reference, thinking “Well, if we REALLY need it, we can just go to Z-cult”…and now THIS happens. Sheesh.
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To the members of Z-Cult:
SLG publishing would like to thank the moderators and forumers of Z-Cult for the respect they have shown in regards to our ban request. Obviously, our preference is to have each comic legally paid for, and the efforts undertaken to honor this desire have clearly shown that Z-Cult is not a forum overrun by those expecting a free ride. In return, we have decided to lift the ban from our independently published titles being distributed on Z-Cult. Of course, this is not an entirely selfless act - we hope that exposure to our large library of titles will help encourage support of our legal download site, www.eyemelt.com.
It is our belief that there is a market for legally downloadable comic books, and we hope that we can prove this to the comics industry by showing success through our our digital distribution system.
Unfortunately we cannot lift the ban on any SLG/Disney titles, for reasons that should be obvious. These titles are limited to: The Haunted Mansion, Tron, Gargoyles and Wonderland. Our apologies for being unable to allow sharing on these particular titles.
For those of you who took the time and effort to report and remove our material, and particularly to those who undertook the process of re-uploading your torrents over and over without complaint, thank you.
SLG Publishing
Hello Serj,
[I HAVE REMOVED NAME] is a freelance writer. He did, with my knowledge, contact you in regards to having you take down SLG content from your site when we started EYEMELT.COM.
However he is not in a position to make policies, especially in regard to something like this. We never asked him to make a statement about removing the ban. This being an American holiday I was unaware of any problems with your site and Marvel/DC since I was out of my office and not checking my email. I was not even aware of any statement on our behalf until I was contacted by a comics news site for additional comment.
[SERJ REMOVED NAME] obviously wrote the statement himself. I'm not certain why he felt he had the right to make a statement on our company's behalf without contacting me. I'm sorry if you came out looking bad on this as I do believe you were acting under the impression that [REMOVED NAME] was sending you something on our behalf. Again, why he thought he could issue a statement on my company's behalf without contacting me is beyond explanation. [REMOVED NAME] is very devoted to the notion of digital comics and he must have felt he was acting in everyones best interests.
I'll be issuing an amended statement on our blog and news site and I will be sure to mention that you posted the SLG statement under the honest assumption it was from us. As for the lifting of the ban, just so you can come away from this with something, you can go ahead and make our stuff available for download. I am not certain what our digital plans are going to be in the coming year, so I may come back and ask you to drop them again.
Dan Vado
...Obsessive comicbook fans who absolutely must read every single issue that comes out from their beloved titles, or completists that want to read every single issue that is included in massive yearly crossover events can either do two things — spend a majority of their income buying comicbooks or download digitally scanned copies of the comics. For a growing number of collectors, digital comics has been a salve to soothe acute wallet burnout. They can now scan favorite titles or look for issues that they have missed. This makes them buy comics with a bit of foreknowledge, allowing them to just get issues that they really love and skip those that do not pass their personal scrutiny...
This shut down of ZCult is a big blow to readers of downloaded comics, but it is far from the only site on the internet that hosts them. People will be able to find other places if this one is in fact shut down. What’s different about ZCult from most is the online community that has formed there. Some of the most active, and intelligently debated, forums on the comic ‘net can be found in their message board section. Add to that reviews, a podcast, and weekly previews, and you have a full on comic site being run by no one actively involved in the industry, except as fans. According to Serj, Marvel’s demands included the complete shut-down of the site, including these community features. This seems odd, and really, a little vindictive to many involved with the site.
Another high note, Z-Cult FM’s admin just announced some really good news. Seems that there are benefits to having your material available on BitTorrent after all. Serj explains:
A comic publisher we talked to while ago who wanted their books banned from our site for their own reasons have just PMed/Emailed me to revoke the ban and are happy for us to share their files here.
The scanning and pirating of comics will continue in the near future (there are still many other sites in which these comics are available for free), but Marvel and DC taking joint action against the best-known sites surely will have some effect. My guess is that new sites will pop up to fill the void left by Z-Cult FM and the also recently-shut down Demonoid, but that some of these new sites may end up having more restricted memberships (an "only by invitation" system).
According to a letter to retailers posted on his company’s website by GIT Corp President Raymond K. Pelosi, GIT will no longer offer Marvel comic books on DVD-ROM. The question of how the collections would work in conjunction with Marvel’s new online comics initiative had been raised by many fans when the publisher’s plan was announced.
Over the years, GIT had released collections of Marvel titles from Fantastic Four to Amazing Spider-Man, the X-Men, Avengers, and more. Popular with many fans, the issues in the GIT collections were scanned in copies, presented in pdf format. Utilizing the technology, GIT would collect decades worth of issues on single DVDs.
