If you’re into comics you know that, like many hobbies, it can get very expensive, very quickly. What if you could download 15,000+ comics for free? Well you can. They’re just not exactly current and you probably haven’t heard of many of them.
The Digital Comic Museum offers a large collection of fully-scanned publications from the “Golden Age of Comics” available for free download. The issues on offer all date from before 1959 and notably absent are the big names—the ones even I’ve heard of like Marvel and DC. The big names have ongoing copyright protections, and the admins at the DCM are very conscientious about maintaining copyright integrity in their collection.
For me, this collection has been one big bucket of inspiration. I only ever enjoy looking at comic covers, anyway, as the artwork is so compelling—there’s just something about the glossy covers that I love. The romance comics are predictably laughable, and the way sensitive subjects are approached is a lesson in our society’s every-changing mores. The artwork evokes a specific wave of emotions for me and I’ve tucked a few covers away in my “Graphic and Style Inspiration” folder.
The DCM asks users to register for free before downloading any titles—though you can see a preview for free—and there is no limit to the number of issues you can snag. I can’t wait to see what happens in the next installments of Green Lama and Atoman!
This article was last modified on January 28, 2021
This article was first published on December 11, 2014
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