Paninivision - Marvel US Reprints in the UK

[primenova]

I wouldn't mind reading some since House of M that I've not read if issues are being passed round. But be just collecting them don't want anyone paying big postage.

ie someone have box load the some one else wants to read them based north east/west (near m62) to midlands so drop off after reading.

[The Doctor]

Old issues have been going in the recycling bin. I haven't got time/energy to send them anywhere.

-Ralph

[primenova]

If you are ever at a meeting them - but only if we can pass them around a few people so they get read a lot.

[The Doctor]

To repeat: old issues go in the recycling bin. A load went in today.

-Ralph

[The Doctor]

Actually on this point: what do folk do with their Paninivision issues? I keep MWOM but recycle Marvel Legends and Avengers Universe due to lack of space.

Hulk and FF back issues also had to go. I read X-Men and Spidey on and off but when I do they are also fed to the recycle bins!

I mostly read them to keep up to date and subs copies turn up heavily creased and/or dinged anyway. Anything really good in them I'd want to read again I mentally note to get the trade of later (ie at some point Cap's Dimension Z story and Jason Aaron's run on Thor will be had!).

I used to drop lots into an Oxfam book store but had to stop due to constraints on my time.

-Ralph

[Pinwig]

I have all of mine, which is X-Men back to about 2003 and four years or so of Legends and Avengers. Longboxes. The last price hike combined with wondering why I was keeping them all meant I stopped buying Legends and Avengers, with a view to going digital instead. X-Men I kept on with, just can't find this month's issue. I've been experimenting with digital reading and am coming round to it. I just need to get the message to my brain that I don't need to hoard paper copies of marvel stuff because I'm unlikely to read it again. I'm pretty sure I've got a load of Spider-Man in the 'to bin' pile in the archive too, those would be at least fifteen years old. If comixology allowed for DRM free downloads I'd have switched by now. I just want to own what I buy.

[browny87]

i dont like digital reading but that's purely because I stare at a computer al lday so its nice to get away from the screen, mine all go In comic boxes in a corner of the room!

[Philip Ayres]

Mine are all in Longboxes, which are under the bed .....

...... Or would be if the new bed's legs, effectively two planks offset from each other, fitted in my bed risers.

4 boxes: X-Men and Wolverine, Avengers, Spider-Man, MWOM & Legends

Space was THE main reason I stopped buying, but MWOM's frequently changing lineup drove me up the wall.

Very happy reading digitally and cheaper, almost all gets bought in sales and at 69p a sale price back issue that's cheaper than Panini for read once comics.

[primenova]

You can pick up some issues for 50p at comic marts or the lots for £5 (cant remember how many but works out around 25p or something)

[paulbyrnex]

I've been collecting/buying since day one back in 1995 the last ten years have been a slog though with relaunches and what not, ill health, college work cutting into reading time. Once I've finish college in August I plan to gather them all up from around the house and place all of them in long boxes. I all ready have a 2016 longbox, 2017 longbox, 2018 longbox and 2019 in progress Its handy that a years worth fits in one box.

I am missing some titles usually tying into when I was in hospital only a small lot though. Think I must have around 1300 issues so far ? I dunno lost count along time ago.

[The Doctor]

I do have fond memories of reading during Heroes Reborn, which I maintain was more interesting than the car crash it has subsequently been viewed as.

I have strange nostalgia for the contents page being in black and white!

-Ralph

[Andy Turnbull]

The FF book was very much a greatest hits but it was fun.

Iron Man was a bit too melodramatic and for me the start of Portacio going off the boil.

Cap - I never read, was super pissed at the binning of the Waid/Garney run which was amazing.

Avengers - didn't read much of it.

[primenova]

I know I got Ess Xmen v1 #1-150 all in 1 box

[Andy Turnbull]

Avengers Disassembled Bookazine now out.

Andy

[Andy Turnbull]

Adam Warlock in Paninivision means MWOM is being purchased again.

[Pinwig]

I have used the Panini back issue shop! The recent X-Men issue my Smith's failed to get in has joined this month's on the pile.

[The Doctor]

The latest 'Marvel Select' newsstand reprint trade is a Spider Man one with Mysterio stories. Has a few issues from PAD's 'Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man' in it.

-Ralph

[Andy Turnbull]

Ooooh is that with Mike Wieringo art?

[The Doctor]

The new issue of Avengers has the cover line of FURY FROM THE DEEP. As the editor is Scott Gray of DWM Comics fame I think we can call that a DW reference!

