The Glade 4.0

So I've been considering getting this service, and I seem to recall a couple folks here have it.

My primary interest is in being able to read all the X-Men comics that my friends used to have, so I'm wondering how many of the older comics have been digitized? I'm less interested in the original stuff, but more the comics of the late 70's and 80's.

Appreciate any info.

I've got it. I'll poke around and let you know. Any titles, specifically?

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

The main X-Men series. I'm recalling a series in them where there was some alien "bug" race that ended up with the X-men travelling in space on some living ship. The dark phoenix storyline was happening around that time as well.

Sorry I can't be more clear. In general I'm really just looking for a feel of what comics are available. Has Marvel digitized absolutely everything that they produced? Or only specific titles/series?

You mean the Shi'ar?

No, that's not the one. These were kinda bug-like as I recall, and the series had all the x-men getting implanted with eggs or some infection that would transform them into one of the aliens. Wolverine ended up resisting due to the healing/adamantium skeleton.

edit: found it. It's the Brood Saga that I'm looking for.

Oh yeah, the Brood. They were a thing.

Yeah, that's the Brood, and I suspect you're thinking of Uncanny X-Men #161-167, when they're fighting the Brood in Shi'ar space (there's a later run where they fight the brood on Earth, but that's only a couple of issues in the 230s). Here's one of the more memorable covers from the original storyline:



Also, the Dark Phoenix saga was in the 130s (concluded in Issue #137, with the aftermath in #138).

Okay, thanks to RD's issue references, I went back and looked at Uncanny X-Men's availability for those ranges -- Dark Phoenix is there in its entirety, but the Brood arc he mentions is in a hole in the current availability (skips from #153 to #167).

I've run into a few of these gaps much more recently using the subscription to catch up on some of my backlog (since it's easier than digging issues out, particularly since I have a lot of sorting to do for the past 3 years or so's worth). So I'm not sure what the rhyme or reason is as far as what causes the holes.

Said holes are, for the most part, the exception rather than the rule, particularly for popular and/or recent series. The start and most recent parts of the run tend to be the most complete.

Since I've got Uncanny X-Men up on the screen, I'll use it as an example. #544 is the most recent issue, and is the final one for the title sometime last year, IIRC (part of the Marvel Now initiative to create good startup points for the most popular titles across the Marvel U, playing mix-and-match with the Marvel standby "Adjective / Team or Superhero Name" format. Like I said, I'm behind on my Marvel, so I'm not sure, but I think it swapped with Spider-Man to become the Amazing X-Men. In any event, in the first 183 issues, Marvel Unlimited is missing 51 issues in 4 contiguous sections, and the most recent 118 issues (almost a decade of publishing) have no gaps at all. Now, Uncanny X-Men is also a good barometer for this because, not only is it popular, but it's one of the few titles that Marvel has been publishing continuously, rather than creating new volumes with relaunched numbering or terminating it in favor of a different title with the same characters. (For the record, DC is more often better than Marvel on this score -- ask Khross how high the Batman issue numbering goes...) The site is reporting 333 issues present out of those 544 that comprise 45 years of monthly comics since 1963 (hmm. Which indicates that there must have been a hiatus somewhere; I thought Uncanny had avoided that. Probably during the original X-Factor days or something.) In any event, this shows how the overall record's pretty decent, but has room for improvement -- over 60% of the issues are digitized. The middle third accounts for the bulk of those missing issues, and would appear to fall into the 184-332 range.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I mostly gave up on unlimited ... The holes and broken issue uploads are really irritating. When its working its gret but... Random gaps.

Yeah, I'm worried about that.

Frankly, if it was every X-Men from start to finish I would have been all over a subscription, but I'm OCD enough that a gap like that is going to drive me nuts.

That said, does anyone know if they are good about regularly adding comics and filling the holes?

They're constantly filling holes. I know of no rhyme or reason to it (aside from being pretty good about new stuff going up on a consistent basis). But every few weeks, new back issues go up. The problem is, of course, that there are a LOT of back issues in a lot of series. So I don't see the holes completely filling up for a while.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

It's very irritating. Even for 'new fill' on the rolling 6 month window they miss issues, upload with wrong date or issue number, with broken content (no load/missing speech bubble), and have no effective way to report problems or track resolution,

Which is a shame, because what works is GREAT


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2

So it sounds like I need to revisit this in a year or so and see where they are.

Probably a good move for what you're looking to do.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades