Research: Marvel AR

Something I thought would work as a good counter balance to the modern polaxis project, I found that marvel comics also had a stab at using AR in their comics, but weren’t exactly successful with it.

“Go behind the scenes of your favourite comics, see new footage, hear from creators, catch yourself up on past events and more.” This is the press release given by the company to explain what it actually is. At first the concept seems like a handy tool, superhero comics have a long, continuing history and lore. The intention seemed to be that the use of AR would work as a means of catch up for new readers, which is fine for its early implementation. But consider that is all that it does, even after AR loses the new appeal, and the ability to bring in new customers. Catch up and behind the scenes would become pretty dry once you’ve become accustomed to the story. I believe this was the downfall of the app, which is now discontinued. On the subject, at the time, Timothy Callahan noted that the product initially was unengaging for a younger audience. Referring to the specific content, he said that “Process and interviews are uninteresting to a younger audience”

There was a buzz for the product, a great deal around the time of its release, which is why I am able to talk about it regardless of being able to use the app or not. Search the app on YouTube, and there are tons of videos, where people are getting excited and showing off what the app can do. It strikes me as an awful lot of free press came from this kind of content. For a few issues, it really caught the audiences attention. But it seems like they never really took it anywhere, or used it to help the story, more of a boring info dump tool.

There were also a lot of writers who spoke about the product at it’s time of release: