Marvel announced late yesterday at SXSW plans to give away 700 of their comics for free as part of a promotion to gain more readers. At $1.99-$3.99 per issue, giving away 700 number one issues is definitely a way to overwhelm comiXology servers, and that’s just exactly what has happened.

ComiXology CEO David Steinberger announced they have paused distribution channels of the Marvel promotion as they “became overwhelmed by the immense response.” He promises the program will come back but users will need to fill out this form (which has also been hit with intermittent downtime) to be notified of its return.

Comic publishers told CNET the outages have prevented digital sales of comics through the comiXology platform. Let us know if you managed to snag any of the 700 free comics via the web or the Marvel Comics iOS app.

[via CNET]