You may have heard of this little application called Graphic.ly that’s sweeping the digital comic community by storm. Well, in a very cool and very big move, Graphic.ly has partnered with Marvel to bring $1.49 digital comics for their desktop app. Holy canole!
Arguably one of the biggest problems that comics and digital comics have at the moment is a price tag. Everyone wants to get their comics for cheaper. We have money to spend, but we want to spend it properly. So what’s the way that the market reacts to us? By matching our needs. Graphic.ly has now placed all of their Marvel books at $1.49 a pop for their desktop application (one which even yours truly uses). Of course, this is only available for the desktop – due to Apple’s price policies, you’ll still be paying $1.99 on the iPad and iPhone. But the neat trick is you can get the comic on the desktop first, and then it’ll be available free for your iPhone because you’ve already bought it. Bam!
This is a great way to get people into digital comics, if you ask me. The only thing left we need is digital download cards at this point. If you’ve never checked out the program before, go to graphic.ly to download the program for your desktop or your iPhone/iPad.
For the full press release, check behind the cut.
We have had a crazy couple of weeks here at Graphicly HQ. We have moved into new offices (here is my view) We even got new desks! We have been traveling and getting ready for New York ComicCon. And have been trying to put together a few interesting surprises.
Here is the first: We have added around 200 new books to the applications (iPhone, iPad and Desktops)! We have more than 50 publishers on board, and are working towards our goal of a hundred.
At Graphic.ly, we are not trying to be the “Diamond of Digital Comics”. We are excited to have publishers of all sizes join us in helping to build a community that believes as we do that comics are best when shared with friends.
To this end, we reached out to Zuda creators, and have a few that are on board. In Maps and Legends, a great book started on Zuda, is in Graphic.ly, and looks amazing. We have creators from all over the world that we are helping get involved in our community. These creators don’t have to be published through Diamond to get involved, they just have to have a healthy desire to engage with their fans.
We also have worked with Marvel to bring their digital catalog to our desktop applications. Its great news for our community who has asked for Marvel on the desktop.
We believe that the experience of reading comics on your laptop or desktop in full screen mode is awesome. So awesome in fact, that we are going to give everyone who has signed up (or signs up in the next few days) Fantastic Four #1 (Which started it all!). It might not appear right away, but it will over the next day or two. (I wish I could get everyone in the same room so I could go all Oprah and scream “you get a comic! and you get a comic! Everyone gets a comic!”
All Marvel books will be priced at $1.49 in the desktop stores (because of Apple’s pricing policies, they will be $1.99 in the iPhone/iPad. BUT – if you buy them on the desktop, they automatically show up on the iPad/iPhone for free. *hint, hint*)
Here is the second: We have partnered with Foursquare to bring the comic world to the real world. If you go to our Foursquare profile you will see (soon – like in the next couple of days) tips about real locations in the world that correspond to the world of comics! We are building the badges as we speak, but you can imagine that we will have some fun stuff in store for New York Comic Con! (Including free stuff! and a scavenger hunt.) If you have suggestions for tips and or venues, let us know.
Here is the third: Not sure if you saw this, but we launched Bonus Content at San Diego ComicCon. With Berserker #0 and Irredeemable #1 you can listen to the creators talk about the book, download scripts and with Irredeemable, actually run away the color on panels to reveal the inks below! To allow everyone to play around with this, we have put Berserker #0 into everyone’s account as well for free. (Its not an all ages book, so please be mindful).
