Okay, I’ve got this in the cart, but haven’t yet pulled the trigger.
40 Years of the Amazing Spider-man
Anyone have any experience with this? They apparently scanned in all of Amazing, and some of the comics they scanned aren’t in great shape. I think it would be more expensive to buy all the volumes of Essential Spiderman, but probably easier to read but also not in color.
Thumbs up or thumbs down?
I don’t think it’s quite the same reading scans as it is flipping through the pages. It is however, going at a reasonable price.
If i didn’t actually have 40 years of spider-man*, I would buy it.
*My grandfather was a geek.
My father was a geek.
I chose to be something different.
and didn’t succeed.
i gave it a thumbs up. i’m only up to the early 80s. a slight yellowing and fading on some pages is the worst i’ve seen so far. imho it is easier to read in color than in the b&w volumes i saw in the store (although my monitor isn’t really big enough to read without inconvenience).
you get the full comic scanned, all pages including ads. some of the ads are pretty funny by themselves (i particularly like the marvel heroes and villains whoring themselves for hostess fruit cakes).
the comics are in pdfs and there is a MARVEL watermark on the pages that doesn’t get in the way when you’re reading.
you also might as well buy some jewel cases while you’re at it. the 11 cds come in stupid paper sleeves.
I actually think it’s fantastic – hell, if you bought the 5 Essential Spiderman volumes, you’d only get 120 issues or so of Spider-man, they’d be in black and white only, you wouldn’t get the adds, etc., and it would cost you 5 times as much.
How did you find this? Are there more? I searched for the “author” (Marvel Content Provider) but found nothing. I would like to buy boatloads of comics on CD!
What is that one, John M J? There’s no product details.
Massive meh to that. I was hoping for more like the Spiderman one, just for different characters.
Oh, there’s plenty like that available…But you said you wanted to “buy” it. 8)
I would rather buy it but if you have any pointers on not buying it, that’d be ok too.
I just dug out my copy of the mixed-heroes CD Desslock asked about — the J&R catalogue copy noun linked to isn’t complete. The CD has the first 10 installments each of Fantastic Four, Avengers, Spider-Man, Captain America (the Silver Age revival), Hulk (just the Hulk stories from Tales to Astonish), Sub-Mariner (the late 60s solo book, IIRC, not the TtA stories), Silver Surfer, Daredevil, Iron Man, and the second X-Men (Wolverine, Storm, Thunderbird, etc.).
Orpheo, I was just trying to impress you — I really know nothing about any source of huge reams of complete scanned comics series. I’m sorry if I misled you.
Nifty, thanks!
Just a follow-up because I did get this and I’m enjoying it quite a bit. I took the first 2 disks on my trip to SoCal and never touched them, but since then I’ve been using this as my “beat the heat” remedy, where I head to an air conditioned coffee shop, open the laptop and read a couple of issues of Spiderman. Now, of course, we’re back to temps in the 50’s so not so much.
A typical comic spread (2 pages) are quite readable at 1024x768, and I’m struck by the denseness of each page. Generally 9 panels per page with much more text than modern comics. I’m also struck by the mundane origins of most of Spidey’s legendary villains. Electro was just a stuck up line repairman who got struck by lightning. Mysterio is a hollywood stunt man who wants to beat Spiderman. Even Doc Oc gets Betty Brant to pick him up when he gets out of jail.
I’m also remembering how Spidey would lose his powers on a semi-regular basis. He got a cold and lost his powers. I seem to remember books from the 70’s where he was swinging around with horrible colds and that was part of the charm of Spiderman-- the idea that a superhero could have the flu and still be out there working.
Anyway, well worth $40. I’ve had it a month now and I’m barely through 1964. Granted I’m very casual about getting through it. Lots of reading to be done.
Incidentally, there’s a Fantastic Four collection now out too. Called “44 Years of Fantastic Four” or something like that. On DVD, not CD, thankfully.
Is there really? I have to get both of these. Just picked up FF essentials 4 today, but I don’t mind reading on the computer to get a zillion more issues AND in colour.
This is one of those things I’d like to be able to preview, because normally I hate reading “print” on a computer screen (long articles, books…)
You can always print 'em out.
Hell, Marvel’s colour reprint line, the “masterworks” is far from inclusive, and each compilation of 10 issues costs around $70. You could buy the CD and get a lot more pages out of a printer cartridge for that $$.
B&N in the US sells an exclusive TPB Marvel Masterworks. They don’t do the entire line, but the big sellers like Spider-Man. Something like $10-15 a pop. I picked up all the ASMs last fall when I was down in Boston. Still a little more expensive than the Essentials, but the color is fantastic. I don’t know why Marvel doesn’t offer these TPBs across the board. Better idea than the B&W Essentials, which I’ve gotten pretty tired of. Even DC’s now smartened up and is beginning a fairly cheap TPB Chronicles line reprinting old Batman already handled in the hardcover Archives line.
The 44 Years of Fantastic Four was scheduled to come out this week or last. Not sure if it did come out on time, but it showed up on eBay the other day.
here’s a few screenshots from acrobat. 160% size, my screen is at resolution 1024. at that size it’s legible but i have to move the image around because it’s a few frustratingly pixels too large to view on my screen.
the comics also include all the letters. and don’t forget the ads. here’s one for cbs sat morning:
