Two awesome moves in the world of digital comics yesterday: 1) Marvel announced the release of their Marvel Unlimited Android app & 2) Dark Horse let fans know they are giving away their free comic book day issues digitally.
When pressed for comment, DC Comics merely replied: “Digital? What, like a camera?”
Marvel Unlimited on Android and Increasing Annual Fees on May 15!
The Marvel Android app has been a long-time coming, and has been promised as a work in progress since the iOS release of Marvel Unlimited on March 7, 2013.
As iPad and iPhone readers know, there are still some kinks to work out with the Unlimited app, but recent enhancements have moved the Unlimited app closer to a preferred end state.
I don’t have an Android device to test on, but I’m assuming these truths remain self-evident: Marvel Unlimited app works great on tablets, and is a Blob-sized challenge on mobile phones. As always, I think the service as a whole is well worth the money, and if you have a tablet and enjoy Marvel Comics, it’s a no-brainer.
Speaking of dollars, though, the biggest news to come out of this Android app release is this:
That’s right -the price of Marvel Unlimited is (discreetly) going up!
Personally, I think $69.00 a year for access to over 13,000 comics is a fair price. That’s a little less than $6 a comic, or as we know it in a comic shop, the ability to purchase one and a half Marvel Now! books.
Most importantly: If you were on the fence about subscribing to Marvel Unlimited, I highly recommend you do so before May 15. That’s a quick $10 savings for a service that has heartily fed my love of comics for over two years now. Marvel Unlimited promo codes have actually diminished since the comic publisher started giving all this digital love, so I’d definitely take a price “cut” where I can.
Dark Horse Comics OWNS Free Comic Book Day
Free Comic Book Day has become a pretty glorious celebration of comics, so it’s nice to see publisher Dark Horse Comics extend that celebration to the digital stage.
To my knowledge, Dark Horse is the only comic book publisher that made their free comics available digitally as well. I wasn’t able to make it to my comic shop for FCBD (hey, I’m a very busy man, man!) so the opportunity to pick up Brian Wood’s “The Assassination of Darth Vader” digitally for FREE is just too good.
Between this, my favorite ongoing comic in Mind MGMT, and Dark Horse’s #1 digital giveaway, I am all in on Dark Horse Comics.
Here’s the link to check out all the Free Comic Book Day comics.
My recommendation would be to actually download the comics through the Dark Horse mobile app. The website link will take you straight to a desktop reader which isn’t as nice an experience as tablet/phone reading. You can find the free comics in the “Free” section of the Store.
It’s a shame other comic book publishers haven’t already made their free comics available digitally as well, but it’s great to see Dark Horse leading the charge. Maybe they’ll force the Big 2’s hand by sheer force of awesomeness.
Any other awesome digital comics news that has you excited? Do what feels right to you in the comments!
First can I just say thanks for putting together such an interesting and informative site. As I’m getting back into comics after an absence of many years, Marvel Unlimited seems the perfect to way to start catching up (and I’m guessing you would agree with me). Unfortunately I am unable to access any of the comics as I apparently cannot type my password properly. In itself this would not be an issue but the “forgot password” link results in an email with my user name but no password. There’s a space in the email for a password but the password isn’t there. A few days and a couple if emails to support later I still have no reply and am no closer to reading the comics!
My apologies for a bit of a rant as this is certainly not your fault or your problem. Really I just wanted to see if anyone else has had the same experience or have I been singled out for special treatment. 😉
At least while I am waiting for Marvel support to get back to me I can browse your reading lists and plan what I am going to read when I can finally get to the books!
Dude, first off, thanks for the comment and glad you dig the site. That’s a bummer that you’re missing out on your comics. I shed a tear just thinking about it.
I actually tested out the “forgot my password” link just now and got a very prompt email with both UN & Password. Which, I know, hooray for me, but that’s crazy weird that your password isn’t coming through.
This is a longshot, but the one weird use case I found in Marvel Help recommends checking to make sure your browser is accepting cookies: http://marvel.com/help/category/9/topic/53. I wonder too… do you use a Chrome Extension like Ad Blocker? I’d play around with the settings there to see if you can get lucky.
I’m gonna look into this some more, and hopefully we can get someone else here who’s dealt with Marvel login issues before. The man needs his comics, Marvel! Make it happen!