We recently reported on a sweet offer Marvel made to comic fans everywhere. For only several days, you could have downloaded 700 debut issues from Marvel’s library for free. This included the legendary debuts of Spider-Man, the Astonishing X-Men, and more.
We at TG thought this was a very cool offer because after all, this isn’t getting your hands on a rare paper copy that costs thousands of dollars on the collectors market. You could actually download the historic origin issues of many Marvel heroes, and enjoy classic comic history completely for free, but only for a limited time. After that, you could download them for $1.99 to $3.99.
Well as it turns out, the offer was even more limited than advertised, because this free for all was apparently “too popular,” and it’s not a surprise that customer demand caused a major net crash. Once the news got out about the Marvel free offer, the Comixology digital comics site started slowing down from the demand, and many couldn’t get their free comics. According to Weekly, the promotion was supposed to go until Tuesday the 12th, but by the afternoon of Monday the 11th it had to be shut down.
As David Steinberger, the CEO of Comixology, said in a statement, “We expected a high degree of excitement for the Marvel initiative – and had believed ourselves prepared – but unfortunately we became overwhelmed by the immense response.”
Once things get back to normal, you should be able to purchase the Marvel comics to download, and to those who briefly got them for free before the big crash, congratulations.
We know today’s generation doesn’t want to pay for anything, we understand that, especially during tough economic times, but at least on Comixology you don’t have to spend a ton of money to revisit classic comic history.
In fact, we think it’s pretty cool that you can look at a reproduction of a classic comic at today’s comic prices, without having to pay an arm and a leg for a first edition.
