Marvel embraces the digital age with the Marvel Unlimited app

More than 130,000 comic book fans are expected to make the trek to San Diego later this week for Comic-Con, a massive convention celebrating all things related to comics books. But in this digital age, fans can now get their “superhero fix” in more ways than ever before. Flipping through the pages of your favorite comic book isn’t what it used to be, music and sound effects are now part of the story. Marvel Comics, the industry’s leading publisher, now offers readers the ability to put tens of thousands of comics at their fingertips, using a streaming app for tablets or smartphones.

With the doors almost ready to open for Comic-Con International in San Diego, Marvel Comics is opening the floodgates to their massive online comics archive, Marvel Unlimited—for only 99 cents. For the next week, a dollar will buy you a month of total access to Marvel’s online cache of over 15,000 comics, which range from books that hit the stands six months ago to the Golden and Silver Age classics of yesteryear. Basically this means that if you’re a comics fan—current, lapsed, or simply curious to learn more about these spandex superstars from the movies—you could easily spend the rest of the summer consuming one of the largest comics collections in existence for the price of a cheap cup of coffee. While most are simply digital versions of printed issues, Marvel Unlimited access also offers some more experimental content designed specifically for the digital format, like Marvel’s Infinite Comics, which are designed exclusively to be read on screens, and behind-the-scenes video content for select comics like Jonathan Hickman’s The Avengers. The six-issue Captain America: The Winter Soldierstoryline, which helped inspire the recent blockbuster film, also includes adaptive audio that changes as you swipe through the panels and pages.