I always liked reading comics. I was a DC guy myself, and I have a set of Crisis on Infinite Earths and a almost full run of Sandman and a bunch of bagged issues of Legion of Super Heroes. When comics went digital I was interested in that format and read some on my tablet. It was great - comics on a tablet are even better than comics on paper in my opinion. But it was hard shelling out for them - graphic novels were expensive and single issues even more so. It is possible to get comics online for free, but I really don't like the idea of reading comics without giving something back to the writers - be that feedback or money or whatever. Without that feedback I feel, the comics I like won't get made, and the ones that did get made would be the gimmicky crap that sells.
I purchased a one year subscription to Marvel Unlimited for myself in December. Marvel Unlimited is like the Netflix of comics. You subscribe for around 9$ a month and then you get unlimited reading of a huge part of the Marvel library going back for many decades. This is a fantastic entertainment deal. I had read Marvel comics before sure - I knew who Iron Man and Nick Fury and Thanos were long before they showed up in movies, but like I say I was much more familiar with the DC line. Well aside from the Micronauts - I have a long run of Micronauts boxed and bagged still.
Since December I have read the fuck out of Marvel comics and I am really enjoying myself. You cannot get better value for your money than this In the last few months I've read about the Avengers Disassembling, about the Ultimate Universe, about the stupid Civil War and the better Siege. I am particularly enjoying reading the 2010 run of Thor right now and the excellent 2014 run of Hawkeye and the also can say enough about The Superior Foes of Spiderman.
Its true you don't get the new stuff with Marvel Unlimited - they track about 6 months from the current releases so they don't cut into sales. I get that. I don't care though - its all new stuff to me and I wouldn't buy it anyway. This way I actually read it and I do get my updates every week. And I hope Marvel is doing what Netflix does and tracking what I read. I hope they are smart enough to use that info and realize that She Hulk as a lawyer is interesting and that although I might read something once - the stuff I re-read is a valuable metric to note. I hope it influences what books (and characters and movies) they green light in the future. I hope that is somewhat valuable even if not as dramatic as the money they see from alternate covers and crappy 'Death of X' stories.
Now I just wish that Darkhorse and DC comics would figure this out.
