Comixology - Comics & Manga Reviews

I have enjoyed using the this app app for about two years now. Although a lot of reviews appear to be about the this app digital comics service itself or the this app Unlimited subscription service, which are both great, I think the user experience accessing and interacting with this app content through Comixology could be improved. The core function of simply reading comics is slick. I’ve never had any issues and the “Guided View” option to view each panel sequentially as a separate page really improves the experience for some books.

But the inability to organize your books drives me crazy. You can only view your titles alphabetically or you can view individual books in one of a few “Smart Lists” that Comixology automatically generates (the same lists are also available in your online account). These show books you’re in the middle of reading, most recent purchases, most recent downloads, and unread books. Those are helpful, but once you build a large digital collection and start to take advantage of sales to purchase books you may not read for a long time, they have very little utility and it becomes very difficult to keep track of th books you want to read. Please, this app, add a setting for “Custom Smart Lists.” Even if the user has to login to the main app through a desktop to setup a custom list, it would be a major improvement. That would definitely make this a five star app.

The removal of the smart list is a big drawback for me. I have become an infrequent reader the last few years and the organization of such rows as “current reading” and “recently purchased” helped to remind me of things to pick back up after long periods of time away. I will occasionally buy something to read later and grouping by recently purchased as opposed to the release date helps for finding older comics I currently bought to read easier . The fact that these synced to the cloud was very convenient when switching devices, as it helped to maintain reading list continuity. The “Library” ( which seem to be what was previously “My Library” ) is not of much use to me, as I have a accumulated a large collection over many years and having everything in one place, for me, can make finding something I was reading but cannot remember the tile of difficult. Making that and “Explore” the only options seems like a huge drawback to me from the previous version. While I still go to my local comic shop monthly to check my pull box for a few series, I mostly read digital for it’s convenience. I hope that at least some of the innovative features like the smart list and others removed can find there way back into was a great comic reader.

I definitely understand bugs in a new version that can only come to light when the new version sees the light, but I feel like 4.0’s shortcomings go well beyond that. The fact that less than half of my titles showed up in my library is a big part of my frustration. To add to that same frustration, when I go to borrow a title back into my library it tells me I already have it. I also cannot borrow the title through Kindle Reader due to the same reason, which was supposed to be a big highlight in the update. Also in the description of the new update it promised something akin to “faster/more reliable downloads” which isn’t the case. Let me be clear, some of these books are big files so a longer download time should be expected. However, when your titles keep getting stuck in “download limbo” and you opening them renders a blurry image that doesn’t go away after loading then I think the problem may be bigger than file size. I do not envy the developers in their task (whatever the goal may have been), but I have PAID for this service for a long time and the disruption in that isn’t sitting well with my extraneous income (or lack their of). I recommend don’t spend your money simply because of this new update, I may not be any longer.

This has been my favorite and most used app for years now. After updating recently I saw the crazy amounts of negative reviews and had to post my own opinion. As a kid and young adult I collected comics for years and had to deal with the clutter of a physical collection. Now, with Comixology, I can stay up to date on the few series I still follow and also fill in the blank spaces of series and runs I missed over the years. As far as the reader, its great. It feels like watching a wide screen movie but I can do it on my lunch break in my car or sneak a few pages at work. Some advice: check the sales weekly! I've gotten so many comics for so cheap (sometimes up to 75% off!). This let me experience the costly task of collecting Morrison’s legendary Batman run, as well as huge series like Mignola’s Hellboy and BPRD comics or the Dark Horse Conan for a fraction of the sales price. I still find myself occasionally buying physical books, but they’re purely for collecting purposes. Overall, while there are occasional and rare bugs, they have always been fixable by restarting and are always addressed quickly via updates.

I never read comics digitally but it’s easier than buying the physical copies of them. I prefer not to buy digital because if I’m going to spend the money on a book, I would much rather have it physical. Thought I would try this out while on vacation because I really wanted to read invincible. I signed up for their “Unlimited” service. Which by the name you would assume actually let you read more than just a chunk of a series. This is a terrible business model. If you only want to buy the digital issues it’s a good reader, however this subscription service is an outright lie. Most series with the “Unlimited” tag are misleading. That conveys that the SERIES is available to read in its entirety. I decided to read Invincible, downloaded what I could (up to vol 10 of the collected editions) only to learn after blowing through those 10 volumes that I’ve only read less than half of the series and if I wanted to read the other 15 volumes I would have to shill out even more cash than I am paying. If you want comics to survive in the modern age you need to adapt to modern consumer standards. Especially for big name series that draw massive attention such as Invincible.

