Digital British comics?

[zippyfan]

I have been wondering why the likes of the Beano, 2000ad and other British Comics have never been released in digital format like American comics. Personally i find it hard to keep old Beano's and 2000AD's in good shape as the paper is usually poor. Come on comic book bosses , lets get some great 70s digital downloads of Beanos and Dandys.

[Mr_Wolf]

2000AD is available digitally:

http://www.2000adonline.com/news/06-08- ... your_ipad/

[Don Satchley]

Many are already available digitally if you know where to look... Groups like [REDACTED] for instance.

Moderator comment: Don't be encouraging bootlegging on the forum.

[Cole]

The Beano is also available for iPad/iPhone users:

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/the-bea ... 1875379?mt

[Duncan]

I bought some digital editions of Charleys war, johnny red and thirteenth floor last week but had to return them. The scans are far too low a resolution to be readable on a retina screen iPad. A real shame

[zippyfan]

Sadly it doesn't look like you can acquire back issues of The Beano :(

[Beaker]

I suppose I’d better not mention the guy or gal on Ebay who is selling DVD’s of huge collections of British comics.

No 2000ad or Beano, but full runs of Action, Starlord, Tornado, Krazy, Cheeky Weekly and a whole load of others.

Yes, they are copyright infringements but there is really no other way to read some of those comics short of spending years to hunt them down and a hell of a lot of money and the scans are rather good.

Whoever holds the rights to these comics, if anyone does, should really consider a legitimate digital release.

[Mr_Wolf]

That guy is just trying to make a quick few quid - he's certainly not in it for the good of making archive comics available to the general public.

[Beaker]

I’m sure he or she is. But it is good quality stuff at a reasonable price and well presented.

I should stress its not me selling them, I'm just a happy customer! :o()

I suppose the former New Model Army guy who runs the Sevenpenny nightmare site is one of the few offering free content for purely altruistic reasons.

[smorodina]

That guy is just trying to make a quick few quid - he's certainly not in it for the good of making archive comics available to the general public.

The worst thing about this is that - ignoring the legality issues - these comics are scanned by people who spend a lot of time in order to make them available completely free of charge to other enthusiasts. The e-bay sellers take advantage of this free source to sell them and make a profit. They don't scan themselves - at least none of the ones I've seen. None of the scanners, obviously, can claim any legal rights to their work, but it's still galling to see someone else selling it.

[Beaker]

I had no idea these were freely available on the internet and don’t know where from, but if this is the case then the seller (I assume we are talking about, to code the name ‘Mildred’ :o()) is indeed making a killing for very little effort.

Although it could be said that I’ve paid for the convenience of having them all on a disc (which is nicely printed, though) and saving the hassle of downloading. There are so many comics on the discs he/she offers then it’d take forever.

What I do object to is the proliferation of people on Ebay selling ‘PUBLIC DOMAIN’ (yeah,right!) copies of George Formby and Will Hay films etc….on most of these the quality is truly appalling and most can be bought commercially anyway.

[Jezza]

Discovered the joys of ".cbr" today thanks to this thread!

[orlock]

The worst thing about this is that - ignoring the legality issues - these comics are scanned by people who spend a lot of time in order to make them available completely free of charge to other enthusiasts. The e-bay sellers take advantage of this free source to sell them and make a profit. They don't scan themselves - at least none of the ones I've seen. None of the scanners, obviously, can claim any legal rights to their work, but it's still galling to see someone else selling it.

Absolutely. The people who scan these take a great deal of time to work on the detail. People such as 'Mildred' gain access to the content - rip it all down and then sell it on. Obviously the original scanners dont own the content but the main idea is to share with other enthusiasts and not to make money.

[John McE]

Although I do understand the copyright concerns, I found out through one of the comic forum about someone selling CDs of comics, and bought several disks straight away. I wasn't aware they were simply copying someone else's hard work in scanning the comics into digital format, but at the price charged they were hardly making a fortune, and when a disk was faulty they send me another at no extra charge.

In my defense the only comics I have any interest in are ones I bought all those years ago. Oddly enough, at my advanced age I find comics almost impossible to read, where as a kid, I devoured them.

The one comic strip I would love to see in full though is Maxwell Hawke - before TV Century 21 took over my childhood world, I absolutely lived for Monday morning, when the latest Buster comic, and new Maxwell Hawke strip would arrive. And curiously, that is one strip where only a few seem to be available.

[brigham]

...I suppose the former New Model Army guy who runs the Sevenpenny nightmare site is one of the few offering free content for purely altruistic reasons.

Is that what Oliver Cromwell's up to these days?