I’m sure it’s apparent that I am a very tech-oriented guy but what might not be so obvious is that I’m also a comic book fan. So I’m sure it’s no surprise that when the two of these cross, I get to be a very happy guy.

For quite sometime I’ve been an advocate of digital comics. While it may irritate some brick and mortar owners by me saying this, I personally think that if I could get my comics digitally for a reasonable, I’d never step into a store again. The problem that I have though is that the publishers are still not producing that much digital material – and furthermore, most of the time when they do it they are doing it poorly. For example, when DC Comics announced its reboot of their universe they also announced they would release their comics digitally the same day. This was very exciting news for guys like me; however, the launch day came and we all were disappointed when we say the price tag was the same digitally as it was physically. I can easily justify 99 cents on a digital download, heck even $1.99; however, when you’re asking me to shell out $3.99 for something I can get a physical possession of in the store for the same price, it’s not going to happen. The worst part is that Diamond Distributors take a large portion of the money from physical comics so publishers like DC Comics should be able to easily afford a lesser price when they sell digitally.

Putting that issue aside – the publishers have started to adopt digital comics more, especially over the last couple months. The market is taking a step in the right direction – even if they’re asking too much. For awhile smaller publishers have been pretty active in the digital market – including folks like Image Comics and Archie partnering with companies like graphic.ly; however, the biggest news lately came when last month DC announced they were partnering with Amazon to offer some titles exclusively on the Kindle Fire. While a lot of people were pleased with this, some companies like Barnes & Noble had a problem with it. It certainly seemed like it was a matter of time until Barnes & Noble would make their own deal with a company – that day has come.

Today it was announced that Marvel Entertainment has made an agreement with Barnes & Noble to offer readers access to some of the greatest graphic novels on the NOOK Tablet. Titles include Civil War, Invincible Iron Man, Captain America, Thor by JMS, Astonishing X-Men, New Avengers, Marvels and more. While it doesn’t appear to be an exclusive agreement, it’s still content that Amazon won’t have – at least not yet.

Now although I’ve only had a chance to try comics digitally on the iPad, I get excited when I read about any digital agreement. In order to get things like digital comics to become the main distribution avenue, the publishers have to start somewhere. It’s great to see that they’re starting to take a leap of faith. While I agree that there is still a large amount of time before we see any huge change in market, if other companies can pull off what I’ve seen through ComiXology on the iPad, I think that shift is going to come a lot sooner than later. More importantly the more inexpensive the comic book readers become – the easier it will be for a comic book fan to purchase the equipment. If someone has to go spend six hundred plus dollars to do it, it’s not very attractive – but if they can spend a couple hundred, it becomes a lot more appealing. Whatever the future brings for digital comics, I’ll be waiting.