-Ralph

[Pinwig]

Excuse the long post, but bear with it, I've been on something of a journey comics-wise this year. I've been exploring lots of options for comic buying/reading recently and I think I've finally come to a conclusion.

Regular readers will remember my frustration with the way Panini comics have gone in the last year or so - small things mounting up. First it was removing the issue number box from the top left corner of the cover, which made it hard in my packed Smiths to see what I was trying to buy, then the change to perfect bound from saddle stitched, which stopped them feeling like comics and made them harder to read. I know that's how graphic novels are done, but graphic novels have an additional weight to them that makes the pages lay flat more easily and the covers don't crease/spines break like the Panini comics do because books are better bound. Then there was the continual price hikes, which I know isn't Panini's fault strictly speaking, but the skyrocket from £3.50 to £5 an issue in such a short space of time meant buying three comics a month went from £10.50 to £15. Subscription was an option, but again, unless you catch those good Christmas offers, subbing to three Panini books is an expensive hit.

So I reached the point at the start of the year where I dropped Avengers and Legends, not because I wasn't enjoying reading them, but because it just cost too much to do it. I kept on with X-Men because I've bought that monthly since January 2001. I kept a note of what was being published in the issues I wasn't buying and decided that I'd try out buying these digitally through the Comixology sales that Phil posts for us. I don't mind being significantly behind in reading, after all, I always have been through Paninivision. So No Surrender became the pilot test for that.

I began to adjust to reading digitally and found that actually, my tablet's screen might be slightly smaller than a standard US comic, but the clarity of the artwork and the brightness of the screen compensated for that. The art felt vibrant and alive, and I didn't have to angle the page to reflect light from my reading lamp out of my eyes. But it didn't feel quite right. It wasn't so much reading digitally that was the problem, it was more that it still felt intangible. I didn't physically own the comic I was reading. I'd paid for it, but it was still in the ether. Big stumbling block. I also started to look at my Panini long boxes, which at three books a month had grown in number. I started to question how many of these issues I would actually look at again and weighed this against the storage space I've got for comic collections (every issue of 2000AD/Megazine for a start).

What I realised is that reading in trades meant I was getting a better understanding of the stories. I have a very poor short term memory and struggle to maintain any storylines read in periodicals. I enjoy reading Marvel comics, but several years into reading X-Men, Avengers and Legends regularly I still felt like a new reader who wasn't quite sure what was going on. Reading No Surrender's 16 parts in one hit I felt like I'd read a story through and 'got' it, even though it wasn't *that* good.

So I started to think trade waiting was the answer - buy complete stories. But then I came back to the problem of housing pages and pages of stories that I might not even enjoy, let alone look at again. It was a risk. Like for example, I have enjoyed some of the Captain America stuff in Legends, but enough to want to buy whole books? probably not. Would I read No Surrender again? Probably not. I also felt that buying trades was probably going to limit my exposure to the wider world of Marvel. One problem I have always had with Paninivision is that it's a very narrow field of view. Events happen and things change in comics that Panini don't reprint, so there's often a feeling that you're only getting part of the story. They also have a tendency to miss issues out of runs when they're behind or trying to realign titles for crossovers. I felt that if I was going to get a proper handle on the Marvel world I needed a guide or something that would tell me what I needed to read in what order to get the full picture.

Finding reading guides online suddenly made me realise that yes, I was missing huge chunks of stories and there was much more going on than I could possibly house buying as trade paperbacks. All these factors were becoming frustrating to the point I considered giving up completely.I just couldn't find a way to make this work in a cost effective, space conscious manner that meant I could understand what was going on. That was when something Blueshift said ages ago popped back into my head - Marvel Unlimited. I wondered if that could be an answer.

I installed the app and gave the free trial comics a go, found it a comparable reading experience to Comixology. I asked myself what I felt about 'renting' comics instead of owning them, as would be the case with Comixology, and found that actually, in my head, there is no difference between the two. Even though you are buying comics from Comixology, I still don't feel I own them. Comixology or Marvel Unlimited, the way you access the comics doesn't feel any different. The difference is that with Marvel Unlimited I suddenly had an archive of over 25,000 comics at my fingertips. Anything that anyone mentioned on the Hub as being a good read was more than likely suddenly there, I could bring it up in seconds and explore it myself. Comparing the cost factor, an annual pass to Marvel Unlimited is £56.70 today. Divide that by thirteen to compare it to Panini and that comes to £4.36 - less than a single Panini issue over the four week cycle. Obviously Marvel Unlimited needs an internet connection, but you can download up to 12 issues at a time to read offline.

