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Yet another step towards complete digital distribution as Marvel and Graphic.ly announced a deal to sell Marvel Comics via Graphic.ly’s desktop application. Single issues will be available via both digital download to desktop and some mobile devices, including such titles as Iron Man; Kick Ass; Amazing Spider Man; Captain America, and Astonishing X-Men. While comics have been getting established on handheld devices, selling them via a stand-alone desktop client has been having a harder time getting off the ground; this should change that. Desktop downloads have the advantage of being readable when offline of benig able to be shared among devices.

The Graphic.ly software is available for Mac and PC via ADbove AIR and Windows. In an email to siubscribers, head Micah Baldwin announced a few that individual issues would cost $1.49, and a few other initiatives:

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).


We haven’t been able to test the Graphic.ly software yet — AIR and our computer don’t go well together — but it seems that yet another stretch of the highway to digital day and date delivery has been paved.

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