Digital Comic Preservation

I have been a comic book fan for a very long time. I guess I must be getting old as I can’t remember when the addiction started. It was harmless fun when I began reading about Peter Parker. But soon I found my self addicted to all things Marvel. I tried to kick the habit twice; one during the ordeal that was the clone saga, and then again during the travesty that is onslaught. But I wasn't strong enough. Soon I found myself in experimenting with varying doses supplied to me by the Distinguished Competition. I few years later I can into the world of Dark Horse and Image. It took me a while to get a hold of myself. Now I am mostly confined to Mareldom, with only occasional forays to check out Flash, Ion or the new Checkmate. Bats does a good story every now and then, and of course one has to keep tabs on the hotties, in Witchblade, Fathom, and even Tomb Raider. Star wars is fun but I buy trades there. So that’s like a once every three months deal. This brings me back to the topic. All those who keep yelling “make mine marvel” know that the 616 is embroiled in civil war. It’s really a great event. And trust me when I say great, I don't me the kind of Bantha PooDoo that was the Infinite Crisis.
So imagine what I was going through when I came back home to find that the only comic book store in the area had become an old bookstore with only one or two titles a year. Yes, the overgrown smug goodie two shoes Boy Scout, who has no idea that underwear goes inside ones pants, is all one can really find at stores. Some Batman and Spider-man make it through but no Deadpool, no Ultimates, and definitely none of the Civil War stuff. So I did what any comic book junkie would do, I turned to DCP.
The name DCP refers to a group of loosely connected comic book scanners on the web, who use BitTorrent for distro. Each of them scans several comics and contribute them to one large torrent, adding their aliases to their scans to let us know who to thank. Several torrents containing the latest comic book and graphic novel releases are offered each month and usually can be found on bit-torrent hosts as dcp-mm-dd-yy.
It’s not like this is a new discovery. I've availed DCP's offerings on several occasions in the past to get a hold of out of print series or when one just got curious or was missing a reference. Still it was a relief to know that even being in a country like Pakistan I can still keep up with my addiction thanks to the cool people that make up DCP.
Also this is in now way an endorsement to stop buying comics. I myself have sent an average of about a hundred dollars a month, every month for the last five or six years. And if comics become available readily in Pakistan, I will again. Artists and writer need to eat too. I know that sounds clichéd, but consider this, that unlike other artists, say Hollywood actors or musician and rock stars. The average person in the comic book industry is not a multimillionaire with an endorsement deal on the side. This post has gotten longer than I expected. So, I’ll leave it hear, saying thanks a lot DCP. I'll keep seeding as long as I can.