Marvel Unlimited
reviews and complaints

I am a lifelong Marvel fan nearing the end of my first year subscribing to Marvel Unlimited. While the opportunity to access MUs vast library in an instant is worth the price of subscription, the functionality of the app often leaves me frustrated and stops me from reading comics in the app. The search feature is not intuitive and often requires several tries to successfully search for a certain title (even if you know exactly what title you are looking for), and the ‘download offline’ and ‘mark as read’ features only work 50% of the time, displaying an error message and causing me to lose my comic the rest of the time. While I absolutely love the Marvel content ecosystem (film and tv, comics, podcasts), and the Marvel Unlimited membership benefits such as earning and redeeming points, I find the process of reading comics on the Marvel Unlimited app unnecessarily difficult and cumbersome. I still use the old Marvel digital comics app and prefer its functionality and ability to download comics offline, but I wish the Marvel Unlimited library/subscription was as easy to use and navigate. There are so many benefits of the Marvel Unlimited platform and subscription, but I know that almost every time I sit down to read a comic, something goes wrong in the app that takes me out of the experience. I have the most recently updated app and recent iPhone and iPad devices, so the technical issues aren’t on my end (and if you don’t have an iPad or comparable tablet, don’t bother with Marvel Unlimited! Mobile is too small to navigate comics and reading on the website is a headache!) I love reading Marvel comics and the features of the MU app are great, but until I am able to consistently use them without error messages or app crashes, Marvel Unlimited is not my go to way to read comics. This is a great product and I wish the developers the best of luck in working out these technical issues.

I was reading chronologically so that I would always be able to follow along with crossover events. It was awesome to see the universe develop between the 40s and 70s. This new update removed the ability to search by publication year and list individual issues chronologically. Now it just lists series chronologically by start date, which is not helpful at all when some series run for 30 years and others start and stop in between. Add in that they removed the ability to filter to “unread only,” and you’re left with an infinite scroll that displays everything you’ve already read mixed with the things you haven’t, and dozens of concurrent series that you’re trying to keep track of and scroll back and forth between to read one issue at a time.

Update after developer reply:
The sorting by publication date happens before you click into a series, and then applies through into the series you click on. Doesn’t help at all, because without being able to filter by unread, you’re still infinite scrolling through everything you’ve already read. That functionality does exist once you add a series to your library, but if you want to read one year at a time, you have to spend a couple of hours individually selecting series in the search library, scrolling through everything you’ve read, and then adding individual issues to your personal library. The developer’s statement that searching by publication year is coming back has me tentatively encouraged, but not much, because I’ve already seen series listed with date ranges that don’t match the issues inside. Moreover, if you’re reading chronologically one year at a time, you can’t just add a whole series to your library and then filter by publication year, because it filters out every series that has issues outside of that year, rather than just filtering out the issues outside of that year. So if that filter is added as is to the search library, it will fix nothing.

The app is decent at basic comic book reading. Beyond that it could be greatly improved.

A few features I'd love to see:

- Subscribing to a series to get a push notification when a new issue is ready. Since most "new" items are a rolling 3-6 months old, it'd be nice to know when it's added to Unlimited for reading. Make these subscriptions a dedicated tab at the bottom showing all series, or storylines/events, I'm keeping track of. Possibly have a related storyline section so if a spin off happens within my existing subscriptions I can know about it. Currently, it's far too difficult to know when a new issue is out and what stories/series I was reading when the "new" releases are so delayed from their actual release. Possibly have these auto-download so I have one less thing to worry about.

- I'd like to see an easier way to save whole events/storylines to "my stuff"/downloads. If there's a group of disparate comics that make up an event/storyline, I'd love to save them all in the correct order but have them shows as one list item, almost like a folder.

- When I'm browsing around, it's extremely hard to tell what I've already read before, what I've partial read, and what I've never read. Currently, I have to tap into a comic and interpret "mark as read" / "mark as unread"; it's not very intuitive. Adding a badge or banner to the comic so I don't have to open the pop up would be greatly appreciated.

Most of my complaints are around tracking what I've read and things I want to read. The current interface is not geared towards that use. I don't need to download everything unless I'm going on a trip; and the downloading is hit and miss. I'm assuming that's how your team thinks users will keep track of comics but that's a poor assumption. Please make it easier to enjoy Marvel's great comics. Help your readers actually manage their reading. A digital experience should do that incredibly well—sadly it's still not doing that.

I’ve collected comics for about 30 years now... as a collector you don’t want to ruin your trade additions paperback single issues, your limited prints/runs, or variants; or what have you! So this is a great way to collect the comics and be able to read them without worry of destroying your invest... that being said it’s hard to collect every issue, with the app I’m able to read all the old comics relive the history and stories that built, lead the way, and created this vast colorful stunning world filled with incredible storylines and storytelling! I also use the app to figure out the artist, writers, inkers behind each issue or series so I collect more effectively... the way it’s organized by character, series/storyline, and so on is also a huge help when building knowledge of comics... the only draw back I have with the app is the delay from the newer issues that released and upload to app for reading pleasure, which I understand why they do it but I don’t agree with that... only because true fans will buy the comic anyway even if they could read it through the app... I also feel it would boost the apps appeal, readers/app downloads, and have higher retention! If they delay the new comics to be read by maybe 2 weeks of release instead of months, so you wouldn’t have to purchase the digital comic the day of release... which I’m sure most true fans and collector don’t buy digital comics they read from the free archives/ data through the monthly fee... other than that maybe adding some better gear to the plus membership or having. A fun quiz type thing to test knowledge of marvel history, and maybe a giveaway every so often would make the app even better... that being said what you get is amazingly awesome especially for the price, and the app is great... other than my side ideas- business expansion/ customer development and retention ideas the app is great( my business degree is showing) ! Get it use it and love it! I do!

Great app; couple issues:

[SEARCH] The search function is mind-bogglingly incomplete. If I search “Characters” for Spider-Gwen, I get a result I can tap on and read her series and SOME appearances in other issues (but not all; more on that below). If I search for Silk or Cindy Moon, or Darth Vader I get no such results. Instead I need to search under “Series” to see their stuff. Why?

Solution: Unified search. A single search bar with results tagged as “Character” or “Series” and additional filters to ensure that content is sorted in the way the reader desires to experience it.

[EVENTS] Something like “Civil War” or “Spider-Verse” works almost perfectly. Readers see a grid with issues that span the entire course of the event. Awesome! Here’s where it gets bad: Smaller events like “Spider-Women” span not only three different characters, but two additional “series” with one issue each to bookend the event. For some reason, Spider-Gwen’s page does NOT contain every portion of this story. This requires the reader to back out of the issue they’re reading, search for the character whose run has the next chapter of the story, scroll to the issue with the next chapter, and repeat the process all over again across five different series. Truly villainous.

Solution: When it comes to jumping around, give readers a branching “Read Next” option. Logically, with access to Marvel Unlimited, most readers are going to experience each part of a story. Instead of “Go to the next issue” (effectively skipping part[s] of the arc), give readers “Tap here to keep reading this crossover” or something.

I love Marvel; I love Marvel Unlimited. I still can’t believe this service even exists. Please make it easier to stay engaged with these wonderful stories and characters. I don’t mind crossovers (they’re fun and let me experience characters I might have otherwise overlooked) but they become a terrible slog in Marvel Unlimited with no easy way to hop between series.

Thanks, y’all.

