Free and Cheap Comics

[Thad]

Humble Skybound Bundle includes the first 30 issues of The Walking Dead, plus some other stuff from Kirkman's publishing label at Image. (And you can get just the first 3 issues for free, without paying for the bundle.)

Invincible is a classic; the high concept is, essentially, "What if Superman's son was Spider-Man?"

Super Dinosaur is a really great and fun kids' comic, all the more enjoyable when you consider it's written by the same guy as Walking Dead. Also, there is a villain named Tricerachops.

I've only read a little bit of Witch Doctor, which was included as a preview in a Walking Dead comic a few years back, but I remember I enjoyed it and meant to pick up more of it.

I haven't read Ghosted or Thief of Thieves but I hear good things.

[Thad]

Top Shelf digital sale. DRM-free!

[Thad]

Humble Transformers Bundle: at the base you get the first 50 issues of Marvel's Transformers, minus the ones where Spider-Man or whoever shows up. That's a hell of a lot of '80's Transformers.

Pay more than the average and you get some more recent IDW comics: the first five issues of Spotlight (which was, IMO, the best Transformers comic IDW put out, though I quit reading after:), All Hail Megatron, which started out pretty strong and had some of the best characterization I've ever seen from Starscream but then finished weak, and Autocracy, which I haven't read.

For $15 you get More than Meets the Eye and Robots in Disguise. I haven't read those.

It's really interesting that they're putting these out DRM-free, because IDW hasn't signed on to Comixology's new DRM-free option and popular conjecture is that Hasbro and other licensors are the reason. Clearly this means Hasbro is open to the idea of releasing DRM-free comics, so maybe if this bundle does well it'll give them some encouragement (at least with older titles like these).

[Thad]

So now that I got my tablet I decided to grab both the Walking Dead/Skybound bundle and the Transformers bundle.

The Transformers comics come in two versions: Artifacted Illegible Goddamn Bullshit Mess and I Hope You Weren't Planning on Storing Anything Besides Transformers Comics on Your Tablet.

Image, as you might expect, seems to have a better idea of what the fuck they're doing.

[Blossom]

Really, how big are the files? Tablet storage isn't exactly starved, especially if you can slap in a microSD.

[Thad]

The "HD" files range from 100MB all the way up to 2.8GB and total around 12GB.

I don't object to having files available at that level of quality -- in fact, it's pretty generous and shows an eye toward archiving and future-proofing.

But I DO object to the lack of a medium setting between "uncompressed" and "garbage".

(The CBZ files, by contrast, range from 10MB to 80MB. In one case, the CBR file is less than 1% of the filesize of the corresponding HD PDF. I'm pretty sure they just released one version of each file where they set the Quality slider in Photoshop to "12" and then another one where they set it to "1".)

The Image files, by contrast, range from 100MB to 170MB and look great.

That's just a quick glance at the files; I haven't broken them down by page count or anything. Still and all, this is amateur-hour stuff and I'm beginning to see why IDW isn't offering DRM-free CBZ downloads through Comixology.

[Blossom]

Wow, yeah, that's kind of ridiculous. You want about a 400-700kb jpg per page, unless these are entire trades then there's no call for something that big to be the usable format.

It's kind of baffling the CBZs are illegible at that size, though.

[Thad]

They're trades, but they still don't need to be that big. I think 150MB would be just fine.

I'm exaggerating when I say the CBZ's are "illegible". They're legible. But the JPEG artifacting is very visible and very distracting.



EDIT TO ADD: The largest of the Transformers files I've downloaded, Classics vol 2, is 852 MB and 286 pages -- about 3MB per page -- and the smallest, Fall of Cybertron, is 98MB and 51 pages, just south of 2MB per page. (I haven't downloaded the biggest files, the All Hail Megatron mini, because I already own them in print. But according to Amazon, AMH vol 1 is 152 pages, meaning that 2.8GB file is approaching a truly ridiculous 19MB per page.)

By contrast, the largest of the Skybound titles I've downloaded is Manifest Destiny vol 1, and it's 170MB and 132 pages, about 1.3MB per page. The smallest, Super Dinosaur vol 2, is 95MB and 128 pages, or 740KB per page -- slightly more than the 400-700KB range you suggested, and I can confirm it looks great on a 10.5" 1600x2560 tablet.

(I do find the text and the dialogue balloons slightly jaggy on a 27" 2560x1440 monitor, but I'm inclined to blame that on the letterer. Unfortunately it's perfectly common to see problems with the antialiasing settings even in print comics -- not as bad as it was in the 1990's when computer lettering first became common, but still pretty common.)

