How To Access The Marvel DCU For Free... On PC, On iPhone, On Android

[Rich Johnston]

The Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited digital subscription service, where thousands of comics have been made available for all-you-can-eat consumption, has been arranged in Beta for compatability with iOS, dropping the Flash language version that prevented it before.

But in doing so, they let anyone try it out... for free. As long as you can guess the issue in question. A reader writes;

Buggy, but it works. terrible smart panels so not great on the phone. It works offline (I can load a book and read on the plane)

All in all I'm very happy that they are doing this and I did just read a comic with little problem on my iPhone browser.

Amusingly, login doesn't seem to be necessary if you have the URL if a comic.

So here is, completely legally, for free on any device, Captain Americe #615.1 Or FF #1. Or Power Man And Iron Fist #3. I'm sure you can find some of your own before they fix it...

[thekeith82]

I don't quite understand what's being said here. Are you saying you can only get a free trial if you guess the issue? That seems ridiculous. Is this actually a bug, then? You can get free access to a comic by inputting the issue number somewhere and you can share the URL freely even with non-users? What's the method? This is appalingly written.

[zehgnomo]

I don't quite understand what's being said here. Are you saying you can only get a free trial if you guess the issue? That seems ridiculous. Is this actually a bug, then? You can get free access to a comic by inputting the issue number somewhere and you can share the URL freely even with non-users? What's the method? This is appalingly written.

It's pretty clear that's a bug.
You've taken that joke too seriously.

EDIT

It seems some comics are recognizing the desktop as a mobile device and showing the full comic. Some are redirecting to the desktop, limited to non-subscribers version.

You can see the code by copying the Read It Online link at the comic page.

The FF #1 link, for example, reads:

http://marvel.com/digitalcomics/view.htm?iid=20186

Just copy the code in red on this link:

http://reader.marvel.com/#/issue/20186

As I said, it doesn't work with every comic. Seems like an easy fix too.

[jonwolf]

Was there no thought put into the "Marvel DCU" abbreviation which is the most confusing name ever? Is this the same as the Amalgam Universe?

[Matt Spatola]

I don't quite understand what's being said here. Are you saying you can only get a free trial if you guess the issue? That seems ridiculous. Is this actually a bug, then? You can get free access to a comic by inputting the issue number somewhere and you can share the URL freely even with non-users? What's the method? This is appalingly written.

A confusing post? Nonsensical verbiage? On Bleeding Cool? Are you joking?

[Stefan Offenberg]

Free or not, what a shitty way to read comics. This is supposed to replace print?

[JRBirkhead]

As someone with an ipad, this is fantastic, amazing news. So happy Marvel finally has an answer to ipad users who want to read MDCU.

[Tom]

The older comics (before advanced printing techniques) look pretty good on it. More recent stuff looks all right, but it won't go full screen on iPad (my number one suggestion to the developers is that they should do something about that) so you have to either look at it shrunk or blown up and cropped. The image quality, especially when blown up, is not as good as the HD comics on Comixology (it seems about the same as the non-HD comics, maybe slightly lower), although since the lettering is a vector element that actually looks a lot better (the Comixology lettering is just part of the artwork, awkwardly) - I guess it's the same as MDCU usually is but a bit more noticeable on the iPad 4. A lot of the comics I tried aren't working in html5 yet and I got redirected to their web pages. There are a few bugs, especially when you zoom in and out, and I couldn't get the smart panels mode to work at all. But on the whole, especially if they enable a full screen mode (I presume they're developing a stand-alone app to do this), it's an impressive value for money product, and when they've brought the full library over to html5 I think I might get a subscription. Those who aren't fussy about their artwork should be very pleased about it.

As an example of an older comic, Amazing Spider-Man #1: http://reader.marvel.com/#/issue/1067