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The Net Spider-Man

LOS ANGELES: Marvel Comics put some of its older comics online on Tuesday, hoping to reintroduce young people to the X-Men and Fantastic Four by showcasing the original issues in which such characters appeared. It is a tentative move on to the Internet: comics can only be viewed in a Web browser, not downloaded, and new issues will go online six months after coming out in print.

Still, it represents perhaps the industry’s most aggressive Web push yet. Even as their creations — from Iron Man to Wonder Woman — become increasingly visible in pop culture through movies and video games, old-school comics publishers rely primarily on specialised, out-of-the-way comic shops for distribution of their bread-and-butter product.

“You don’t have that spinner rack of comic books sitting in the [shop] any more,” said Dan Buckley, president of Marvel Publishing. “We don’t have our product intersecting kids in their lifestyle space as much as we used to.”

Translate “kids’ lifestyle space” into plain English and you get “the Internet.” Marvel’s two prominent competitors now offer online teasers designed to drive the sales of comics or book collections.

Dark Horse Comics now puts its monthly anthologies ‘Dark Horse Presents’ up for free viewing on MySpace. The images are vibrant and large.

DC Comics has put issues up on MySpace, and launched the competition-based Zuda Comics, which encourages users to rank each other’s work, as a way to tap into the expanding Web comic scene. Company president Paul Levitz said he expects to put more original comics online in coming years. “We look at anything that connects comics to people. The most interesting thing about the online world to me is the opportunity for new forms of creativity... It’s a question of what forms of storytelling work for the Web?” — AP

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