The old version of the marvel unlimited app had some bugs but made searches and keeping a massive reading library very organized

Then the new update hit, and while it looks visually nicer, there are couple big issues that make this app no longer user friendly, to the point that reading is almost a burden and not worth it

Biggest issue is the way you can only view your collection by book, previously it listed every single issue of all books in your collection individually, why is there no option to view by issue? Here is why this was handy: previously I decided I was going to read every x-men related title from the beginning to current (miniseries and one shots included), I added every issue of uncanny X-men, xfactor, X-men, xforce, Excalibur, etc and had them sorted by publication date, I started with uncanny X-men #1 and started reading them all in order, this is particularly helpful when you get to the era of multiple running titles and crossover stories, before I just worked my way down the list, now if I want to read xcutioners song I have to jump from title to title finding each issue, if I want to read uncanny X-men and adjective less X-men in tandem you have to constantly change titles, not being able to view by issue and means you cannot in any easy way read multiple books simultaneously in the same manner you would picking up physical issues week to week, this is the largest issue for me and I’m contemplating cancelling altogether, the thought of trying to pick up where I left off and read multiple titles at once is so off putting now

Another issue is when browsing by titles there is no shortcuts to jump to say the letter “X”, with the millions of miniseries, one shots, and the beyond numerous times marvel has relaunched a book, do you understand how long it takes to scroll from the top of the alphabet to the bottom

Visually the updated app is appealing, and as always the actual comics are stunning as ever, but this is the most un user friendly UI I have ever seen

I really want to like this app. I think the general idea and format of a comic book streaming service is great. The massive library of content is a great aspect of this program. However, the Reading Guides and Reading List for this program are abysmal. The reading lists are not organized well and that don’t follow through. The reading list section does not have a full reading chronology guide or even just a list of books to start reading a character like Thor. They only give you starting points. The reading lists provide a superficial surface level entry point to begin a story, but do not help me move through the succeeding series and volumes for that character. Comic book continuity and series reboots are confusing and this app does nothing to streamline that reading order. This app will not guide you through a character’s comic book events or crossover issues, or any related books that are connected to the story your currently reading. I started reading Thor Vol. 3 and had no idea that there was an event called “Siege” at the end of that run. I was also surprised to discover that their was a series called “Journey into mystery” that took place around the same time as the main Thor book...AND it featured Thor. I read Thor by writer Jason Aaron and had no idea that their was a major Thor related event called Original Sin that happened after that series ended. It would be easier if I could just choose to start reading Thor from Vol 3 (2007) onwards in chronological order that included all of his major Events and crossover books instead of having to guess the order or look it up online! That would’ve helped me to not accidentally skip “Original Sin” and discover that Thor had lost his freaking hammer and been replaced by someone else in the next series. This app does not guide a new comic book reader through a characters books well at all. The reading lists just gives you a starting point and then drops you into the vast ocean that is marvel comic book continuity with no life jacket.

First, let’s get this out of the way. This service, bar none, is worth the price of entry and it’s amazing more comic book publishers haven’t attempted to replicate this service. I love it and will never give my subscription up.

But why 1 Star? Allow me to explain.

There was a relatively recent update to the UI. It was a refreshing look for the app, and they constantly are highlighting comics you may be interested in. Great stuff.

Wanna know what I’m here for? To catch up on the back catalog of various Star Wars comics chronologically by release date.

Know how long it takes me to get to my next Star Wars comic? ELEVEN taps of my screen.

Now that may seem trivial to you but let’s put that into perspective.

How long does it take me to get to my next JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure manga in the Viz app? ONE tap of my screen.

How long does it take to get to my wish lists on the Amazon app? TWO taps.

For me to resume on my next issue of Vader - Dark Visions I need to:

Tap “My Library”
Tap “Filter”
Tap “Read Status”
Tap “Unread”
Tap the back arrow
Tap “Apply Filters”
Tap “Sort”
Tap “Publication Date: Oldest First”
Tap my next comic
Tap my next issue
Tap read issue

THEN I can start reading….

When you finally make it to the end of an issue, sometimes you’re at a cliffhanger right!? But it’s time to go to sleep so you want to add it to your list for resuming later of course.

How do you do that?
Surely it’s just one button press?
Well, no.

See you tap “Read Now”
Then you figure out a way to tap the screen without going to the next page
Then you tap the three vertical dots in the overlay that pops up
Then you tap “Issue Details”
THEN you tap “Save To Library”

FIVE taps minimum.

For the love of all comics, Marvel. Please. Hire a competent UI/UX designer to fix this. Please.

I’ll INSTANTLY give you 5 stars and change my subscription to be with you directly instead of letting Apple take a 30% cut or whatever. Just please, why is it a chore to binge read Marvel comics in my Marvel comics app?

Having unrestricted access to the mind-bogglingly huge library of comics Marvel Unlimited offers is great, and I have no complaints about the reading experience itself , but beyond that, not much attention has been paid to the quality of user experience with this app. Search and sort features are rudimentary, the database is poorly organized, and probably most disappointingly for me personally, there’s no way to create your own reading list. The library feature seems to be an attempt at this but there’s no way to finish one issue and then proceed to the next in your library, and inexplicably, the default sorting on the library is newest first, so you have to manually change the sorting each time if you’re reading in chronological order (as you’d imagine most users would be). I bought the subscription specifically to read Spider-Man comics and potentially branch out to track other characters I was interested in as I encountered them in crossover issues. I’d like to just read all of Spider-Man’s appearances (including crossover issues) in chronological order, but it feels like I’m constantly fighting with the app to get it to do what I want it to.

I have only been using the app for a week and a half now, but my understanding from discussion with long-time users is that the app has been this feature-barren for years with little attention from Marvel. Inasmuch as I can personally testify to Marvel’s apparent devil-may-care attitude to managing this service, the reason I’m writing this review instead of reading comics on my day off is because the login servers are down and after several hours Marvel Support has still not even acknowledged that there’s a problem. Marvel is not some tiny group where I can forgive a less-than-fully featured app that at least does what it’s supposed to. They’re a major corporation that can absolutely throw some money at this app and give it the features people have been requesting for years, but they don’t seem to care, and that’s really disappointing for an app that is the primary means of using one of their key services.

Marvel Unlimited is essentially a clone of the Marvel Comixology-based app, with some unfortunate changes. The “Library” metaphor and interface is not as clear as the shopping cart interface of the Marvel app. I was laboring under the misconception that the library was meant to be a virtual bookshelf where I could put titles that I considered being particularly good, just for quick reference in the future. However, the Library is a flat list of titles, and does not allow for entire series to be added. This interface severely limits the utility of the Library. However, if you think of the Library simply as your upcoming reading list, and remove titles already read from the Library, it works well enough. Unless you like managing long lists of random titles, which I do not.

I believe the Library should work more like a Library, and be organized by series, not issues. This would be your long-term collection of works you want to read multiple times.

Additionally, there should be a Reading List, to which either series or issues could be added. This would be your transitory “shopping list” essentially. At the end of a book, you should get the option to Remove from Reading List, Add to Library, and Read Next Issue.

Reading: the app needs to remember what book you were reading and where you were in the book. It is a huge pain to have to go find the book again and then find the page I was on every time I power off the iPad. When I do find it, it is obvious that the book was cached on the iPad because it doesn’t have to download… so why didn’t the app open to the page I was reading? Infuriating.

Final bug report: Zooming does not work. When zooming the page image is forcibly centered lower on the screen, like it is centering on the top of the image or something. Basically there is some math that needs fixing on your zooming image placement. I don’t know how bugs like that get through QA when there are so many comics with double-page spreads that are basically unreadable due to this issue.

