My review of Marvel digital unlimited

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the1captain
Reviewer
Posts: 158
Joined: Fri Nov 25, 2011 6:57 pm

My review of Marvel digital unlimited

Post by the1captain »

Back during the San Diego Comic Con Marvel offered a special deal to try out the service. Normally it cost $9.99 per month or $69 for the year. But for a limited they offered a month for .99. So I thought I would give it a try. For my review I tried it out on an iPad, iPhone, and a PC. I'm not going to compare it to print. There are enough comparisons of print vs digital. For this review I'm assuming the reader already enjoys reading digital.

For those not sure what Marvel Unlimited is the easiest comparison is basically Netflix for Marvel comics. For one monthly or yearly price one can read as many comics on the app as one wants. Considering currently you can have access to 14000 comics, that's a lot of books. The catalogue is approximately 6 months or so behind new books. This is similar to Netflix doesn't get brand new movies right away

THE GOOD: Best part of the app. One low costs to access a lot, and I mean ALOT of comics. Browsing is easy. One can search by series, character, and events. Nice thing about that is if one wanted to look for "the Punisher" not only do you get all his own series, but also the other books he appears in. Another nice feature is I can create in my library a list of books I want to read. So it is easy to keep track of what I've read and not.

Quality is on par with what ones expects places like Comixology and dark horse digital to have. For the iPhone it does not offer the guided view mode that Comixology does. Therefore can be difficult to read on a small screen. And on the PC the picture was good. Except I found before each book I had to adjust the screen size slightly more than I have to on Comixology. But not a big deal.

THE NOT SO GOOD: reading offline is very limited. For example, on Comixology I can download as many books from my library as my iPad can hold. On MU the most you can only download 12 books to a device at a time. So if you don't have access to wifi or data and are on a long trip, one will likely read those 12 books quickly. Unless you got 12 comics from the 70's or 80's. Those take awhile to read. Trust me.

There are a lot of gaps in the collections. Marvel has a long history. So I understand it will take time to get them all on digital. But the frustrating thing is when reading a particular series and there are issues missing. For example, if one wanted to read X-Force vol 1( and do youself a favour, don't lol), it jumps from issue 8 or 9 to about 50 issues later.

Loading a comic sometimes took more than one attempt. But this was more an issue with reading on a PC than other devices.

Overall I would say if you love Marvel comics this is a great app. I'm not continuing with it because while I quite enjoyed it, I'm not a big enough Marvel fan to justify the expense. I'm sure there are points both good and not so good I forgot to mention. If anyone has any questions please feel free
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