In a mysterious tweet last Friday, the recently-awakened Marvel Unlimited Twitter page heralded an upcoming announcement bearing the date “February 5” plastered across a series of images featuring The Mighty Thor, Spider-Man and the X-Men, Iceman, Hawkeye from various periods of Marvel history. The tweet provoked comics fans and subscribers to the Marvel Comics digital subscription service to speculate on the nature of the announcement, though no further updates have emerged to clarify the intriguing social media bulletin.
Marvel Unlimited launched in 2007, under the name Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited, as an online subscription-based service available on the web and on mobile devices via downloadable apps from the App Store and Google Play. The entertainment service provides subscribers access to over 25,000 titles from Marvel Comics’ vault, including an extensive back-catalog from the Golden Age through the Age of Wireless and a wide selection of recent Marvel publications. Subscribers pay a monthly fee to access the digital library which features curated reading lists, recommendations for fans new to comics, creators spotlights with reading guides for popular Marvel writers and artists, and must-read special events like the epic crossover-event, War of the Realms and the Dark Phoenix Saga from the pages of The Uncanny X-Men. Additionally, the Marvel Unlimited Reading Club offers creators and fans picked categorized by theme and title such as This Week in Marvel: 1990s Hidden Gems, Pull List Picks, and Surfin’ Through the 60s with Silver Age stars Galactus, Fantastic Four, and the Silver Surfer.
It’s unclear what the Marvel Unlimited announcement could be, but it’s an exciting development for the service. Subscription tiers for Marvel Unlimited feature access to the digital library, 12 digital downloads (available offline), and range from the $9.99 monthly fee to an annual plan for $69.10, offering a significant discount over the popular monthly rate. A premier tier at $99.20, Annual Plus unlocks the Marvel Unlimited Plus Membership Kit with a limited-edition Hasbro Marvel Legends Deadpool: Terror Inc. figure, Cyclops pin by Skottie Young, two variant House of X comics and an X-Men patch.
Fans of the Marvel Unlimited subscription service are eager to see an unlimited number of downloads worthy of the service’s moniker and the option to create their own reading lists or folders to group their favorite titles by theme, event, or character. Others yearn for a major back-issue drop or the increased availability of current and newer Marvel Comics closer to publication date as most titles appear, with few exceptions, six months after release date — this week’s addition of Powers of X #1 from July 31, 2019, is an example of the delayed-delivery schedule. And some subscribers, lamenting the delay in digital access to current titles, call for a new tier option that would offer access to newly-released comics at a premium rate. As February 5th draws closer, fans are looking to take it to the limit on Marvel Unlimited.