I was looking forward to reading vintage X-men comics, I started with the dark Phoenix story. While the resolution is is great (better than what I experienced from the local library) the color was distractingly over bright and saturated. Researching this a bit, I learned that colorist of that era, most anything before the 90s, selected colors intended to be printed on warm gray newsprint. It’s a bit of a disservice to the original art work to not see the colors accurately. It would be a great simple feature if there was a way to adjust colors to make them more muted so they can be more accurate. The guided view feature works great. ‘Unlimited’ subscription felt deceptive as many have noted about misleading people to think an entire series would be unlimited when you see it decorated with that label, huge strike there in trust. Offline feature didn’t work for me when I tried, that was a bummer on my camping trip. The UI is not bad so if these things get addressed this would be a solid reader.

First, the idea of this app and digital comics is amazing and I would recommend any one who is curious to try it. My review is coming from a decade long user who is frustrated with the major overhaul of Comixology . Without ranting for paragraphs, the most important missing feature for me is sorting by purchase date. I also miss the smart lists section. When you have thousands of books the smart lists help you stay organized on one screen with out having to go back and forth between different sorting options. I’m sure the way this all works is fine for books, were you spend a lot of time with one book. But for comics, where you may buy a dozen or two a week and they take 15 minutes to read, and you don’t always get to read them all that week, and often you are reading multiple books that are part of a big crossover where the order matters … so, yeah, organization is vital. When you are finished with a book there isn’t any easy way to go back to the Home Screen without clicking backwards out of the book, or the path it took to get there either. And the entire mechanism for how Comixology sorts books you open but don’t read …. Uggg. This turned into rant.

I’ve been a user of this app since 2014 and enjoyed the fact that if something was misprinted then it wouldn’t be long before a book got an update to fix a page. In fact, sometimes whole graphic novels would be updated with better image quality or updated colors. With 4.0 all those updates to all of the this app library has been stripped. Lists of what I had downloaded most recently, bought most recently, and was in the middle of reading were all handy feature that were stripped away in the latest update. Since 2014 I downloaded a plethroa of free titles that were usually #1s to see if I liked a book. To clear things up, I would often archive the #1s I didn’t care for or archive a book that I knew I wouldn’t read again. That cleared up my library and allowed me to focus on the unread books. The newest update got rid of the archive and now only lets you permanently delete a book. Those archives books now flood my library with confusion as every book in my collection is marked unread. This update has crushed Comixology I once loved and had poured $1000+ into over the years. Now Comixology is just a dumpster fire.

First, I want to say, this is a great and easy app to use for reading comics.

That being said, I have two major problems with it.
1. What’s the point in paying a subscription service if you ALSO have to pay for the digital comics you’re getting? There are some free ones, but they’re all individual parts of bigger stories, or they’re just not worth reading. The stuff worth reading is always extra.
2. If you’re going to make people buy the comics they want to read as well, you should allow them to do it USING YOUR OWN APP. The fact that I ALSO have to go to the safari window to open this app just to buy something, then go to Comixology to actually read it, is ridiculous. It’s 2021 and you don’t have a “buy now” option in your app? Are you just trying to turn people away or do you just want to make everything needlessly complicated? I’m trying Comixology on a trial run right now, but so far, none of this is worth it. The only reason I’m even giving a second star is because the reading is actually fluid and nice when you actually get to finally read a comic.

