©Courtesy of Viz Media

VIZ Media and Marvel Comics have agreed to collaborate on a project that will make Marvel’s content available to VIZ subscribers. Under the aegis of VIZ Media, the VIZ Manga service provides access to content in the English-speaking world. At the moment, it has an inventory of some 10,000 chapters, which are published simultaneously in Japan. The Marvel Unlimited entity contains more than 30,000 comics.

To celebrate the new venture, VIZ and Marvel are offering a special limited-time promotion that will allow customers to have free one-month gift subscriptions to each other’s service.

As part of the deal, VIZ Manga subscribers will be able to use the Shonen Jump app to access issues from such comics as Deadpool, Fake Red, Marvel’s Secret Reverse, Samurai, Snikt!, Spiderman, and Wolverine. This fall, other content will be added, including Spider-Man: Octo Girl and the manga adaptation of X-Men: The Manga: Remastered. The Shonen Jump app is easily accessible to iOS and Android users.

In Deadpool: Samurai, Iron Man invites Deadpool to join the Samurai Squad as the Avengers visit Tokyo. Marvel’s Secret Reverse matches Iron Man with Spider-Man as Tony Stark attends a gaming convention in Tokyo. Fake Red follows the exploits of a high-schooler who assumes the role of a superhero by donning one of Spider-Man’s discarded costumes. The Octo-Girl manga sees the evil genius Doctor Octopus inhabit the body of a middle-school girl. In Wolverine: Snikt! The hero fights to survive an attack by robotic creatures. X-Men: The Manga: Remastered is a remastered and reissued version of a series that has been out of print for several years.

For the past several years, manga has accounted for most of VIZ Media’s earnings in the United States. The company describes itself as an ”international authority on manga for more than three decades … leading the way in what’s now, new and next. Reaching one in four millennials and half of all GenZ manga readers, VIZ is at the forefront of America’s Japanese pop-culture phenomenon, which today dominates multiple industries from publishing and animation to film and gaming.”

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