Hey, I absolutely love your blog, it’s the one thing that gets me out of bed on Monday mornings <3 I was thinking about getting Marvel Unlimited bc I'm way too broke to buy all the books I wanna read and it's mostly the older runs I'm looking for (just finished New Mutants v1 and it was awesome). I think you mentioned it a couple of times in the podcast, would you recommend it? I read somewhere that it's not really worth it for laptop and phone and I don't have a tablet, so I'm a bit unsure.
We use Marvel Unlimited because there’s not a great alternative for our specific purposes; but I, at least, am pretty reluctant to recommend it.
My biggest problem with Marvel Unlimited is that its interface is godawful unless you’re reading on either a tablet or a monitor at least as tall as a comics page (actually, the interface is still awful then, but the lack of a usable zoom function matters less). Yes, there’s a panel view, but it’s nigh unusable—it’s choppy, it frequently entirely omits parts of panels or entire panels, and it’ll throw panels and even pages out of order. I read on an 11″ laptop, and it sucks, hard. I can’t even imagine trying to navigate that mess on a phone.
It’s also worth noting that the Unlimited library is big, but it isn’t comprehensive; and the gaps often fall mid-series. For instance: If you’re thinking of subscribing mostly to finish up New Mutants, you are going to be sorely disappointed.
With the above in mind, I would recommend looking through the Unlimited library—seeing what’s available and what isn’t—and maybe waiting until Marvel has a free or discounted trial-period offer (which happens pretty regularly) to test it out and see if it’s what you’re looking for. There’s also the new scribd library, about which I know literally nothing, but which sounds like it might be worth checking out.
There is another alternative, one I’ve recommended before and will again for anyone working on a more flexible schedule than ours (basically, anyone not doing high-volume research for a weekly podcast): your local library. If they don’t have the books you’re looking for, talk to a librarian or check the computer system to see if you can request them via interlibrary loan. Comics collections are becoming a more and more standard part of library collections, and if you’re not wed to digital, they are a fantastic resource that far too few people take advantage of.
Best of luck!
/Rachel
Wholeheartedly agreeing with everything Rachel says above, but especially the part about hitting up your local library (and using interlibrary loans) as a way of catching up on the comics you want to read. I’m spoiled being where I am, because the Multnomah County Library system is amazingly good, but nevertheless: libraries, people. They’re your best friend when it comes to that whole reading thing.
The road to success at Image has been achieved by enough creators recently to create a recognizable pattern. Garner attention with a small, self-published title, write or draw for Marvel and DC until you get bored, pitch to Image as an ‘established creator,’ return triumphantly to creator-owned books, but now with the third largest publisher promoting your work. Whether intentional or not, Image is inheriting all of the disparities in representation that plague the industry at large. I sure am glad more people are seeing comics differently because of Image, but without real commitment to diversifying their content and creators, then where is the real change? It’s just the same folks making the same comics for the same people, and anything that succeeds outside of that is just icing on the cake. The comics industry doesn’t need another publisher that has to explain why there are so few women and minorities behind and in their comics.
You have to pitch ONE of these books: Doctor Druid or Staff-Team-Up starring Jarvis and Wong. Which do you choose and how would you pitch it?
Doctor Druid, and I turn him into a comic book writer to play up the fact that he’s always reminded me visually of Warren Ellis. (Now that I’ve made that joke, part of me is going ‘Wait, what if you did some kind of “Anthony Druid is a psych-sci-fi writer and his life goes nuts around him like a supernatural Philip K. Dick?” and wondering if there’s something in that.)
I like Doctor Druid, because he’s Marvel’s Doctor Orpheus; he’s the Doctor Strange who’s allowed to be a dick.
There’s more nice guitar gush (e.g. the sub-Tom-Scholz anthemic stairclimb of ‘Black Star’), but the rest of the album mostly reminds me of Suede trying to rock like Sparks but coming out like U2, or (more often) that hissy little pissant in Smashing Pumpkins passive-aggressively inspiring me to clobber him with my copy of The Grand Illusion by Styx
I want to see the weekly five-or-six-page thrill-powered serial that you would write if you got to come up with everything yourself. That’s what.
I have an answer to this! Kind of. Back when I was trying to get something together for Dylan Todd’s 2299 anthology – spoilers: I completely screwed myself on scheduling and let myself and him down on that front, so sorry again, Dylan – I came up with a one-off 2000AD-style thrill called Lucifer Sam (because the Pink Floyd call-out seemed ideal) that was pretty much my take on a John Wagner take on a Han Solo character in a Dredd-esque future world. It was ridiculous in the ways such things should be ridiculous, and one day, I might revisit the idea.
(Talking of anthologies I tried and failed to contribute to, there’s also a story I wrote for a San Francisco-based anthology which explained the secret origin of the Transamerica Pyramid. That was very Future Shock-y.)