Fix the bugs and I would bump up to four stars, fix the Reading List interface issues and I would bump up to five stars.

Marvel unlimited offers a great service at a great price. I love it.

HOWEVER.

The experience in the app (to say nothing of their website) is inconsistent at best. It frequently fails to load comics or gives me errors saying it failed to download issues. I have received this on WiFi and LTE in stable locations where I have steady internet access in every other app and use on my phone.

Also, the service as it exists in the app and Marvel's website are two totally different entities. I was told there was no way to read comics on my computer web browser if I had subscribed through the iOS store.

In addition, I had to reset my password recently because I uninstalled and reinstalled the app to address issues with crashing. When trying to reset my password through the app, they sent me a temporary code to use to log in. The problem with this is the app was asking me to reset my password to log in, not use a temp password. I kept receiving a message saying my account was locked and I needed to reset my password but that option was NOT AVAILABLE anywhere on the app. So I went to the website. I received another temp code (from a different source email...the app email came from Disney services and the website email came from Marvel. Again, inconsistent). I was able to reset my password after navigating a website that, every time I tried to click on my account after loggiknin, kept telling me "it looks like you're already logged in" and would redirect me to a different page that still showed I wasn't logged in. I finally found a page that acknowledged that I was logged in and reset my password. Only then was I able to log into the MU app.

When the app works, it works fine. When it doesn't, it seems REALLY doesn't. I didn't even mention the fact that when clicking on links in the app they frequently lead you to incorrect items. Ex: clicking Original Sin in Comic Events may lead me to 1970s X-Men comics. The issue is the inconsistency and the feeling that the service is run by multiple entities that do not talk to each other whatsoever.

Overall I love the service as I said as it has allowed me to catch up with a wealth of comics I love. Marvel just needs to overhaul the service and it's interface drastically to avoid frustrating it's customers. Please!

An unlimited amount of marvel comics at your disposal for endless reading. 3 month delay on new titles. However the app itself leaves much to be desired. I’d say about 90% of the time the app runs smoothly. Every week or so I run into a problem that I have to find a work around for like uninstalling and reinstalling, logging out then back, deleting and re-downloading, and you get the pattern. My biggest issue however was getting my Android tablet and iPhone to recognize me as a member at the same time. The work around for this is to not subscribe through iTunes or Google play, and to log in through a web browser.

Other than those issues, I recommend this for 2 types of readers. 1) Binge readers, for obvious reasons. Look how many comics are on here. And almost any series you want to read, the full series is on there. 2) NEW READERS! people who are new to comics in general who want to explore marvel titles and don’t really know what they like. At the very least try out the free trial and check some stuff out. You’ll be safe with any #1 issue in a series. Marvel has recap pages at the beginning of their issues that inform you of any information that is pertinent to the series you picked so don’t worry about not reading the series before or having this extensive knowledge on a character that dates back to the 60’s, nobody actually knows that much so don’t feel like you so don’t feel like you have to. If there is something you do want to inform yourself about, don’t be afraid to just Google it. Most of the time the writer is responsible for making sure the reader has the information they need to understand the story though. I cannot recommend this enough to people who are trying to get into comics.

Other apps to look into if you’re new to comics would be DC Infinite (same price point, also has a very large library, still has bugs but not nearly as many, 6 month delay on new titles). If you’re a fan of anime/manga the Shonen Jump app (only $1.99/mo, there’s a decent amount of titles but the titles they have are long running so there’s plenty to read, new releases available instantly) and finally Hoopla (free with library card, variety of publishers, comics are collected in volumes so you’re a little more limited in a sense but there is a great deal of content still, only 10 “barrows” per month.)

I actually wrote the below review for the previous version of the app, though it appears it never posted (but somehow was saved when I went to review the new version). However, despite release notes suggesting that this update would address the very issues I mention below, I have seen absolutely no improvement. Reading offline doesn't work consistently at all, and once there is a problem, those issues can't ever be read or downloaded, until the app has been uninstalled, reinstalled, signed into again, and then those issues downloaded again. I'd probably switch to just reading issues "online" but I do a lot of my reading on the subway and my connectivity is poor. (of course reading even offline issues without an internet connection doesn't seem to work anyway so maybe I'm just wasting time downloading them to start with). Anyway, on to my review...

Since I started using Marvel Unlimited a few weeks ago (thankfully with a free trial month) I've found that I LOVE the concept of the service, if you're into older comics it's amazing, and even for contemporary stuff it's pretty good, if you're ok with being 6 months or so behind the current runs.

However, the iOS app is TERRIBLE. It's exceedingly unreliable, especially when it comes to downloading issues for offline reading. Since I started using the app regularly I've found that it forgets which issues I have already downloaded, but when I try to download them again, it will often just give me an error, giving me the same error even if I try to read the issue "online." Those issues seem to happen periodically no matter what. The app also crashes a lot. Whenever THAT happens I KNOW that I'm going to run into those issues again. The only way to fix things seems to be to delete the app entirely, reinstall, and sign in again. I've had to do this at least once a day since I started using Marvel Unlimited. Sometimes multiple times a day.

I really want to use Unlimited a lot. It's a great service, when it works. But the iOS app is just awful. I don't think I will be renewing my subscription at the end of my free month, at least not until they get a more usable app.

Marvel, if you're listening. Whoever you have working on your app, tell them they need to focus on stability and making the app usable, before adding any new features. You are losing customers over this. Fix the app.

UPDATE: Beware before subscribing. I envy those of you who have a functioning app, as hose who have a functioning app sound pleased. For me, the app has not worked properly since JULY 20. After multiple emails and tweets to Marvel Support, I received a response on AUGUST 13, which stated I would be comp'd an additional month and my email would be forwarded to IT. Well, today I am unable to log in and the library access issue was never resolved. This is literally the worst customer service response I have ever received and I'm normally low maintenance. Buyer beware.

I've logged in/out, restarted, and uninstalled and it still won't work properly--issues do not save to the library and error messages abound. Check their Twitter feed (@MarvelSupport). It's been 3 weeks since my subscription, 5 emails, 5 tweets, and one letter to customer service and 0 responses to address the non functioning app. For the record, I subscribed before Marvel started offering its 99 cent deal. Therefore I am paying full price for a service that does not work as promised. It's not an isolated problem either, if you check their Twitter. And why should I need a Twitter account to receive service updates? To top it off, some people were erroneously charged incorrect amounts ($99 instead of 99 cents!) or multiple times. It's worth it if it works, but I'm sorry, I had to cancel on principle because of poor service. I understand technical difficulties but there's no reason for the complete absence of communication.

ORIGINAL POST
Finally I decided to invest in a subscription and the app absolutely will not work on my completely updated iPad 2. I can browse issues and add them to my library. But when I try to add titles to my offline library I receive an error message saying I've exceeded my maximum number of issues in the library! I get rerouted to edit my library, which shows...nothing. Then when I log out, anything I added to my library completely disappears. So basically, all I can do is browse and read titles online.

And yet, I can open the app with no problem on my tiny phone and through the website.

I'm really worried I flushed $10 down the drain, and have out in an email for customer service. But based on the reviews here I'm apprehensive. It being Sunday, I will have to wait to see if anyone replies or roll the dice by calling their service line. I will certainly update this if they are able to help me with a resolution. I am so disappointed.

I instantly hit update as soon as I saw “unlimited downloads” but boy was that a mistake.

The new look is fine, but everything else is messy. But I’ll try to stick to my three main criticisms of the last update.

