To an overflowing crowd of devoted fans at the SXSW Gaming Expo, Axel Alonso (Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief), Arune Singh (Director of Communications at Marvel Entertainment), and Peter Phillips (senior vice president and general manager of Marvel Entertainment’s Digital Media Group) gave updates to existing projects and explained exactly what the teased Project Gamma is going to be about.
First up on the list of announcements is that the Marvel app is completely free with over 700 free comics. However, there is a limited time frame for these free comics to be available to download. From now and through March 12, over 700 Marvel #1 issues will be made available free to own digitally. These free comics include some from the earliest incarnation of the company up to the critical- and fan-favorite Hawkeye, which editor Axel Alonso himself recommended to the audience. Feel free to use the #Marvel1 hashtag on Twitter to promote this special deal.
Next, Singh set up what turned out to be a cheesy video about quite a cool project. On July 9, Marvel will release a new weekly series, starting with Wolverine: Japan’s Most Wanted to coincide with the character’s upcoming movie. This new weekly series will predate the regular delivery date of print comics on Wednesday by coming out every Tuesday.
Singh pushes the idea that this new Marvel weekly digital series is about, “Top talent, top characters.”
Also announced is the name change of Marvel Digital Unlimited to simply Marvel Unlimited. This new version of the online comics platform will now use HTML5 instead of Flash to make Marvel’s comics readable on all devices. Marvel Unlimited has over 13,ooo digital comics, and you can also save and read comics offline.
“More than a Marvel comics app. It’s more like a Marvel lifestyle app,” says Arune Singh.
Today also sees the first public demo of Project Gamma, where according to Alonso, “is adaptive audio where you control the pace, you control the universe.” Marvel wants everyone to fully understand though that isn’t a set soundtrack or motion comics.
“You’re not pressing play on your comics, because then they’re not comics,” said Arune Singh.
Alonso goes further to describe Project Gamma as an, “Adaptive non-lyrical score that moves along with you in the narrative.”
Even Phillips admits that there was hesitation about using this new application to the comics from within the company at first. “We weren’t all sold on this until we saw it and then we said, ‘wow.'”
Partnering with two agencies most known for scoring movies, Momentum and Chord, music in Project Gamma is key to the story beats of a comic book. One priority of this application is to theme this to story lines and certain characters to let you know they’re coming. The most important refrain from the panel is that the reader always remains in control. Readers are in ultimate control of the pace of the story and the music changes to associate with the panels and pages you view, without looping. Also, if you wish, you can always turn off the score whenever you want. Right now, there’s no specific platform or comic Gamma is tied to, but it’s set to come out later in 2013. What was showed to today’s audience was completed yesterday to have this debut.
“We’re constantly evolving. We’ll be at a point where this will look like Pong,” said Axel Alonso.
Marvel then showed a teaser video of Earth’s Mightiest Show, which stars Blair Butler every week and will be, “Streaming to your internets…soonish.”
This new web show will focus on more than just Marvel properties and tackle subjects that the company thinks are of interest to its fans. Putting Earth’s Mightiest Show out there fits into the “Marvel lifestyle” that everyone on the panel has mentioned repeatedly.
About the entire release of Marvel’s apps and the online show, Phillips said, “This is about an ecosystem to make your experience greater.”
UPDATE: Bleeding Cool is now reporting that ComiXology’s servers have experienced crashes due to demand of people trying to download Marvel’s 700 free comics.
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