Skip to main content

Marvel Announces Barnes & Noble Nook Deal For Digital Comics

Breaking

By Nov 7th, 2011, 11:03 am

Recommended Videos

This morning, editorial director of Marvel.com, Ryan Penagos, live tweeted from Barnes & Noble’s NOOK event in New York City. Why was the Marvel employee in attendance? In addition to revealing their new Nook tablet, Barnes & Noble announced they would soon be carrying Marvel digital comics on the device in their first-ever electronic pairing with the bookseller. 

The news adds to the interesting tale that’s been unfolding between the bookseller and the comic book world. Last month, Barnes & Noble decided to pull all DC Comics books from their physical store shelves after the publisher made an exclusive deal with Amazon.com for their new Kindle Fire e-reader. Jaime Carey, chief merchant of B&N, gave this statement at the time, “regardless of the publisher, we will not stock physical books in our stores if we are not offered the available digital format…To sell and promote the physical book in our store showrooms, and not have the eBook available for sale would undermine our promise to Barnes & Noble customers to make available any book, anywhere, anytime.”

DC later felt the need to clarify that their digital releases would not be exclusive to just one e-reader but available through the Kindle app on other devices besides the Fire. B&N then made an interesting move by inking a deal with UK publisher 2000 AD/Rebellion for a slew of old Alan Moore stories.

Penagos tweeted the news about Marvel comics coming to the NOOK and then continued filling his 1.3 million followers in about the new product and details about the deal. Here’s a breakdown:

  • NOOK Comics will have a lot of Marvel support and content and the library will continue to grow.
  • It will have the largest collection of Marvel graphic novels than any other tablet on the market.
  • The NOOK is in HD and weighs under a pound. It also has wifi and can do 9 hours of video on a single charge. It will have 16 GB of internal storage and support for up to 32 GB SD cards and 7 times more memory capacity than the Kindle Fire.
  • The tablet supports 1080p video, Netflix, Hulu Plus and offer free cloud storage.

The NOOK Tablet will cost $250 and be available next week online and in stores soon. B&N’s NOOK Color will now be $199 with new enhancements and also have Marvel comics. Penagos also gave us a look at the tablet up close via his tumblr, showing off Ultimate Spider-Man #1.

What do you make of the big news? If you were going to choose, which device would you purchase, the new NOOK or the Fire?

Previously in Barnes & Noble

Have a tip we should know? tips@themarysue.com

Author
Jill Pantozzi
Jill Pantozzi is a pop-culture journalist and host who writes about all things nerdy and beyond! She’s Editor in Chief of the geek girl culture site The Mary Sue (Abrams Media Network), and hosts her own blog “Has Boobs, Reads Comics” (TheNerdyBird.com). She co-hosts the Crazy Sexy Geeks podcast along with superhero historian Alan Kistler, contributed to a book of essays titled “Chicks Read Comics,” (Mad Norwegian Press) and had her first comic book story in the IDW anthology, “Womanthology.” In 2012, she was featured on National Geographic’s "Comic Store Heroes," a documentary on the lives of comic book fans and the following year she was one of many Batman fans profiled in the documentary, "Legends of the Knight."
twitter facebook

Filed Under:

Follow The Mary Sue:

Exit mobile version