Marvel is offering its archives online for $9.99/month, or $58.99 a year.

Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Well…

“Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited products will be viewable only in a Web browser and not downloadable.”

Well, that’s a drag. But at least I can check out the comics I plan to purchase online first, and then go pick them up at my local comic shop so I’ll have a hard copy, right?

“Additional content will not include new comics until six months after their print publication.”

Oh. So, why would I use this service?

“The move comes after years of discussion amongst fans and professionals about an intuitive and legal alternative to downloading pirated comics.”

So it offers less than the pirated comics do (apparently it requires some sort of “reader,” and doesn’t let you store a hard copy), except it charges money for it, and it’s out of date. Sweet, I’ll take two.

“Said Peter David, “If [Marvel] put their monthly comics online at the same time, they’d be cutting their own throats and undercutting the retailers.”"

No, that’s stupid. They’re offering almost no incentive for people to use this option for new comics. The old archives, fine. Makes sense, I guess. As long as you don’t care about being able to read the comics on some other device at another time.

But new comics? They’re six months out of date, so you can’t keep up with the comics community online, and will have to avoid spoilers. What kind of market is this targeting? The comic book-liker who doesn’t care about being up-to-date, who feels bad about pirating, but likes comics enough to pay for them instead of pirating? Who is this mythical person?

This will do almost nothing to stop comic book piracy. It offers no benefits over just downloading the torrent. I mean, who actually bought every Civil War comic? I didn’t buy any of them because there were too many and I didn’t have the money. I also didn’t download the torrent, either, because I felt bad about that. I’m not going to pay to view them online on Marvel Digital, though. Why? Because I know how it ends.

Everyone knows how it ends. Six months is too long to wait to release the content. The small demographic that they could be targeting just doesn’t care enough to wait, or to not pirate them.

I have a feeling that this was only set up so that they could maintain a moral high ground. They can continue lamenting pirated copies by saying, “Hey, we offered them online legally, and you still didn’t want to pay for them.” That way they can feel satisfied charging ridiculous prices for the printed copies and encouraging piracy.

Geniuses, the whole lot of them.