First off, the “Continue Reading” section not even being visible in favor of “Recommended Series” and “New This Week” is near insulting. Like many readers that have been using Marvel Unlimited in the past, I already have a clear reading list that I’ve been working on and I don’t want to scroll down to continue working on my reading list.

If I had been looking for new stuff to read, I would have put in the effort to venture further within the app but normally, I’m continuing to read whatever I was working on and it’s a chore every single time I open the app.

Secondly, it’s near impossible to navigate in between issues. Why they got rid of the arrow to go back and forth between issues is beyond me. Sometimes I want to go back to a previous issue to remind myself of what happened. I used to be able to do just that with a press of a button.

Now, I have to : 1) Click on an issue, 2) Press the three dots because 1) takes you straight into the comic instead of Issue Details page, 3) Press Issue Details, 4) Press Keep Reading, 5) Press View Full Series, 6) Spend an ungodly amount of time scrolling to find the issue you’re looking for because they got rid of grid view, 7) Click on the Issue, 8) Press Read Issue, 9) Go back home and find that the issue you just looked at somehow remains in Continue Reading section, 10) Go back to the issue and “finish the comic” by scrolling to the last page, even though you just wanted to catch up on what happened, 11) Finally go back to the issue you were originally reading.

That whole paragraph is just to go back to a previous issue to check out what happened. It’s ridiculous. All the people using this app pay for the services. This is as though we’re doing a free pre-alpha test for this update.

Lastly, the search function is now severely limited. We used to be able to search through a marvelously comprehensive list of all thing that is Marvel comics, ranging from characters, creators, series, events and publication date. To be fair, it seems that we can still do that to a certain degree, but as seen in my last point, it takes A LOT of additional steps to do simple things that we could do with a couple of taps in the previous version.

Please either roll the update back or polish it as soon as possible. I used to love this app and the app is the sole reason why I bought an iPad. Let me continue loving the app.

Obviously, the content is great. This version of the app might be a deal breaker for me.

My "My Library" looks like it is missing some things and has others that it shouldn't anymore. I'm not sure it knows what I have read, but it might still be downloading that info.

The new changes in 7.10 make finding what I was reading before the update more difficult. There are more hoops to jump through just to find what is available to read, I'll have to search titles, characters, creators, or curated lists.Basically you have to already know what you're looking for in some ways.

Key issue: there is no way to view all comics by publication date anymore, which was the most useful way to read multiple, related issues/titles.

Let me give the app developers a use case. In Feb 2020, I decided to get the app and read everything X-Men related (fan from 80/90s). I started at X-Men #1 in 1963. By viewing ALL titles published in a particular year, I would also see any new X-related titles, limited series, character crossovers (eg look, the Blob is on the cover of an Avengers; I'll read that too), etc. In this view all I had to do was "click" an issue to read it in time order for the series and see it in relation to all other titles available at that time. At some points in time there were as many as 10-14 X-related titles per month and you don't want to get too far ahead in one series over the others because they all end up crossing over and impacting each other. As Marvel designed it so as to generate more revenue by cross selling, and I thoroughly enjoy the books.

For example, when this app update came out, I had caught up to the year 2000. There is a cross title story arch called Maximum Security (not in the curated reading lists search by the way). There are 20 related issues including a one-off title, a 3 issue limited series, and it involves 16 established titles. Yes, there are often footnotes in the books themselves to let you know what to read, but try chasing the storyline down and count how many times you have to "click" on something and compare it to the old version where you just scroll through the publication timeline looking for titles with the crossover marketing logo to read.

PLEASE, bring back a way to view ALL issues released by a publication date range. All I ask is a year selector and sort it older to newer. If I find I'm spending more time trying to figure out what comics I need to read next, than actually reading the comics, it is no longer worth my time or money. We know you still have the code in git somewhere, and you can add another index to the database if you need it.

Really, it probably deserves 2 stars in its current state, but unlimited has been great for a long time so I'll cut em some slack. Series list and browse are completely blank. On new Ipad pro, Iphone, 6splus, Ipad Air 1. Please fix and back up to 5 stars!

Previous (5-star) review:
Update April : Seldom have I seen an app dev take customer feedback to heart so fully. EVERY complaint I've listed below, from big issues to little nitpicks, has been addressed. Truly impressive. A fantastic update. The buffet of Marvel Unlimited goodness is now nearly on level with it's a la carte cousin, Comixology. I can now wholeheartedly recommend this app and service to any Marvel fan. You guys rock!

The only thing that remains is for the team to update their books to high resolution. I have no idea how practical this is, but even if they never do it, it's still every bit worth your 10 dollars a month.

Extra points for being one of the only big devs on the app store who doesn't ballot stuff with paid, fake reviews. Few have that integrity anymore. Thanks for being one of the few that lets its customers voices actually be heard, rather than drowning it out with fabricated praise.

Previous reviews:

Update March : guided view no longer zooms at all. Half the point of guided view is to get a nice near full-screen view of each panel. Dropping to 2 stars (from 3)until fixed.

Previous review: The amount of comics this app offers is staggering, and far more complete than I had anticipated. Unfortunately, the reading experience is years behind comixology (and even Dark Horse's and IDW's apps). The guided view seems to run off some a.i. that attempts to read the page's format and adjust accordingly, and usually fails. Half the time, half the panel you're trying to read will be forced offscreen, unseen.

So you're forced to read manually, which might be okay of it let you do landscape mode in single-page. Honestly, whose Ipad is big enough to do double-pages in landscape? Is there some 26-inch Ipad that no one has told me about?

On the other hand, the search tools blow the competition out of the water. Search and order results by release date, author, storyline and more. Relaase date organization is particularly awesome, and something I've been wanting from comixology for years. Not just within the same series, mind you, but for all of a particular crossover event, your particular search parameters, or the whole darned Marvel catalog if you want. This is of particular use to me, as someone who didn't start reading comics until his 30's and has decades of old storylines and crossover events to catch up on.

If you prefer to read in manual, single-page, portrait mode anyway, this is DEFINITELY the app for you. Otherwise, you must weigh an inferior reading experience vs. gobs and gobs of money saved and great search tools.

One star only because I have to in order to post.

MARVEL:
While I still would love to ENJOY the app, in it's current iteration I am having too many problems. Unfortunately no one will take responsibility for the problems. If only Reed were here to show them how to do it. You tell Marvel about the problem, they blame the device OS or your internet. You tell Apple about the problem they blame the app or your internet (haven't checked it at other wi-fi spots just hotspot from phone. But still what's the point? If I did find a place that worked, what? I can only read comics sitting on a hard chair at Starbucks?) I believe I have one solution to my problem but it involves deleting my library, and I'd hate to delete 5k+ comics only to find out that's not the problem. Currently in the process, as I'm writing this, of updating the iPad with latest iOS as Marvel states to do and will see if problems persist.

Right now the biggest problem with my app is it's not productive at all and is never consistent, if I'm especially lucky, I can make it through 2 or 3 issues before I have problems, but that's only if I have them in my offline library where the problems are still present just not as often. I can't read straight from library without having it happen often.) Not exactly sure when it started maybe a year or so ago. Basically it just keeps crashing or has a big lag in loading stuff rendering the experience unenjoyable, frustrating and practically unuseable. Right now my current process is once I see that the app stops working which is at least once or twice an issue it takes so long that it's just easier to close the app and restart it. However the probelm doesn't end there because if the app hangs up and you close it and restart it, then it hangs up on the app splash screen on the start up so I have to wait a few seconds before I have to close that one and start it again which then loads into the app. I have to do the same thing when adding issues to the library. I usually can only add 4 to 5 issues before it crashes and I have to do the double restart to continue adding.

