There’s a new comics reading app in town. Marvel Comics and WEBTOON have partnered to create a new service known as the Marvel Comics app, offering over 35,000 digital comics.
Developed by WEBTOON – the leading webcomics/webtoon service – from the ground up, it will offer a new experience for Marvel readers. New features provide better discoverability, new reading experiences, and easier ways to follow ongoing series. The Marvel Comics app will give readers different ways to read the plethora of comics available through the service. This includes flexibility across web and mobile, in addition to different reading experiences with traditional page and vertical-scroll views.
Interestingly, Marvel didn’t mention guided-view in their announcement. Being able to zoom on a panel seamlessly revolutionised digital comics on smaller screens 15 years ago. However, with Webtoon creating the app, vertical-scrolling was going to be favoured. I suspect Marvel’s guided-view metadata will inform the vertical-scrolling feature. Otherwise, it would be difficult to cut up 35,000 comics to translate from print to vertical-scrolling format.
Looking at the available screenshots below, it looks like a hybrid of WEBTOON and Marvel Unlimited. Based on them, it appears the service has many of WEBTOON’s browsing features, but also the familiarity of Marvel Unlimited’s following features and reading guides.
While it’s called the Marvel Comics app, you’ll get more than Marvel comics on there. There will also be Star Wars (current canon and Legends) and 20th Century Studios available as well.
“We know that there is a large audience of readers who are looking to experience comics digitally, and there is no richer library than Marvel Comics,” said David Abdo, General Manager, Marvel Comics and Franchise. “We’re excited to partner with WEBTOON, industry leaders in the space, to create a new app that can continue to grow and evolve with the way readers discover and experience comics.”
Abdo isn’t wrong about this venture’s potential to attract new audiences to Marvel Comics. While Marvel/Disney’s existing partnership with WEBTOON has seen a variety of Marvel Comics – with select print comics transformed into vertical-scrolling ones – land on the platform, this takes that partnership to the next level. The Marvel Comics app will be accessible on the web via marvel.webtoon.com. The service is baked into the WEBTOON infrastructure, allowing plenty of opportunities for cross-pollination and promotion to WEBTOON’s 145 million active monthly users.
There will be two subscription tiers available for The Marvel Comics app.
- Base tier: $9.99 USD/month (plus tax) or $69.99 USD/year (plus tax). This will provide access to the full comics library, with the latest issues available 3 months after their print release.
- Ultimate tier: $12.49 USD/month (plus tax) or $99.99 USD/year (plus tax). This gives readers access to the full library as well as comics 30 days after print release.
You can pre-register to claim a limited-time founding member price of $59.99 USD (plus tax) for your first year of the Ultimate tier.
The new service will launch on 16th November. However, if you’re at New York Comic-Con this weekend, you can preview the Marvel Comics app at the Marvel booth.
This is not the first Marvel Comics reading service/app. Historically, they’ve had the Marvel Unlimited reading service and, at a time, a Comixology-powered storefront/reader. The latter ran from 2010-2023, until Comixology was directly absorbed into Amazon/Kindle.
Marvel Unlimited launched on 13th November, 2007 and will be sunsetted with the launch of the Marvel Comics app. It acts as an all-you-can-read subscription service, offering the publisher’s vast library and new exclusive vertical-scrolling comics. 7th December, 2026 will be the last day that new comics will be added to the service, and 21st December, 2026 will be the final day subscribers can browse their library on the service. The app will be removed entirely on the 28th December, 2026. Existing Marvel Unlimited subscribers can port their library and reading history to the Marvel Comics app. An FAQ explains this process and what else subscribers will need to know.
While Marvel Unlimited has been a great way to read many Marvel comics easily and affordably, especially since a large portion of the publisher’s library is out of print, it wasn’t without its own headaches. Marvel Unlimited could be incredibly slow, struggle to load pages/comics, be difficult to search for specific comics, and had a specific options menu that was challenging to open. We will have to see whether the Marvel Comics app solves these issues at launch or if they’ll be fixed as the service evolves.
This is the second digital venture Marvel has announced this year. The publisher announced a partnership with USA TODAY, which included an exclusive comic and select back catalogue on the USA PLAY portal.
Will you be checking out the Marvel Comics app? Share your thoughts in the comments below or via Bluesky, Facebook, or Mastodon.
