Source: Author’s screenshot of Marvel’s App Interface

Collections come in many formats. For those organizations whose collections include many books, texts, or print portfolios making these collections readily available can present a challenge. The comic book industry has been utilizing technology to create novel distribution pathways for many of their materials. By examining their solutions arts organizations may gain inspiration for ways to archive their textual or print works, and create interactive and engaging way for audience to appreciate the artworks.

Marvel Unlimited is Marvel Comics’ only digital comics subscription service that allows the readers to easily have access to Marvel’s comic issues through the app on their phones, pads, and through their official website on computers. The application contains over 20,000 Marvel comics from the publications in 1939 to the latest published issues.

Main Features

The application includes more than 20,000 digital comic books by Marvel, therefore the browsing and searching system is crucial in order for the users to quickly locate the specific comic issue they want. The browsing tab is categorized by Publication Date, Series, Characters, Creators, and Comic Events, which allows the readers to locate the comic issues they want as fast as possible. Readers can search through either one of the categories, and filter the information of the others. This type of browsing system could be useful for archiving files or the collection systems of museums. This methodology can be applied to different departments or the search engines in art organizations that by categorizing each file with different features and applying filters to them, it is much easier for the employees to browse through the files they want along with relevant files with similar features.

Source: Author’s phone. Smart Panel view of Marvel’s program.

With the trend of reading on mobile devices and the notion of being environment-friendly, more and more people choose to read electronically rather than buying stacks of comic books. Though Marvel Unlimited is an application on electronic devices, it strives to create a reading environment that contains both the sense of reading a physical comic book and watching a Marvel movie. There are two viewing modes when reading a comic in the app: full page and smart panel. In the “full page” mode, readers will see the entire page of a comic. With the page flipping animation, users will have the sense of reading an actual comic book. When switching to smart panel mode, the app will zoom in the text boxes and the scenes on the pages in order, so readers don’t need to worry about not knowing where to look at because the app is leading the readers’ gaze through the pages. This animated viewing mode can be effective for audience engagement in art organizations, like museums. It could be utilized in museum apps to provide high resolution images of the museum’s collections to the visitors while zooming in to the details of the brushstrokes and impastos of the paintings or the carvings and textures of the sculptures.

There is a tab called “My Library” for the readers to build their own collection of comics. Users can add any comics they want to the “library” so that they can find the comic issue they are interested in afterward. Also, in the tab, the comics are grouped by “read” and “unread” so that users can clearly find what they are currently reading, what they have already finished, and what they are interested but haven’t read yet. For an organization with significant textual collections this type of digital library system could enable users to build virtual libraries to read at their conviencie, and for students or scholars researching the collection this type of feature could provide an easy way to organize their research.

Pros:

· Free to download, with in-app purchase of subscriptions

· Includes over 20,000 digital Marvel comics issues

· Easy to browse through the comic issues

· The “Smart Panel” view provides an ordered view of the text with smooth and vivid transitions between scenes.

Cons:

· Can only view comic issues offline on phones and pads, and for computers terminals, comics cannot be downloaded

· Do not have recommendations based on readers’ favorites/ preferences

Membership Plans

Monthly - $9.99/month

· Instant access to over 20,000 Marvel Comics on iPhone, iPad, Android, and Web

· Member-only deals on Marvel Comics and merchandises