It would be nice if you could search your library to delete comics you've read since there is no "comics you've read" section in the app. Or even an option to delete it from your library once you've read it like the option to remove from offline library and if you delete it from your library have it be marked as "already read" so you don't waste time reading something over unless you want to.

How about making the library work like the browse section where you can search for a title but also be able to sort by title a-z, release date (not that those are exactly acurate) to make it easier to select what you need to delete from your library instead of searching through your library to delete a series, finding the first issue you want to delete and then have to scroll through 40 comics until you get to the next issue to select and repeat until you select all the ones you want to delete. Just makes more sense to have a search option to make that easier. Also with the smaller series or collections like Marvel Zombies have a "delete all" option. Search Marvel Zombies. Oh, look there's Marvel Zombies Vol. 1, Vol. 2, etc. I've finished Vol. 1, let me select Vol.1 to delete all instead of having to go in and find all issues from Vol. 1.

How about importing your Marvel app purchases into Marvel Unlimited so you know which ones you already purchased and don't end up purchasing twice, for whatever reason you would do that since mostly eveything I bought on Marvel app is free in Marvel Unlimited.

OK, so I've updated my OS to the latest and it still doesn't work. Since I'm not ready to delete 5k+ comics only to find out that still doesn't help the app. I have found another solution that does work as seemlessly as the app should but am reluctant to say it so it also doesn't suffer the same fate as the app. Just be happy I won't have to cancel my sub.

This application single-handedly made it possible for me to return to my oldest and dearest hobby - reading comic books. Marvel comic books, because are there really any others besides Marvel? No way! After years away from the stories, due to daily life demands on my time and too little disposable income to financially justify continually buying physical comic books, this app has given me access to essentially the entire catalog in the palm of my hand. My phone is no longer a “phone”, so much as it is a window directly into the Marvel universe, and I can barely stop peering through it! The app interface is well laid out and the subscription rates are low and accommodating, so any Marvel fan will definitely feel as though the money is well spent. It made it so easy for me to catch up, after having stopped regular reading of the storylines since the first Civil War, although I’ve dipped into a couple of the major events, (like Civil War 2, AvX, Original Sin, Seige, Fear Itself, and the best, my favorite, Time Runs Out/ Secret Wars) over the years since then. I’ve even had my wife start reading along with me, now, which is awesome! The single biggest advantage to the app is the “Smart Panel” reading mode, which I use with the “show full page last” option toggled “on”. I can’t express how much more immersive and engaging this makes the stories. The way the view shifts and slides and zooms in and out with each panel, as you swipe in a comfortably small left-to-right gesture, gives the books an almost cinematographic quality and takes your eye just where it needs to be to really drink in the artwork and digest the story and dialogue in the best way and at the perfect pace. You never feel like your eye is pulled away from the wording to the visuals or distracted by the artwork on the right page when you haven’t finished the left page yet. While there is no substitute for viscerally holding an issue in your hands, this feature actually makes this way of reading comic books superior to the traditional form, if all other things are equal. The one and only, but in my opinion, major flaw in this app lies in the search function and library interaction aspect. You should be able to make “playlists” of issues from two or more different titles, saved in whatever order you like indefinitely that will transition seamlessly, so when you read an entire event or crossover, you never need to break your immersion in the story in order to go hunting in the library for the next book in the cases where it is not continuing in the same title’s next issue. Please, developers, add this functionality! I love comics, I love Marvel, and I love this app and its corresponding service! Rest In Peace, Stan Lee, and now and forever... Make mine Marvel!

Update on new version - NOOOOOOOO! You guys totally changed the format of the app and it’s for the worse! Now NONE of the events are in proper reading order, only separated by title and ordered by publication date. The app loads books slower and when swiping to turn pages, sometimes freezes and turns multiple pages, or blocks at once, depending on smart view being off or on. The search function is now way less intuitive and makes it so difficult to find the books I’m looking for. The large icons for pinned events are gone from the Home Screen. If you guys want to improve the app, revert basically all the changes you made to the new version, and PLEASE add a “Playlist” function so I can go through and build my own savable reading orders for events, (because the ones on the app are 99% wrong, just ordered by publication date, which when reading, totally ruins the immersive experience), so I can enjoy them without having to stop between books, tab over to a third party reading order site, look up the next book, tab back, search for it, then continue reading (which again, ruins the immersion into otherwise amazing stories). THAT would be an amazing and sought after function that would be so easy to implement. This app did get 4 stars from me before the update, now it’s 2. If you fix the mistakes made in this version and put it back the way it was, and add the multiple playlist saving function, it would be 5 stars. Please please please fix this otherwise awesome app! That said, thank you for your hard work, and I know you guys will get it ironed out!

I literally started collecting physical books again after a 12 year break because of this app, I spend hundreds on your physical copies a month. If you guys fine tune this app, it WILL make you lots of money in the long run, and I mean besides the subscription fee, because I’m definitely not the only Marvel fan who has restarted his passion based on a positive experience with this app!

Overall:

I enjoy the app and view it as being pretty solid, though I think it also has the potential to be excellent with some improvements.

The Pros:

Obviously the change to a three month delay for new books to be added (from six previously) is quite welcome, and I find myself easily losing track of time and reading a ton of issues because of how easy the app makes it to go from one issue to the next.

The app also does a terrific job of highlighting which books have been recently added to the Marveo Unlimited collection, as well as which books are currently most popular with users.

And though the search functionality via "Browse" could use refining in instances where you aren't entirely sure how best to look something up (more on that in "my wishlist"), it also digs deep enough and provides users with a great enough variety of search options (search by character, series, event, creator, publication date, ect.) that you should eventually be able to find what you're looking for in what is truly a library's worth of content IF you know what you're looking for.

The Cons:

In terms of issues I view as cons that truly impact the user experiece, the list is pretty short at two items:

1. Really the biggest one is that I find that some comics (randomly) take forever to load individual pages. And given that I am on a gigabit internet connection and they sometimes do not load regardless of how long I leave them to do so, it seems more like a bug with the app than it does an issue with my iPhone or internet connection.

2. Granted I haven't owned my iPad long, but it seems like most, if not all content on Marvel Unlimited is optimized only for holding your iPad verticality. So obviously I wish their was better optimization in terms of fitting the reading area to the screen for iPad, especially as someone that uses his tablet far more often horizontally in a "landscape" orientation than he does vertically in a "portrait" oreintation.

My Wishlist:

These are items that I wish the app would either expand upon or add. Most are improvements on its existing functionality as opposed to something that is straight up missing, hence why I am not including them as "cons" since they don't result in me enjoying the app and service less.

1. Custom Reading Lists - I'd love to be able to create AND title my own custom reading lists as someone who is using his Marvel Unlimited sub to catch up on decades of content I didn't have time to read previously. Granted there is a filter available in your library that allows users to achieve this to a limited extent, but it seems like it'd be a lot more covenient if I could group books into lists as I see fit and makes it easiest for me to access them.

For example: if I am trying to read all of the books that tie into a given event not officially recognized by the app, I'd rather be able to group them together in a custom list I titled based on the name of the event than have to mess with the filter in my library.

2. Content Curation, Organization, and the Browse/Search Functionality - This kind of ties into the custom reading lists (since it shows a large part of why I would like the option of creating them), but I think the app could do a better job highlighting the best runs for characters (curating content you could say) and organizing it in a way that makes it easiest for people to dive into.

