Part me hates the idea of loosing comic book stores, but Comic publishers need to look at the newspaper business and see that print media is a dying media, except for books. If they put every comic published online and sold them for say $1 each or had some type of monthly $20 subscription I'd likely read 30-40+ titles a month. I've gone long periods of time in my life off and on where I did buy this many titles a month and its just crazy expensive especially these days when every title is $3-$5 each. Just trying to keep up with the bare minimum of 4 ongoing titles and usually 1-3 one offs or a tpb a month is still a good $30+ easy. I know Marvel has a subscription type service but the last time I looked at it there were not enough of my titles on it and they didn't put up new ones every month. It'll be hard giving up hard copies for digital ones. I have 8-10 long boxes in closets right now and I'll sold off a dozen or more over the years. Its also considerd a collecting hobby but so much of it is total bs blown up by publishers making short first print runs, limited covers, etc that I get pretty sick of it. All I want are the stories, I don't care anymore if I got the 1 of 1000 with the cool cover anymore.
I like the idea of reading comics online. Heck, I keep a scanned copy of each of the ones I have right now anyway, and it's a lot easier than going through stacks and trying to find the right ones. Plus it saves wear and tear on multiple readings so I can keep my comics all minty fresh.
The TFCC should contact IDW and try to put the club magazine available through this system. The market seems to be able to handle digital release of publishing materials now without harming the publisher unlike the "email a PDF out" ideas... I usually only buy TPB now, I would gladly pay a fee to read comics as they come out and then buy a TPB at the end. Seems like a good attempt to be ahead of the wave instead of crushed under it when the technology changes.
It's a good concept, and I might actually get somewhat interested in IDW comics if I could "get" them without having to have physical copies laying around. Now, if any one of the various online publishers could come up with a distribution method that doesn't suck balls and make me want to punch my computer between page loads on visual media, they may be on to something.
Digital copies of both Alliance and Defiance (issues 1-4 for both)are now available through the app store for iphone and iPod touch at .99 each. I have no reason not to get them now ^__^
