In recent years, Marvel Comics has been trying to promote its back catalog by republishing them in a digital format. That includes the Infinity Comics line, where new and old comics are recut to fit a vertical, scrollable format reminiscent of modern social media feeds. Now they are offering 100 of these vertical adventures for free, available at the official Marvel site.
Infinity Comics: Start Scrolling
Marvel needs no introduction as one of the biggest names in comics, but now they want to make reading their comics easier than ever. That’s why they have devised Infinity Comics, a comic arranged in a vertical format for easy scrolling on today’s smartphones. To celebrate these comics, their Start Scrolling promotion offers 100 stories, including Spider-Man and X-Men classics, available for free.
The decision to offer them for free was a simple one. It’s a strategy that is common in digital industries, best seen with free trials for services like Amazon Prime, or free spins on iGaming sites. Many iGaming sites offer daily free spins for select games, typically a special pinball or spinning wheel game hosted on-site. Offering a free sample is a tried-and-true way to get people interested and shows that the business is confident in the products they’re offering. For Marvel, they’re also sitting on way more than 100 stories after writing comics for almost as many years. By offering them for free, with some of them being recuts of classic issues, it’s sure to garner interest from old and new fans alike.
All Infinity Comics are available through the Marvel Unlimited app, the hub for Marvel Comics’ digital products. This service has made it possible to view comics on a smartphone, tablet, or desktop computer since 2021. Since then, Marvel has created 1,000 Infinity comics, with more to come in the future. That’s just about 3% of Marvel’s stash, which is approximately 30,000 comics nowadays.
More Free Comics to Come
The Start Scrolling promotion will be an ongoing effort by Marvel Unlimited to bring interest to the service. Having started on March 7th, 2024, Marvel has confirmed that those 100 free stories will change over time. Describing the promotion, Marvel Unlimited’s VP of Marketing Jessica Malloy said it was “not only introduced to provide a new way to experience Marvel stories, but also to create additional avenues for fresh and under-explored corners of the Marvel Universe.”
Then she added, “with titles being rotated in regularly, we hope to keep welcoming in readers to our ever-expanding comic universe!” This means that stories will be cycled into and out of the 100 free comics on offer. This means that if you want to read one of the free comics, you’ll need to do so before it gets cycled out of the free selection. To get access to the whole library, you’ll need to be a subscriber to Marvel Unlimited. Malloy’s comments also confirm that new, as-yet-unreleased stories may become available in the Infinity format, and may even become a free offering one day.
Marvel Unlimited has changed a lot since its introduction way back in 2007, with 2021’s Infinity Comics update representing a significant change in how digital comics are read. The platform will likely change even more in the future, especially if new technologies like AR become popular among readers.
I have this. It is awesome. Definitely recommend.
Cool.