Whether this means A) developing landing pages for specific/popular characters, where upon searching for them and clicking on the character's name in Browse, you're taken to a "landing page" for them that shows their most popular runs over the years with a brief description of each (ideally not just the first issue displayed, but with a horizontal scroll the same way as appears for the "Popular" and "Recently Added" items on the Home tab in the app for example, or 2) clicking on a character's name take you to the rather brief/limited curated reading lists already present for characters, events, ect., it seems like the app and its users would benefit greatly from either option (I realize "A" is a lot to ask for, which is why I included a more simplistic option with "B").

I guess what I am truly getting at is it'd be nice if I was not having to use Google and external sources to determine which books I should read next, and if I still had to, that I could at least save stuff to my own lists. Not everyone knows which runs are best for a given character (especially someone like me who has largely missed most of the past 20-25 years and only was able to read a limited selection of content prior to that given that I was still a child back then), who all was responsible for creating them, ect., and the app doesn't always make it easy to find them if you don't know what to look for.

The Marvel Unlimited Experience is absolutely not user-friendly at all, Unlike the mobile app, the website is unable to filter searches by series, most times it will push the most recent run of a book as a series but then individually show each issue in the run. For example, if I wanted to read the original run of Amazing Spider-Man (1963) by searching "The Amazing Spider-Man (1963)" as listed in the mobile app the series which was numbered from [protected] won't come up if I search for the above on the website it will only show me the newest individual issues which I'm not looking for because that's a different series It's the same with other series as well. Not to mention the desktop version doesn't carry over the My Library feature present on the mobile app which allows quick access to the books I'm looking to read and it also doesn't mark books as read either.

Been using the app for two months. Noticed a few things I wish they would change. Price, $9.99 a month seems unreasonable if the app is glitchy, delayed new releases, and download issues.

Glitches found so far after downloading a few comics. I noticed the thumbnail in the my download list would not appear, also causing a viewing issue and could not read the book. I had the delete the book and redownload it to view the book. The thumbnail still would not show but I could at least read the issue.

I noticed the newly released books are delayed on the app. I am guessing it’s a marketing thing to keep physical books sales alive.

For books that have multiple issues in the series, I wish there was a “Download Series” option as well. Or download first 4 or 5 issues. Something better than what exists would be awesome. My biggest complaint though, the download feature.

I recently took a trip and knew I would be on a plane for a few hours both ways. So I also downloaded 4 series that had at least 8 issues (I wanted to pass time while in flight). Once I took flight I noticed I could NOT read ANY of my DOWNLOADED issues at all. Apparently you need WiFi at all times? So what’s the point of downloading a issue(s) if you CANNOT read them offline? Most useless feature. Also a long boring flight that had no working WiFi.

I’ve been a subscriber to MU for just under 3 years. It has been amazing saving money and shelf space being able to read thousands of Marvel comics. A couple weeks ago, a new update dropped that changed pretty much everything. While the app looks and handles better, it introduced a lot of bugs. Over time these have gotten fixed, that’s not what I’m mad about.

See, there is a tab in the app called “Continue Reading” and it used to keep track of all the series you were in the middle of, like the way streaming services do. If you finished an issue, the next issue would pop up in Continue Reading, making it easy to read multiple series at once (especially useful for events that take place over multiple series). The new update neutered Continue Reading, the tab now only keeps track of a single issue you are reading, not the whole series. I thought this was a bug, but contacting support told me that this is the intended way for it to work.

This is a major step backwards, as series hopping is incredibly difficult. You could use the library feature as a sort of Continue Reading, but that really floods the library that I use as a list of series I would like to read later. All of MU’s competitors have the same Continue Reading feature that MU used to have, and now the app is a slog to use. I am going to keep this in mind in a few months when it comes time to renew.

The old version of this app was, aside from a few obnoxious bugs, super well-designed and made sorting and organizing comics and reading lists incredibly easy. With this latest update, they’ve not only turned the app into a buggy mess, but they’ve set the user interface back about 10 years. It’s like the designers are TRYING to make reading less convenient.

The new search function is borderline unusuable. The old version of the app had a variety of Browse features that made comic discovery fun and easy. Now, sometimes it’s impossible to find a specific issue even if you search for the exact title and issue #. Reading Lists are no longer easy to navigate. For some incomprehensible reason, they got rid of the handy Grid View in your library, meaning that all comics are now organized by series. This makes jumping back and forth between series (which is necessary if you’re following a reading order or reading chronologically) and absolute chore. This is all made even worse by the fact that the app is now ridden with bugs and constantly forgets which comics are “read” and “unread.” Meaning, even if you organize your unread books chronologically, the list is no longer accurate because half of the books are ones you already read months ago.

Just an all-around disaster. I can only assume this redesign was some corporate mandate to make the app more mobile-friendly.

UPADTE 3: Even in Version 7.7, Still do not have the history of the (hundreds!) of issues I have read over the years.

UPDATE 2: Just got a response to my post asking me to contact customer support. I did that last week and have gotten no response. WTH guys? Get it back together. It was a very good product until the update about 2 months ago. UPDATE: latest updates still do not fix these problems. Lost my reading history! While the start up screen fills the screen with issue covers, this function has been stripped for when you view by series, mostly dead black space now, MUCH harder to scroll through tissues. Did I mention I LOST MY ENTIRE READING HISTORY? That is a HUGE deal. ORIGINAL REVIEW WHEN UPDATE CAME OUT A COUPLE OF MONTHS AGO. Version 7.1 inexplicably changed, in a major downgrade, the ability the view all issues in the series. Had always been there were tiles of the issue covers, maybe a dozen per screen, so you could easily brows through to find something, and see with a simple, clear demarkation, whether you had previously read the issue. Now, only one issue cover per line, and a blank dead space from the cover to the end of the screen. Most of the screen is now dead black space where issue covers had flowed, and the demarcation of whether you have viewed the issue before is more difficult to see. Baffling change. Otherwise love, love, love the app, and have since it first came out.

This newest update deleted all my continue reading options - every single comic and it’s place are gone. There were a lot to keep track of, and I was also using an external page to keep track of what to read next because this app doesn’t have a good sorting option. But now even the most basic feature was just..reset. I’m kind of devastated in a way I really couldn’t imagine I would be over something so seemingly trivial. Absolutely cannot recommend an app that would ever do this.

Old review:

I really, really want to give this app 5 stars. It’s a great experience, great selection, at a great price. But if you look a little more closely, especially at the comics from the 60s and 70s, you start to see the art is washed out and heavily compressed - like a jpeg. The beautiful crosshatching and stippling as a result of the printing press process is almost completely lost. As an artist this is incredibly distracting. Maybe this is a byproduct of the digitizing of old comics - maybe an attempt to make them more modern looking? Maybe to just deliver them in a cheaper format, at a lower resolution? But if you, like me, zoom in on a panel and expect to see the color of an old comic actually be a few colors printed on top of each other, dot by dot, you will be disappointed. This is a shame, as much of the detail and therefor quality of older works are lost. Maybe I expected too much, but for me it’s a very unfortunate loss.

A week ago Marvel Unlimited was the best comic reading app and comic investment on the market. It had a few glitches but it was a 5 star app and was worth every penny. I’ve had it for years and I have tried DC apps, Comixology, CloudLibrary, and Hoopla. Marvel was the best even when it was purely web-based back in the day. But the most recent update threw away everything in an attempt to be intuitive and create a “cooler” look. I had years of comics marked as read and a library full of my next comics to read. All gone in an update. Replaced with some random issues I’ve already read weeks or months ago. The search feature was so easy to use before. Now it is so user unfriendly and difficult to find issues. Don’t get me started on how difficult it is to add or delete issues from your library. I just read an issue using full screen mode (smart panel doesn’t seem to work right for some issues and isn’t my preferred view mode) and I noticed that it will not do full screen. It has a black border around the page of about half an inch. Makes everything smaller and I have the newest large iPhone model. The update is a huge step backwards. Please fix it quickly because it is making me reconsider continuing my subscription. Luckily I have a few months left before I have to renew so I hope the marketing and software geniuses behind this update get it figured out and get it functional again. Change can be good. But this was poorly conceived.