[Thad]

TFAW's got a nick and dent sale.

In my experience, this makes for really excellent deals on comics that have only slight damage.

[Thad]

Warren Ellis and Mike Allred's Bacardi comic. Warning: uses panel-by-panel zoom-and-pan navigation that is probably a pretty good idea on a phone but completely fucking stupid and ugly on a full-sized desktop monitor.

[Thad]

Latest Humble Bumble is from Boom. No Adventure Time, but they've got Bravest Warriors. And Lumberjanes is supposed to be pretty great.

[sei]

So now that I got my tablet I decided to grab both the Walking Dead/Skybound bundle and the Transformers bundle.

The Transformers comics come in two versions: Artifacted Illegible Goddamn Bullshit Mess and I Hope You Weren't Planning on Storing Anything Besides Transformers Comics on Your Tablet.

Image, as you might expect, seems to have a better idea of what the pineapple they're doing.

Use something like Irfanview* to batch resize the too-big version, then use owncloud or equivalent to get it from your tower onto your laptop.

*Would be surprised if GIMP or some linux cli shit like imagemagick didn't support batch image processing. Irfanview is probably the most user friendly, free way to do it on Windows, though.

[Thad]

The high-quality versions of the files are all friggin' PDF's.

There's probably a way to batch-extract the images and THEN fix them, but it's one more step.

[sei]

Ewww.

Yes. Yes, it is. Especially since PDF is locked down and since almost any software that modifies it in a useful way (except briss, which is super cool if you just need to crop; doesn't resize, though) costs money.

[Thad]

You know what? I can probably just grab a fucking torrent.

[Thad]

And speaking of Don Rosa Disney Duck comics, you can get Fantagraphics' FCBD release of A Matter of Some Gravity and The Sign Of The Triple Distelfink free on Comixology. (Unfortunately Fantagraphics hasn't jumped on the DRM-free train and so you'll have to use the Comixology app, but hey, it's free.)

You'll want to lock your screen orientation for this one.

[Thad]

Bleeding Cool's got Legends of Red Sonja #1 for free. It's got a story by Nancy Collins and Noah Salonga, another by Devin Grayson and Carla Speed McNeil, and a framing sequence by Gail Simone and Jack Jadson. It's good stuff.

[Thad]

Got the Boom bundle.

It's got the same problem as the Transformers bundle, except only 4 comics even have high-quality versions: Lumberjanes #1, #3, and #4, and, inexplicably, Translucid #2, which suggests somebody clicked on the wrong #2? I don't even know.

Part of me feels petty for complaining about the image quality given that I just scored a bunch of great books for $15. This is still a great deal. But damn it, it is not enjoyable to look at, and my experience with two of the past three bundles has led me to conclude that I should only buy Humble Comics Bundles from companies that already have experience selling CBZ files. (The Image bundle looked great. I would expect the same from a publisher like Thrillbent or Monkeybrain.)

[Thad]

Valiant to offer its catalog as DRM-free PDF's on Drive-Thru Comics; for the next 30 days you can get #1's for free (but have to sign up for an account).

I like the new Quantum and Woody and have been meaning to check out Archer and Armstrong.

[Thad]

Regarding the Valiant books:

Quality is decent. Balloons and words are really sharp, while background images are a little blurry (but have no noticeable JPEG artifacting). I'm curious if they're actually different image layers, since you can do that in a PDF.

They're watermarked but it's not intrusive.




MEANWHILE:

Dynamite opens digital store, sells DRM-free books. There are a bunch of #1's going for 10 cents a pop, and for the first month 10% of sales will go to the CBLDF.

The Trial of Sherlock Holmes is pretty good.

I haven't read the new Vampirella yet but Nancy Collins is a great writer and I'm surprised they got her.

The Boys is...not for me. But if you like Garth Ennis and hate superheroes, you might dig it. It's got a guy who looks exactly like Simon Pegg in it; that part's cool.



As for stuff that's not on the ten-cent list (and therefore not really appropriate for this thread, but I'm already here):

The first issue of Captain Victory is recommended; it's a lot like the Prophet reboot in that it takes an existing SF comic book and does weird shit with it. Unfortunately, not only is it not on the cheap list, it's frankly damn expensive. They want a full cover price of $4 for it.

Gail Simone and Walter Geovani's Red Sonja is pretty great and they're selling it for two bucks an issue.

Project Superpowers...well, it's a neat idea (bring back a bunch of Golden Age superheroes who've entered the public domain) but it never really gelled for me.