Pay For Downloading Comics

There are more and more ways to legally download comics nowadays. Marvel Comics has their digital subscription service and there are also sites like WOWIO, Direct 2 Drive, and Drive Through Comics that also allow you to pay a fee to download comic files. Most of them use a viewer type system or allow you to download them as a PDF file, with none that I'm aware of offering the CBR or CBZ files that are more common to illegal downloads.

I personally really like this trend. I hate paper and would rather get stuff electronically any day. Keeping track of a comic collection can be a lot of work and I don't ever have to worry about damaging them physically, although a computer crash would be the same as a home fire for a digital comic collection.

My biggest complaint with the digital downloading sites are two-fold right now. First is the monopoly effect that sites have. You have to go to specific sites that have licensing deals with comic publishers to get the comics you want. Marvel.com is the only place to legally download their comics and other sites only carry certain brands. There is no true digital comic book store where you can get whatever you want. Second is the price of these downloads. Sure, many are reasonable at only a buck or less, but many cost the same as the cover price. That's insane to me.

As more and more publishing companies seek to find ways to increase revenue, digital downloads seems to be a very smart choice. It is just one more way for companies to profit from their efforts. I just wish there would be a place where I could download all my comics and not go to jail for downloading them as well as getting them for a reasonable price.