I had enjoyed this app for over three years. Two weeks ago, it was announced that there would be a “major” update to the app. That turned out to be a major stripping out of much of the functionality of the app.

I’ve been reading (collecting) comics for almost 35 years, and not to sound too “get off my lawn”ish, but this update didn’t seem to be for people like me.

You can no longer sort between series in your library. You can, for example, only see all of the Uncanny X-men series, Avengers Vol. etc., together. This makes it hard to read issues between series. Before I could just sort my whole list by oldest to newest and basically read the issues in the same order as they were released. Now, I have to figure out the order myself and then find the issues in the series.

Also, as I have oh… about 1000 comics saved to my library, sometimes I’ll read a bunch at once. But you can no longer select multiple comics at a time and remove them from your library. You can only remove one at a time!

Oh, and the sort function doesn’t stick. As mentioned, I sort oldest to newest, but every time I open the app, it defaults back to Recently Saved. So, I have to keep resorting.

And finally, the app feels sluggish now. It has frozen once or twice too, but mostly, when you tap a page turn, now it might take a second.

Not better. Please fix, or at least bring back some of the functionality that made this app one of the best for reading comics.

Listen. I love the service it is literally a 6/5 star service but unfortunately it’s really kind of hard to get into. The UI is better but still not great. This app has so many comics which is the main pull but it feels almost like going into Spotify without any sort of organization. Unless you know what to look for, it’s super hard to find anything.

The organization is also bad An example, I’m reading ultimate Spider-Man, ya know, a huge marvel series. And 30 issues are missing from the end, they’re in another series called Marvel’s Ultimare Spider-Man and labeled 1-15, and 150-160 That’s super confusing. I get that it was technically a different creative team, but maybe if you can’t put them in the same bin connect them somehow. Especially because they carry the arc through the two stories. The original Spider-Man ends on a huge cliffhanger and apparently there’s a gap of missing comics I can’t even find, like requiem.

They have so much content but it’s hard to know where to start; it’s like being given a box with all 29000 comics marvel ever wrote with a few tabs saying “punisher” “spider-man”

Also it loads really slow for some reason, I don’t have the best internet, but still I can stream 1080p video so I should be able to scroll through a comic without having to wait 20 seconds for a page to load every time I flip the page. Still would recommend for comics fan. But maybe if you’re trying to get into comics wait until they update the UI.

I have been a huge Marvel fan for years, moving from paper into digital over time. The recent migration from the Marvel Comics app to the Marvel Unlimited app has been a significant downgrade.

1. Marvel Unlimited logs you out frequently and defaults to a subscription screen when you open the app after being logged out. You need to choose sign in another way to access the separate sign in for your Marvel library.
2. You can not easily navigate through your collection. Everything is a scroll. Larger collections can take a significant amount of time to get to the bottom of the list favorites.
3. Exiting a comic you are reading to return to the library is completely infuriating. Tap, swipe, double tap, tap and drag, pinch - tried them all and the close function only appears on occasion.
4. Completion of an issue does not let you automatically move to the next issue. All I can say hear is wow.
5. You can’t purchase digital comics anyplace from an Apple device. I guess I will no longer be purchasing comics.
6. Lackluster smart transitioning does not elevate full page art. Of the dozen comics I have read so far, everything starts off zoomed into the cover. Covers are what draws me into the story. I have purchased many comics just for the cover alone, this is why you publish variants. Why would you open comics fro reading zoomed to the text title?

Pretty disappointed. Forced to transition to an inferior product. I sure hope they fix this.

Loved this app until the new update, which is a great new look and feel, introduced various technical issues.

After the update, when I went to access the app, after I signed back in with my account, the app no longer has any record of the comics I have read, the comics I saved to my library aren’t accurate (most issues are missing and most are also marked as unread). This is super frustrating because I was reading my way through the entire Marvel U library and with the status (read vs unread) and my library being incorrect I will have to go back through and manually update each individual comic (mark as read and add to my library) which is frustrating because I had read tens-of-thousands of comics to date.

Also, the Search function is screwed up; when you begin to scroll, when sorting Series from A-Z or Z-A, just continues to bounce you back to the top of the list after you are only about 15 series in.

When saving new comics to my library, if the app reloads (like when you are refreshing it to get around a freeze) it loses all comics you have saved to your library since the new version update. Also, you lose all your read status as well.

Please bring back the letter legend in search

My library, even when I’m actively adding new comics to it never reflects the changes.

I have contacted customer support but no resolution(s) to date nor was I provided an ETA on fixes.

If you can address these issues, I am happy to give an amazing review and a 5 star rating.

Guys, the new version of the app is close to unusable. No browse means I have no idea what’s available, which means the depth of the catalog is unknown to me. This means I read the three or four titles I know of, then cancel my subscription. Search (and frankly the Home page) aren’t as good a mechanism for discovery, finding new titles that I’ll stumble on and want to try. Yes, the old browse was text based and not visual, but even so, it was more efficient to find stuff then anything in the new iteration of the app. Best would be browse with both images and text.

The search feature is single item scroll, which is bad UX b/c it takes forever to reach anything at the end (even if I reverse the sort, it takes forever to reach the middle). As an example, if I go into Series and sort A-Z, it took me 83 medium swipes to get to the M titles. So actually, the Series section *isactually close to a Browse, but 1) single item scroll is inefficient (and you’re not even making use of the rest of the horizontal space! Criminal) and 2) there’s no right hand side alphabet jump list for me to skip the A-L if I want to get to M titles quickly.

The good news is that you did speed stuff up, so maybe this is just the first working version of a necessary technical refactor, and you’ll bring the app back to feature parity with its old incarnation. I sure hope so, because I loved discovering comics in this app before. As it stands now, I’m gonna catch up on my favorites and then split.

I genuinely don’t understand how the performance of this app is still so bad at this point. When you download issues, you still can’t access them offline, because the app won’t load any content. So what’s the point of downloading issues? Pretty frustrating when you have a bunch of issues saved for a long trip with no Wi-Fi only to find out that you can’t actually access them.

Numerous times I’ve logged into the app to find my entire library and reading history has been deleted. The first time this happened I started rebuilding my library until I got a response from their support team (about a week later, mind you) that I should delete the app and download it again. This did the trick, but now every time I log in I don’t know if I’m going to see my complete library or the incomplete recreation with no reading history. The number of times I’ve had to delete this app just to get my library back is frankly unacceptable.

I also wish there was a way to create your own reading lists. They provide you with a handful of curated lists but they’re always incomplete. If you could create your own “playlists” that would go a long way to maintain your place in a long run or in a run where multiple series intersect and you have to jump back and forth.

It’s unfortunate that a service with such a huge backlog of material is so frustrating to navigate. They really need to fix these bugs to make it a more usable service, because in its current state, it’s a crapshoot whether or not you’ll be able to actually use the service as intended.

I have already written about the broken search, as it has lost the ability to search by date. To where if you miss reading for one week there is no way to search by date. Even finding individual issues is much harder.

Now with further use I have other issues.

