Comixology, the leading online outlet for digital comics, has just announced a Netflix-style subscription service called Comixology Unlimited.
Similar to the subscription services provided by Marvel and Archie Comics, Comixology Unlimited charges a monthly fee for access to thousands of comics. You’ll still have to buy new comics individually, but for $5.99 you can catch up on earlier volumes of titles from Image Comics, Dark Horse, BOOM! Studios, Archie, and more.
With Marvel Unlimited at $9.99 and Archie Unlimited at $7.99, this is an extraordinarily good deal for fans of indie comics, especially new readers. While it obviously won’t cover every comic under the sun, it includes early issues from plenty of popular titles like The Walking Dead, , and Saga. Readers can download comics from the app and read them offline, if they wish.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Comixology CEO David Steinberger said, “It sounds silly but our mission is to make everyone on the planet a comics fan. That’s really hard to do by just throwing them into the middle of 100,000 comic books. It’s a lot easier if people have a very low risk opportunity to discover comics for themselves and just really take their time with the catalog.”
Following this news, we have to wonder when (or if) we’re going to see a similar service from DC Comics. While Marvel fans are able to devour thousands of vintage back-issues on Marvel Unlimited, DC titles are still only available to buy as individual volumes and issues. As of now, DC is the only major publisher that can’t be accessed through some kind of subscription service.