The latest update here from the last couple days is the worst downgrade for an app/company that I’ve ever experienced. The in-app interface and digital comic reader have been overhauled and made infinitely worse. The guided view when reading comics makes the images look borderline grainy, you have to download a whole sample to preview a book rather than just reading it on the book’s page. The comic archive where all the books you’ve purchased is now organized in such a bizarre way and for some reason they’ve added a “permanently delete” option when you select a comic so if you choose that option, you have to purchase the comic a second time…? Not to mention the site where you go to buy the comics to download on to Comixology has now been fully merged with Amazon’s site so searching for any one issue of a comic is a nightmare bc it’ll pull up results for non-comic items before the comic issues, plus there’s no way to filter it to only search this app’s database. The whole update across the board is god-awful and the worst I’ve ever seen, I only continue to use it bc I have no other option…

The is the best comic reader on the market by far in terms of assortment, reading technology, and support. However, when you have a large collection of books, Comixology becomes subpar. The main issue is how Comixology checks against all your owned books before displaying your locally stored comics. So, if you’re on the subway and you’re losing data and want to read, you open Comixology and then Comixology will check against your library of books. Problem is you have bad data so you can’t do that check. So you’re stuck looking at a loading wheel unable to access your books. Seems like this could be solved with either a small check against recently purchased OR if data is below a certain threshold AND a user has a certain number of books owned just abort the check and show local books. There may be a concern around privacy and DRM but if someone has a lot of books then they’ve given you a lot of money and I think it’s alright to lose a bit on privacy here to give good UX.

PLEASE return to the old version. The new one is poorer picture quality, no archive system, terrible organization options for library (why lose smart lists??), and enraging difficult in series navigation for purchases ie in order to get “series details” it starts you back to issue 1 instead of the old OBVIOUSLY superior method of jumping to your current issue number WITHIN the larger series and allowing you to scroll backwards or forwards from there. If I want to buy the single issues preceding and following the current issue I’m reading why oh WHY would I have to scroll all the way from issue 1 again? Also no Event or connected issues groupings like in the old app at least that I can find. You have made Comixology far more difficult to use AND far less profitable for you as I’m not going to spend 20 minutes searching for a single issue that comes next in whatever I’m reading or searching for all the event tie ins one at a time by hand. SO fewer purchases and more annoyance for me. It really worked well before. Why remove the most basic user friendly and LOGICAL aspects of Comixology ??

The previous version was quite good and did everything I wanted from a comics reader app. The smart lists put things where I wanted them, and made browsing my library very easy. This new version has really cut that back, making browsing more difficult, and not being clear about what's actually downloaded and what's not. The actual reader view is mostly unchanged, which is good, but for something intended to manage weekly periodicals, this is really not great. Amazon's integration of this app has been largely botched and would have been better simply leaving it as it was.

This update is more of a downgrade. The user interface is confusing and makes me wonder if Comixology was even tested before the update was released. The 2 page view on landscape mode is non existent, which is essential when reading manga. The previous version was almost perfect for this option when using an iPad Pro. All you would have to do is turn your device landscape and you would get a two page view with almost no space between the artwork and it would look like a single page, as intended by the artist. I won’t be able to finish reading a series due to this interface. The smart list option is also gone, which was a great feature when trying to start reading where you left off and it even listed the books left in a series that you hadn’t finished.

Please fix the 2 page view mode and have a option to fill view the entire screen.
Smart lists was also a great feature and now not included in the interface.

this app used to have a darn good app. The library was easy to use, the store did a good job of highlighting comics and the reading interface was really good. Since version 4.0 the library is more like Kindles, which isn’t as well suited to comics. The store doesn’t seem to have near as much. But far and away the worst is the new reading view. Zoom doesn’t work. Guided view only partially works. In a lot of comics the panel view only zooms very slightly making it barely better than nothing. Landscape mode is horrible. The page is fit to the screen vertically making it tiny. And guided view doesn’t expand to fill the screen. Several of my comics show up sideways. I’ve got to lock the screen rotation in the OS and the turn the screen to read those. Even then I’ve got to remember to swipe up and down instead of left and right. I can’t believe they ever even tested this,it’s just awful. Prior to the update this was a 5 star app

Listen, I get that you want to update the UI even though there was nothing wrong with it. I can even understand how you’re pushing consolidation with kindle and prioritizing getting more unlimited subscriptions over users that have bought books in the past. What I can’t understand is why you’d ever have a release that would totally wipe someone’s downloaded library. I found this out while on a plane ride, which was horrible, but even now at home I have to remember what I had downloaded and why. I use Comixology all the time - why was there no notification.

Really poor execution and navigating tradeoffs. I expect better.