It now takes so many clicks to open and close a book. When you click on a book, you get it’s info page, then can open it to read. Then when you get to the end it pops up a window in the middle with a close box that brings you back to the book, you must then click around the top to bring up the close x which is in a different spot! This is horrible UI design. It should be one click to get out of book and one screen, and even then it brings you back to the info page, which you must close to move on. Honestly I only need the info pane once!

Then there are the new unlimited scrolling comics. They seem to be on their own schedule, and show up during the week, pushing the weeks current issues into a view all page with another click. If these are going to be with the weekly new issues they should all come with the weekly refresh. And personally i find the scrolling nature of the comics to be very annoying. I want my comics to be read the same way so i don’t need to be doing different methods to read them. I know it is more content, and some of the issues have been interesting, but most are normal comics that you scroll, which is frustrating.

And having lost my entire read history is awful! Are you kidding me? Who thought this was a good idea?

The only positive is being able to download more comics.

The quick and easy A-Z list of titles is gone, the new search function is a headache because series, characters, writers, and reading lists will ALL show up in the results in mixed order, you can’t filter by month/year anymore which was the main way I used to find what I was looking for, you can’t filter by read/not read anymore and “read” badges are gone entirely, though i suppose it doesn’t matter because my read history is completely wiped. The comic issues are no longer presented in a simple grid of covers anymore, but awkwardly spaced out vertically, so you have to scroll through them, and there’s a ton of unused space off to the right, so finding the issue you want in a series with lots of issues (such as Avengers vol 1) takes a lot more scrolling than it used to. Also, downloading/adding to library takes extra clicks, when there used to be big and clear buttons for these features. Certain bugs that had riddled the previous app design for years are now gone… in favor of new bugs that are even more intrusive, such as the “sort by” function in downloads randomly reverting back to “Download Date: Newest First” right as you click on an issue, taking you to an issue you didn’t intend to click on. I will give these bugs the benefit of the doubt as this iteration of the app is brand new and might get ironed out soon, but… the rest of my complaints still stand. What’s funny is that the app actually runs smoother overall for me than the old design, the app loads up quicker and downloads are faster, but what good is that when the overall functionality is botched?

Unfortunately I have to agree with many recent reviews. This latest update to Marvel Unlimited is truly awful. The previous version could have used some tweaks to make it run smoother but this new version has departed in such a way that I miss the hiccups from before.

Since the new update I’ve noticed that they randomly added comics to my library that I never added previously. Not just a few, hundreds. There also seems to be no way to quickly clear my library as in previous versions so now I need to click on a character or series, select each individual issue and then remove it. This is quite a pain in the butt to get rid of the 50 issues of Power Pack that I never added in the first place.

When searching for comics to add they also managed to make it far worse than ever before. Say for instance I want to add some Iron Man issues. I click the search button, then scroll through the list of characters to get to Iron Man (not in alphabetical order either because why would it be ) and then I’m presented with every comic Iron Man has ever been in, seemingly in no particular order. At first it SEEMS like its in reverse order from his newest 2020 series, but then suddenly I’m looking at issues from Wolverine 1998… Iron Man features in NONE of these issues.

The reading guides tab seems to be hidden in the search function now. Several of the issues I KNOW I’ve read have been marked unread. They seem to have done away with the feature to search for comics by publication date so if you wanted to read everything that came out at a particular period of time, TS to you.

The app looks nicer, and so far it seems that the panel and page turning are smoother, but when it comes at the expense of everything else I wish they wouldn’t have bothered

We’re more than a month past the 7.1 update that completely ruined this app, and most of the issues have still not been resolved. There’s been a lot of frantic reassurances from the developers that everything’s going to be okay, but there’s no roadmap for when that will be.

Some of the issues are basic, app-breaking bugs — like an inability for the app to remember to mark issues that you’ve read as “Read.” Several times over the past month, I’ve marked a few dozen issues in my library as “Read,” only to have them marked as “Unread” literally a few minutes later. This is basic database functionality, and even after three updates, it’s still broken. It’s shockingly incompetent.

Most of the worst issues though are a completely reimagined UI that feels like a solution looking for a problem to solve. You used to be able to view issues as a grid and see multiple issues from multiple series in the same view. That’s all gone now. Instead, you’re confined to a clunky view that lets you see no more than 2-3 issues at a time, only from a single series. So good luck trying to read a crossover that doesn’t already have a reading guide, and good luck trying to see all of the issues that Marvel published within a certain time period.

The greatest strength of the Marvel Universe is its interconnectedness. But Marvel Unlimited forces you into a restricted reading experience that frustrates any attempt to explore the rich history of the world’s largest narrative. It feels like an app designed by people who have no idea how comics readers read comics, and they didn’t bother asking any of them before they shoveled it out the door. Frustrating, disappointing, incompetent, and condescending. Don’t bother subscribing until they’ve radically overhauled everything.

UPDATE: I just received a developer response, the same copy/paste response sent to so many others, about how searching by publication date is now a thing. While that was a problem, that WASN’T one of the problems I listed. The app customer support team isn’t even reading these reviews. They are just generic replying (probably because there is some metric they are trying to meet by “responding”). If I could give negative stars, I would. Getting a thoughtless response is worse than no response.

I’ve lost track how long this new update has been out for, but it is still a flaming dumpster fire. Do you care about crossover events (because it’s not like there aren’t a handful of these each year) and want to read them in some semblance of published order? NOPE, not without a lot of hassle looking up each series one by one. Do you have a lot of issues saved to your library and want to just see what’s unread? One click? HA! Try five taps. Did you forget to check the app for a week and want to go back and bookmark issues that were recently released to the app? Also a fat no. You only get to see what’s new this week, not this month, or even just a simple reverse publishing order of everything available in the app. But do you care 1000% about being a marvel insider? Well I have good news for you, because that nonsense is all over this app. Listen marvel, i don’t think I’m asking for that much when I ask for A) just a one tap toggle switch on any page where there is a list of comics to only show what is unread (but I suppose that would depend on you caring to track and maintain successfully what has and has not been read) and B) not insist on grouping everything by series. A good portion of your business is crossover events (big and small) and this decision just fully thumbs your nose at being able to read these events.

This app used to have some bugs and limitations, but was profoundly intuitive and user friendly. Rather than improve it, they’ve created a whole new app with some upgrades — but that is way less friendly and easy to use. Things that use to take one button press now take multiple, buried on additional screens. Everything takes longer. Want to close a book when you’ve finished it? You used to be able to swipe an additional time to get a window to close the book; now doing that brings you to an overlay you have to close before you can tap to bring up the top bar that you can tap to close the book. Have a lot of books in your library you’ve read and want to clear out? You need to tap and remove each one, individually. Want to see if you’ve missed any issues in a series? That’s buried two pages deep on the issue you’ve opened. And they used to make it so easy to find what you missed from previous weeks, but now you can only see the most recent week’s issues — along with tons of additional clutter you can’t remove.

All of a sudden, it’s become a huge pain to keep up with comics on Marvel Unlimited, which is a shame because they’ve added so much new content. It’s becoming easier and easier to forget to log on, and once you’ve fallen behind, it’s impossible to catch up now.

Just a shame — I discourage people from using this app now.

UPDATE: They have pushed through an update, but it sadly remains as unintuitive as the rest of the new version. What used to be one click away, is now buried under four clicks, and it’s not exactly where you’d expect to find it. Why can’t you just see past weeks of new issues, or new issues added this month, in the same place as those added this week as before? Why can’t I edit my homepage so the stuff I want to see is top? Why is my reading history still gone, so the app only recommends stuff I’ve read? The world may never know.