Things you can get on the web for free (or very reasonable)

Wow, there are more free things than EVER on the internet! What is the use of playing softball in the park or brunching with the girls when there is so much cool free shit?

First off, some that is NOT FREE, repeat NOT FREE, but it is pretty affordable: yesterday’s news BOMBSHELL: TEZUKA ON THE WEB! Japanese bookstore Papyless will make 448 stories from manga forefather Osamu Tezuka available, including ASTROBOY, BLACK JACK and NEW TREASURE ISLAND. Starting March 18th it will cost 105 yen, or about one dollar, to read a volume over 48 hours. You can buy it for keeps for 315 yen per volume. Hopefully with a little Googling and Paypaling we can finally read NEW TREASURE ISLAND which was to manga what D. W. Griffith was to filmmaking, technically speaking.

Technorati Tags: Dr. Goldfoot, Tezuka

Turning to FREE STUFF on the web, Dark Horse recently began serializing SHAMAN WARRIOR by Park Joong-Ki for free. On the web. The first three chapters are available here. (Aside: Derek Kirk Kim, who we have not seen new comics from in WAY TOO LONG helps with the translation.) the book came out a year ago–retailers haven’t yet complained about putting this up on the web but if this isn’t a sales tool, nothing is.

Next up, it was recently announced that Wendy and Richard Pini were joining the now-seemingly-inevitable print-to-web migration, by putting the entire run of ELFQUEST online:

It had to happen. Even with thirty years of more-or-less continuous publication, there’s a goodly chunk of the complete Elfquest saga that has gone out of print. Many of the collected volumes are still available but raising a new audience one book at a time is slow. So after a lot of thought we have decided, over the course of Elfquest’s 30th anniversary year, to make every single Elfquest comic available to you, to read, right here. It’s going to take page-code revamping and a heck of a lot of scanning, but by year’s end you’ll be able to follow every tale, every adventure of every character who’s ever seen print.

The first chapter goes up this Friday.

WANT MORE? You got more. THE COMICS JOURNAL is now offering online subscriptions and this week only the online version of TCJ #288 is available for free in its entirety. The offer ends this Sunday. Hurry, children, hurry!

Okay what else…Ah…a giant mutlinational conglomerate has launched Hulu.com a new streaming video site where you can watch the Simpsons, Family Guy or The Big Lebowski in their entirety. More content from FOX, NBC, MGM, Sony Pictures Television, Warner Bros. and Lionsgate will be made available. Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine and its dynamite followup Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs are both available as well.

FOR CHRIST SAKE WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? This web thing is definitely where it’s at!