Make Mine Marvel Unlimited

https://lebeauleblog.com/2018/11/10/make-mine-marvel-unlimited/

It’s been a long time since I read comic books. Like a lot of people, I have been getting my superhero fix from other media. These days there is a plethora of movies and TV shows to choose from. Not to mention cartoons and video games. There are more ways than ever to enjoy superhero adventures, but none of them offer the same in-depth experience you get from a comic book. After more than a decade away, I have recently returned to superhero comics through a Marvel Unlimited trial subscription. In a lot of ways, comic books haven’t changed. But thanks to new technologies, some things will never be the same.

I grew up with superheroes. I couldn’t tell you what my first experience with the genre was. As far back as I can remember, there was the Batman TV show and the Superfriends. I was enthralled by these brightly colored characters from a young age. But we didn’t have a lot of money for comic books when I was a kid so mostly I watched superheroes on TV. It wasn’t until I was in my twenties and I had a lot of disposable income that I started reading comic books regularly.

For a lot of years, I had a very expensive comic book habit. New comics hit the shelves on Wednesdays and I did my best to pick up my stash as close to the middle of the week as possible. My local comic shop would pull certain titles and hold them for me but it they missed a hot-selling title I might have to scramble to find a copy. It didn’t happen often, but I didn’t like to take any chances. Most weeks, I would come home with a pretty big stack of books that would take at least an hour or so to read. Comics aren’t cheap and most of them can be read in a matter of minutes, so those stacks of books added up pretty quickly.

When I was reading, I sampled a little of everything. My preference was for DC Comics because those were the characters I formed the strongest attachment to as a kid. I read Marvel books too, but I never bonded with the X-Men the way I did the Justice League. I liked the Avengers, but during the years I was reading comics Marvel could never figure out what to do with them. I also read my share of indie comics to mix things up. I liked a lot of them, but like most fans what kept me coming back to the store was superhero stuff.

That all changed once I started a family. Disposable income was a thing of the past. Those of you without kids cannot appreciate what a bite diapers and formula take out of your budget. To this day, I do not know how we paid for daycare. We had to tighten our belts and the first thing on the chopping block was comic books as well as just about any other form of entertainment beyond cable TV. We rarely went to the movies or out to eat.

It’s not a coincidence that I started blogging when my kids were young. Blogging was a pastime that didn’t cost me a dime. I actually got into blogging through comic books. I used to write reviews for a comic book website. But when I stopped buying books, I still wanted to write so that’s what lead me to start Le Blog. I needed a site where I could write about a variety of topics because I wasn’t keeping up with comic books or movies anymore.

Now the kids are older and disposable income is a thing again. We can afford to take expensive family vacations and if I want to go out to a movie I don’t have to stress about the cost of a ticket vs. paying for daycare. But still, braces are expensive and college is looming. We’re doing all right for a middle class family, but we don’t make comic book money. At an average price of around $3-4 an issue, comics just can’t compete with other forms of entertainment on value.

Or at least physical comic books can’t compete. However, digital comics are another matter. Virtual comic books were becoming a thing just as I was moving on from the hobby. Marvel Unlimited started in 2007 giving fans a chance to dig into the company’s vast archives. The library was limited at first but they have been adding to it over over a decades. Today, the service offers just about everything you could ever want to read excluding comic books published within the last 6 months.

The service is typically prices at $9.99 a month or $75 for a year-long subscription. There are discount codes from time to time but these are not as common as you might expect. I was hesitant to commit until I had sampled the product so I occasionally looked for a free month-long subscription offer. But it seemed like every time I found a code, it had just expired.