The most obvious benefit to this would be to generate some advertising revenue from out-of-print content. It might slightly hurt used comic book dealers, but that's not Marvel's problem, and it could actually have the opposite effect by sparking renewed interest from collectors for hard-to-find originals. But the more subtle—and in the long run, more important—benefit is that it would get a lot more comic book nerds reading and discussing out-of-print comics, and doing it on Marvel's website. For example, Techdirt Insight Community member Julian Sanchez recently penned a great article for the American Prospect discussing the evolution of political themes in comic books over the decades. It would have been great—both for his article and for Marvel—if Julian had been able to provide his readers with links to archives of the relevant comics. Such increased traffic would provide Marvel with all sorts of indirect benefits, including opportunities to advertise new products, increase consumers' brand loyalty, and create spin-offs of old comics that enjoy renewed popularity online. Right now, those comics are just collecting dust, so it's hard to see what they have to lose.