I paid $29,99 CND for it, but have found it cheaper elsewhere. I doubt it would be much more than 20 bucks US.
This is that collection of silver age comics on a CD Rom that Marvel put out recently.
Inside we get 10 scanned Masterworks. The characters/comics included are:
- Spider-Man: Amazing Fantasy #15,
- Amazing Spider-Man #1-9
- Daredevil: Daredevil #1-10
- X-Men: Giant Sized X-Men #1, Uncanny X-Men #94 -102
- Fantastic Four: Fantastic Four #1-10
- Hulk: Incredible Hulk #1-6,
- Tales to Astonish #60-63
- Captain America: Tales of Suspense #59-68
- Silver Surfer: Silver Surfer #1-10
- Avengers: Avengers #1-10
- Iron Man: Tales of Suspense #39-48
- Namor, The Sub-Mariner: Tales to Astonish #70-79
Plus the covers to all the listed comics.
What they look like:
I do not own a masterwork volume so I can't compare how the art looks to one of those. What I can say is that the art does has some flaws. The pages are brightened, which sometimes leaves thin lines looking faint. There is the odd coloring mistake to be found as well.
How it Works:
You read these comics through your web browser. What the CD does is install a plug in that allows your browser to view the images. Then it points the browser to the character list, which you can click on and then start reading the stories. When they come up, you can change the size to what suits your fancy best. I use "Fit Width" and all I have to do is scroll down to read the page. While there is some black borders and white space on the sides, I can still read it just fine using my 17 inch monitor. Also on the left side are all the pages in thumbnail for easy jumping. On top is an arrow navigation for going page by page or from start to finish. Overall it is extremely easy to pop in the CD and read the comics. It works a bit faster it you copy the whole thing on to your HD, but the CD has about 500 megs on it.
The stories:
I've already read a number of these comics in Essentials format. For that reason I was very hesitant to buy this. I went into a video place where they had a stand nearby the front door with a bunch of them and looked at the box a few times. But one day I got bored, needed something to read and decided to try this. I felt sorry for the store as I don't think they were selling them all that quickly and I would like to see Marvel do more digital comics projects. So I spent the money and got this.
I haven't read every comic, but I will review what I have read.
Spider-Man has the origin and then some of many of his famous arch-enemies. Among them Chameleon, Vulture, Dr. Octopus, Sandman, a fight with Dr. Doom, Lizard, rematch with Vulture, a boxing match between Parker and Flash Thompson, A fight with the Human Torch, and Electro. The Sandman story in particular is very condensed, after reading it you go *whew!* as it takes a long time to get through. Stan and Ditko packed a lot of story in them pages.
Fantastic Four is focused on them turning into superheroes (getting costumes and a headquarters) and battling Namor and/or Dr. Doom a bunch of times. The love triangle between Namor and Sue Storm is played up quite a bit here. Storm actually did have the hots for Namor. Also included is the story where the Fantastic Four have to find jobs - not unlike that storyline going on today.
Hulks first 6 issues showed Stan and Jack went ahead with this character without really knowing what they were going to do with it. They keep tinkering with the why Bruce Banner changes into the Hulk and how Rick Jones plays into it. At it's most offbeat, the Hulk is brainless, Rick Jones commands him with his mental thoughts and for one panel Hulk actually flies. No surprise the ended his series at issue #6 to make way for a Spider-Man series. When he returns in Tales to Astonish, they have it all hammered down to what we know today and spends time battling against the Leader, with Betty and her father General Ross being the on-running conflict. Ross wants Banner arrested because he thinks he has something to do with the Hulk. Eventually Tabolt is introduced as well. Also of note, the Tales to Astonish stories are penciled by Steve Ditko and they look good!
Avengers I've read in Essentials format. Major villains to debut are Space Phantom, Lava Men, Masters of Evil, Kang, and Immortus. Captain America and Wonder-Man also make their debut here (well, re-debut for Cap). Loki is in the first issue and we see Hulk and Namor attack the Avengers. All these stories are very good.
Iron Man I'm just part way though reading now. You see him change from silver to gold and why, then to the more traditional costume. He battles an evil scientist named "Dr. Strange" who was a genius before getting hit with a bolt of lighting. This somehow enhances the electrical signals in his brain and makes him smarter. No relation to the current Dr. Strange. Better known villains include Jack Frost, Crimson Dynamo and the Melter. Perhaps some of the others have come back but since I've never read any Iron Man's I don't know if the second string villains turned out to be anything major in the ongoing series.
The rest I haven't read but most of them have debuts of the series major villains.
Piracy:
Just for fun I decided to test and see how easy it would be to pirate these comics. All the images are in a DjVu format, which is not recognized by ACDSee. I did do a search on djv file format and found some programs that could convert them to jpg. I tried to convert the images only to get white pages with extremely faint gray marks showing the line art. Sorry folks, unless somebody zips the entire 500 megs and you keep your computer online long enough to download it from a generous soul, you're going to have to buy the CD.
Extras:
They also advertise 3 free comics on the box. If you go to that area it just takes you to Marvel.com website and tries to get you to buy a subscription - and that's when you get your three "free" comics.
Improvements:
Most CD's can hold 700 megs, some even 800 megs. This CD uses less then 500 megs so clearly there is space to put more stuff on it. If they wanted to stick with just scanning Masterworks it would have been nice if they put on Thor, Dr. Strange and the original X-Men masterworks as well. It would have also been nice had they stuck on the last 8 issues of Silver Surfer as his series only goes 18 issues and issue #10 kinda ends on a cliffhanger. I get the impression Marvel wanted to maximize their profits by putting as few manhours as possible in producing this thing. Get 10 Masterworks of 10 of their characters, scan them and let the techies work out everything else. Advertise 100 comics and try to sell subscriptions.
I give the CD 4 and a half out of 5 stars. I'm very glad I bought the CD despite having read some of the books in essentials format. There is still lots here I haven't read and I'm slowly working my way through them. This CD will still be entertaining me months from now. I only knock off half a star because they could have put more on. I tend to think the average reader would like to see the debut of Magneto, Toad, etc.. in original X-Men and I don't see how Iron Man is any more well known than Thor is. Dr. Strange stories are a cult classic that people should see and look way better in color than in black and white. In all I hope the sales do well enough for Marvel to make more CD Comics.
Regards,