Suddenly it felt right. The remaining problem was 'owning' the comics I liked and wanted to keep. I could pick and chose now though, read first and decide to buy afterwards. So I can keep a select set of trade paperbacks of comics I really want to keep hold of, and just read everything else. Marvel Unlimited runs exactly six months behind release, so this week comics published in the first week of February go up. This is more than current enough for me, given Panini were at least six months further behind that anyway, and following my own thinking, it's older complete runs I want, not monthly issues. They also regularly add older issues; this week they added a bunch of Marvel Team-Up issues from 1972-74.

I've been using this approach for the last few weeks, helped by having reading time every day because I'm on holiday. I finally feel like I've got a format for reading Marvel comics that works for me. I decided to start by going back to the point I felt the storylines I've been reading over the last few years really kicked off, Avengers Disassembled, and have gone from there on an ever expanding organic path. I've used New Avengers 1-64 as the spine, so I'm covering Disassembled to Siege, branching out into other titles as they take my interest or feel necessary to add in detail. As such I've read New Avengers, Mighty Avengers, Ms Marvel and the core event books that happen in that time like Civil War and Secret Invasion. I'm heading toward Dark Avengers next to get Osborn's side of Dark Reign, having read some terrific stuff in Ms Marvel through that period, and will then move on to the Legends characters Cap, Thor and Iron Man (although being an Iron Man fan I have some of that stuff in trades anyway). Having consumed so much so quickly I feel I've got more of a handle on what's going on, and I don't feel bad about not physically owning a lot of it. I have picked up Mighty Avengers 1-20 in a trade collection (super cheap because it's old, brand new copy for £7.99 from amazon) because I loved the punch first mentality of Carol's team and I also really love Frank Cho's art. That also led me into picking up the first Ms Marvel Epic collection - it's all there on Unlimited, but again, the book was only a tenner new on amazon and I've become quite attached to that character reading these comics. She seems to be the forefront female Marvel character of the noughties outside the X-Men crew (really thin for an Epic though, it's only half the width of the Iron Man and Punisher ones I've got).

So there we go - mission accomplished. I'm now consuming huge quantities of Marvel back issues for less than the price of one Panini comic a month, and am making careful choices about the physical versions I buy to follow that up with. No wasted space on the shelf for stuff I don't really want, but at the same time I can launch into pretty much anything anyone says is good at any point. The only downside is that it probably means, after 18 years, that I've bought my last Panini X-Men comic.

[The Doctor]

At the end of day reading should be fun so if there are cost/format/space issues getting in the that then it is fine to change approach.

I can't see Panini sustaining 7 titles. Yes it's cheaper than buying individual US comics but the £5 price is a big mental barrier. I used to dip in and out of X-Men as a casual reader but not at a fiver.

-Ralph

[Pinwig]

I'm enjoying it. Machine Man in the Ms Marvel issues is hysterical. Great dry sense of humour and disdain for humans.

[browny87]

pin will you be bringing said tablet to TFN?

[Pinwig]

I expect so, yes. If the wifi holds out in the hotel it'll be useful for bedtime reading!

[browny87]

i thought so i may have to ask to hav a look at marvel unlimiteed, reading your experience above mirrors my feelings on it perfectly,

the only downside to me is i stare at a computer all day while teaching programming so it is nice to get away although im open to trying it!

[Pinwig]

Sure, yes. No problem. You can test it out pretty well yourself if you want - if you install the app from Google Play and skip the payment setup it gives you quite a few free comics to sample on the last step without having to enter any details or sign up to anything. If you want to browse the full index you can check that on my tablet.

The interface is really simple but the only thing it doesn't tell you is a single tap in the middle of the screen will get rid of the menu bar at the top of the page. The other thing to note is that if you sub through google play, which I did to test it, it sets it up as a recurring monthly £8.99 payment. To do an annual sub and get the cheaper price you need to sub via marvel's website.

[The Doctor]

MWOM reboots again next month and starts running Immortal Hulk.

-Ralph

[paulbyrnex]

Nov 14, 2019 8:24:36 GMT The Doctor said:

MWOM reboots again next month and starts running Immortal Hulk.

-Ralph

Apparently not the powers that be have stated on Facebook that Mighty World of Marvel is actually now cancelled.

[The Doctor]

What!!!

Oh no.

-Ralph

[The Doctor]

Do you have a link? I can't find that announcement.

-Ralph