Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited is Now Online

Marvel has started its digital comic book subscription service. Where for $9.99 a month (or $4.99 if you pay for a year up front) you have access to a constantly updating archive of Marvel comics dating back as far as the World War II era. An archive is a good word for the offerings in this service since comic books from this year are few and far between. Its hard to fault them for doing this since they don’t want to cut into their print books revenue. Having access to the first Spider-man story, old Fantastic Four and WWII Capt. America stories is still pretty cool. Current series are on this service as well, usually up to their 2006 issues. All comics are presented ad-free, which is cool.

I played with the interface on some of the sample content that is offered for free. It is pretty smooth to navigate through the pages. This really comes as no surprise since Marvel has long been experimenting with online comic book presentation. They’ve found a formula that works. I’ve long been a fan of the CD-ROM collected series, but I can still see the value of this service. Its a great way to get caught up on a series that you came into late or for historical purposes for those curious about their favorite characters earlier adventures.

Of course I’m greedy, I’d like to be able to download e-comics and own them… but this payment structure no different from the subscription based music services… of which I don’t care for either. I’m still of a mentality where I like to own things out right. If you don’t have that kind of hang up and enjoy reading comic book back issues. This isn’t a bad deal, hopefully some of the other publishers will follow suite.

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