Free is the best price point!

Did you manage to score any of those free Marvel #1 comics?  Marvel offered 700 first issues through Comixology and apparently inspired demand so great Comixology's servers couldn't handle it.  While most of the offerings held little to no interest for me-- Marvel Ultimates, Marvel Zombies, Marvel Now, Avengers vs. X-Men and stuff like that-- I did find 84 comics both old and new I loaded into my digital shopping cart.  Then I couldn't complete the transaction because Comixology wouldn't let me sign in.

The shopping process went as usual.  Maybe a little more slowly, but not so much it taxed my patience.  Then the sign-in stage and nothing but a blank screen.  I left it for a while, watched a little Japanese television-- celebrities who graduated from the top universities here taking a kanji quiz while dressed in high school uniforms-- then came back to find that same blank screen.  I turned off my computer and picked up an actual book.  I'll try again tomorrow, I thought.

Now Marvel and Comixology have suspended the offer so I'm out in the cold.  I'm a little disappointed, but those are the breaks in this digital age.  Fortunately, I'd previously bought a few of the number ones offered-- New Mutants, Fantastic Four and some others from the good ol' days.  

But there were some oddball choices (for me) I was really looking forward to having in my Comixology library.  Wolverine and Jubilee, for example.  Young Avengers.  The first Joss Whedon Astonishing X-Men and the Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men with Kitty Pryde riding the giant space bullet into apparent oblivion.  Some updated Dracula story.  FF, a new Fantastic Four book with a different cast and Mike Allred art.  Not stuff I'd cover here where my focus is on comics from the last century, but things I wanted to read nevertheless.

Well, maybe they'll take the lessons learned from this event and do something similar in the future.  I still think Comixology is a wonderful site, especially for a person living overseas where it's difficult and expensive to come by print issues of various comics.  And, after all, free is my favorite price point.