Back in January, a reader we'll call M. sent us a short note: she wanted to read all 69 issues of Saga without buying a single floppy, without pirating anything, and without spending her evenings squinting at a phone screen. She asked if that was even possible in 2024. We turned it into a small experiment. Three months later, we had a timeline, a few obstacles, and some numbers worth sharing.
The first decision point came fast. M. had tried a handful of free comic sites before, and most of them felt like walking through a mall kiosk — pop-ups, broken pages, missing issues. She wanted something that felt like a library, not a trap. That's when she landed on ReadComicBooks, a fully licensed, ad-supported platform that carries more than 320,000 single issues across every major publisher. The licensing part mattered to her. She works in publishing-adjacent media and didn't want to build a reading habit on scanned copies of unknown origin.
The Setup: One Reader, One Series, One Spreadsheet
M.'s plan was simple. Read one issue per night, five nights a week, and finish the run in about 14 weeks. She kept a spreadsheet with columns for issue number, date read, and a one-line note. Nothing fancy. The interesting part wasn't the reading — it was the friction. Or, in her case, the lack of it.
Her first session took under three seconds from clicking the issue to seeing page one, which she timed with her phone stopwatch because she's that kind of person. The browser reader held up across a 2012 laptop, an iPhone, and a work-issued Chromebook. She never installed an app. That sounds like a small thing until you've tried to manage a 69-issue run across three devices with bookmarks that don't sync.
The Obstacles (There Were a Few)
Not everything was smooth. Around issue 30, M. hit a stretch where she wanted to read a side story from a different title that crossed over. She had to search by publisher rather than by character, which took a few extra clicks. Her note in the spreadsheet: "wish the search knew what I meant." Fair. We passed that along.
The second snag was pacing. Reading digitally made it too easy to binge. She blew through issues 40-55 in four days, then had to wait for the next arc to land. That's a reader problem, not a platform problem, but it's worth naming. Digital access changes your relationship with release schedules.
The third issue was more structural. M. wanted to read some older indie titles alongside Saga — things from Oni Press and Boom! that she'd heard about on a podcast. Those were available, but the back catalog depth varied by publisher. Full series run coverage is genuinely strong for flagship titles. It's thinner at the edges, which is true of every legal comics platform right now.
The Numbers After 90 Days
Here's what the spreadsheet showed at the end of March:
- 69 of 69 Saga issues read, completed in 87 days.
- Average reading time per issue: 22 minutes.
- Devices used: 3 (laptop, phone, Chromebook).
- Total spent on comics: $0.
- Pop-ups encountered: 0.
- Times she had to re-find her place: 2, both after switching devices mid-issue.
The $0 line is the one that surprised her most. She'd budgeted $150 for the experiment, assuming she'd cave and buy trades. She didn't. The ad-supported model meant she traded a few seconds of her attention for access, which she described as "a fair deal, actually."
We also checked the technical side. ReadComicBooks runs a Lighthouse performance score of 97/100, which lines up with what M. experienced — pages loaded fast, the reader stayed responsive, and nothing crashed. For a platform serving 320,000+ issues, that's a real engineering achievement.
What We'd Tell the Next Reader
If you're planning a long run — Saga, The Walking Dead, Invincible, whatever — a few things help:
- Pick your primary device and stick with it. Cross-device reading works, but your place in the run is easier to track on one screen.
- Don't binge past the current release window unless you're okay waiting. Same-day digital releases from Marvel, DC, Image, IDW, Dark Horse, Boom!, Dynamite, and Oni Press mean new issues land every Tuesday, just like your local shop.
- Keep a simple log. M.'s spreadsheet took 30 seconds a night and gave her a clean record of the whole experiment.
- Read the licensing page before you commit. It's the difference between a sustainable habit and a sketchy one.
The bigger takeaway for us: free and legal aren't opposites anymore. A reader with a modest budget and a specific goal can now work through a complete series run without piracy, without a subscription, and without a dedicated e-reader. That's a meaningful shift from where digital comics were five years ago.
M. finished Saga on a Tuesday night, then immediately started Paper Girls. Her new spreadsheet has 30 rows. We'll check back in a few months.