UPDATE: all of the unread flagging is off, so I can’t even tell where I was in various series. This is totally unusable and unacceptable for all users that aren’t using unlimited - like me, someone who has thousands of books they’ve paid thousands of dollars for. This might legit turn me off digital comics altogether.

This new version of this app is, as reflected in the reviews of so many others, an unmitigated disaster. I do not recall any other app. ever going so far in reverse from one version to an "upgraded" version. The new version has become a reader only; virtually every convenient feature that made the earlier versions of Comixolgy an excellent app. has been eliminated. The new inability to order comics as in-app purchases is the worst defect. Forget this: I am going back to paper.

JUST AWFUL: no more archiving of books, no more progress lines showing how far one has progressed reading a particular book, no more list of books recently read, etc., etc. (there is, however, an irksome icon at the bottom of the screen of the last book one has read that one cannot get rid of). Bring back the old this app, please!!!…otherwise, I may go back to paper.

I've been using Comixology for several years and have hundreds of books on it. It's very convenient and easy to download and read comics with. HOWEVER Comixology is somewhat buggy; marking as read sometimes doesn't work, there's rare crashes and such. Also the organization of titles in the library is kind of rubbish. Don't the makers read comics themselves? There should be a way to organize by story arc when a story is scattered across a dozen thinly related titles with different authors. Yeah that's partly a fault of the comics industry, but I'd like a custom organizing feature or something. Also the ability to write or download suggested reading orders.

Awesome, prompt support - I always got my tech support problems heard and resolved by the team.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Comixology. A lot. I love my old comics, but I do enjoy the ability to expand the art, and to see it in rgb, the way the colorists intended, over cmyk. And it’s great on vacations not stuffing a bag with comics over clothes. That said, we all now have to live the scene in “40 Year Old Virgin”, where Jonah Hill’s character is in the Ebay Store, asking to buy some silver boots, to which he’s told he must go onto eBay to bid on them, even though he’s standing there with money to pay for them.

Now when we use Comixology, we have to then go online to the
this app site to buy books we come across while in Comixology instead of the convenient way we had it before? It’s not the end of the world, it’s just extra unnecessary steps when the previous way worked so well. I hope they decide to bring back in-app purchasing.

So I upgraded the application and to my surprise there
is no new features, the opposite, this upgrades takes away old
features.
We no longer have the books listed alphabetically, meaning I can no longer jump for example from A to F, and since the thumbnails are now gigantic, I am now expected to scroll my 13,000 plus books for hours before I get to the book I am looking for.
The search feature doesn’t help if one doesn’t know or remember what he/she is looking for....
And the ‘unread’ and ‘in progress’ listings were already in the smart list section but they are now prominent in the my books section, why?
Twice the same feature? What about adding a real feature ?
I know many people have requested: the capacity to create
collection listings, where is the collection feature?
Also gone the series list in the left side of the screen with the issues list on the right, now it is either or... totally useless
in fact the earlier setting was extremely helpful.
Now I feel I lost control of my books.
This looks like a programmer upgrade with zero clues about the needs of a reader especially one that has a large library.
This upgrade is 100 % about good look and 0% about readers.
Very disappointed.

Been using Comixology for several years now and, other than one train wreck of an update, it’s worked pretty well. With the latest update, though, the search engine took a big step backwards. Instead of searching for whole phrases, it now searches for any word in the phrase. I was a little disappointed when my search for “Black Panther” brought back every book with “black” or “panther” in the title. That’s over 40 titles, 35 of which I could care less about.

I never had this issue before. Not sure why they took out the specificity, but it would be nice to get it back.

I've loved the this app app since I started using it years ago (bought an iPad specifically so I could read digital comics on it), but the latest update is either buggy, or poorly designed.

I read comics on the new version for the first time last night. Had to adjust the settings to get My Books to display my library in alphabetical order - no big deal. Then I found the title I wanted to read, clicked on it, clicked on the "download all" link to get all 3 issues downloaded - after each issue downloaded, Comixology kicked me back to the My Books screen. I had to repeatedly click on the title to get back to the issues. Annoying.

After downloading the 3 issues, I started reading the first one!..... Or so I thought. Turns out they were listed "most recent first" so instead of issue 32, I ended up reading issue 34 before realizing what had happened.