...removing the legitimate option for people who want to legally purchase a digital
version they can own and enjoy at their convenience instead of waiting for Marvel's site to get back up so they can read a rented copy from a spotty selection.
My opinion on this is that it's bad and shortsighted marketing to promote the product you want to sell by removing all other even vaguely related alternatives that could possibly take away sales from a non-competitive rival, especially when the previous product has decent sales *and* customer demand and the new one is still an unproven test with a noticeably flawed implementation.
And already on various message boards and such, a lot of people are expressing disappointment that the upcoming Thor and Daredevil or whatever collections they were looking forward to/saving up for will no longer be produced.
I was saving up for Avengers, X-Men, and maybe FF, myself. I think this kind of puts recent events into perspective, and I'm petty enough to hope that Marvel's subscription service tanks just because of all the DVD-buyers they're letting down so they can push their shiny new subscription model.
Guess I know what I'm not spending my holiday money on this year.
Best regards,
Well, Monday/Tuesday, Marvel announced their Digital Comics Unlimited - their first REAL venture into the world of Digital Comics (I don't really count the previous versions as anything but mere Flash advertising campaigns.) Since this announcement, my fastmail inbox has been swamped with e-mails from various friends asking me for my opinion on Marvel's site.
I wanted to get an article out as quickly as possible, but as it turned out, the launch date of the site corresponded with my wife's Fencing Practice night, so I was in charge of watching our 2 year old daughter all night. (Which was actually a lot of fun, because we went and saw the Bee Movie, which we both enjoyed.)
ASIDE: The Bee Movie is quite awesome. Do yourself a big favor and go see it. :)
The launch of the site was preceded by a rather awkward bit of internet journalism as Newsarama broke the news from a Canadian news agency, only to have to retract it and post an update.
Regardless, the post on the news from Newsarama quickly blew up into a huge thread with most posters all wondering why Marvel wasn't going to let you download the comics. Site unseen, the Flash interface for reading these new comics was getting condemned, and to be honest, I must admit, I was one of the guys throwing stones at the press release.
Anyway, I hope I was able to tide all the loyal readers of this blog with links to the opinions from Phil Looney and Jason Wright.
As the week progresses, if other Flashback creators comment (see image <-- ) on the site, I'll be sure to post either their comments or links to their blogs here. :)
So, with all that aside, let us dissect this puppy...
Yeah, I'm gonna start with the good things about this new site, because I actually think there are quite a number of them. However there is also some *room for improvement* and *areas of opportunity* for the whole site, so bear with me.
1) The price seems fair - for $60 I can have access to a wide array of Marvel comics on my computer without taking up any hard disk space. That's really nice.2) They seem to have a nice assortment of titles on the site. I saw comics ranging from the 60's to the Modern Day. Strangely, I even saw a few that seem to violate the 6 Month Publication date rule (Omega, The Unknown)3) The scans are really top notch! I viewed a Bronze Age Captain America comic and was amazed at the clarity of both the colors and lettering. NOTE: I did have to fiddle with my browser size to get the page to appear sharp, but I suspect on a 17 inch monitor, no such tweaking would be necessary.
Got this message while exploring the site and it pretty much killed the whole experience for me, as I was unable to access the site from then on.
Sigh...is it just me, or do you only ever see this message when sites are using MySql? Seriously - can anyone send me a similar message from a Microsoft SQL Server?
I'm sure in the right environment, MySQL has it's uses...
...it's just not for me.
Still, I think it really says something about the validity of such an idea (Digital Comics) that for the first two days the site has been running, the server's been too busy to accomodate all the requests to the site.
On the flipside, people don't like paying a monthly fee for a site they can't access!
Not to mention the CRUCIAL loss of good first impressions Marvel needed to make with this launch.
1) No downloadable comics - Wow, did you see that one coming? Seriously, has anyone at Marvel Corporate looked at the history of such sites as Spinner.com. People, especially us greedy Americans, really like to KEEP what we buy, and not being able to download and store your comics from the Marvel site seems like a huge oversite.
2) That interface is still pretty awkward. I've noticed quite a number of people saying the found the interface difficult to understand or clumsy. You don't hear prople say that about CDisplay.
3) This is NOT the iTunes of Comics we were hoping for. With all the media hype that this site is getting, I'm afraid the idea of Marvel delivering their comics in a nice downloadable cbr format are pretty much gone. I also suspect that DC will probably do something similar, so we end up having to read the complete I, Vampire or Black Orchid in some ghastly Zuda interface.4) No Woodgod. - Nuff Said.
...I'll probably keep checking out the site, but I'll be wishing I could download the comics everytime. :D