Who reads issues in reverse order???? NO ONE! I have no idea why this is the default order when showing issues of a title. If this is a defect, it needs to be fixed. If this is as designed, the design needs to be re-thought.

After reading each issue, I was kicked back to My Books, rather than the title screen. The old app took me back to the title screen (screen listing all the issues I have got a title) after finishing an issue - this made sense.

One thing neither version of Comixology had is the ability to view one's archive - this would be nice to have.

The reason, the ONLY reason, that I didn't give this a 5-star review is a small glitch between the this app website and the this app app. If I purchase a title on the website, it may not immediately show up in my SmartList on Comixology , even if I hit "download to app." I can use Comixology to search for the title and download that way easily, it's just an extra step. But I've adapted 😊
This is a great place to find those missing issues in your otherwise "complete run", read titles you normally wouldn't, and even explore self-published or independent writers. this app UNLIMITED is amazing (and super CHEAP) so utilize it before feeling like you have to make mass purchases.
This is the future of comics, people!

I am deeply invested in this app having bought thousands of books from them. Comixology is great (the website not as much). BUT...and it's a big one...the inability to organize our own books by creating personalized folders is outrageous. It makes it impossible to keep track of our books by story arc or any other categorization we should choose. Every time I contact them they say they will try to add this -- it's frequently requested -- but given what they've got now, it shouldn't be such a challenge to do this. IT IS SERIOUSLY FRUSTRATING FOR THE SERIOUS USER AND MAKES THE EXPERIENCE FAR LESS ENJOYABLE THAN IT SHOULD BE. this app: PLEASE IMPLEMENT THIS!!!!

I was almost forced to give up my hobby of collecting comics which I have loved to read for over 60 years due to the incredible amount of space the books took up. Thanks to this app I can keep up with my favorite stories without taking up any more space. I also like that I can read some of my treasured older books without digging out my hard copies and thus saving them from deterioration. The borrow library give me a chance to check out some titles I may not have tried yet to see if I would like to follow and add to my reading list.

Was working really well until I tried to download ultimate Spider-Man vol 1. It keeps acting like it’s been downloaded and when I open the book it just showed me the loading screen until I close it and then it’s like it never downloaded and I have to try and download it again. I’ve closed Comixology , restarted my phone, checked my connection, returning a few books I had already read and it still won’t download. I was able to download other books in the series just fine after trying to download the first. And it’s just this book too. No other books I’ve downloaded in the past few hours have had this issue. Really annoying.

I spent an hour trying to figure out why I can’t; download, purchase, fill out my billing info, sign up for the monthly subscription, and look at my wishlist. It turns out that you have to go to your iPhone Safari App to go to the website and do all that stuff..... Just why? That makes no sense. This made no sense. Non of my other apps do this to me. I never had to do a loopty-loop like this for books before. I feel like I worked too hard for a facepalm that isn’t even my fault.

This is an amazing app for people who are beginning to read comic books, and if I was going to recommend a series for beginners I would recommend the marvel masterworks, most of the first ones are with unlimited, speaking of unlimited I would totally recommend it, it gives you so much comics and graphic novels to choose from. The only thing I don’t like about Comixology which isn’t there fault is that all the DC Comics are only available if you purchase them. But anyways this is an awesome app and I 100% recommend it

As a comic book app, it works very well and how they zoom in on panels helps a lot on a phone. However the real flaw of Comixolgy in general is that even when you are on Unlimited, a paid service, too much of the material is still pay walled. I don’t want to pay $5 a month to get access to some series, most of which I can’t even finish because of pay walls. It would be like if Netflix let you watch some shows for subscribing to them, but keeping 50 shows still pay walled and you have to pay to see any episode of that series. As an app it works well, but as a subscription service, horrible

I never write reviews. In all honesty, this is my very first app review. But I feel so strongly about this that I had to write about it. The most recent update is a complete UI disaster. They basically took something that was working well and did everything they could to mess it up. I’ll echo the statements of other recent reviews. The tiles are too large, so you end up scrolling endlessly. The sorting by letter is gone. I really don’t know what they were thinking. If I could go back one version, I would do it in a heartbeat. this app, please listen to your users and bring back the old interface! I love your content and your service, and I used to love your app. Make me love it again, please!