In a potential challenge to comiXology's market dominance, Google Play Books has unveiled several upgrades intended to make it easier to find and read comics on its digital platform.

The new features include vertical scrolling in landscape mode, so viewing comics in mobile devices isn't quite as frustrating, and curated pages on the Google Play Store. As you can see, the upgrades are specifically designed for comics fans.

To help promote the changes, Google is offering more than 40 free comics, including the first issues of The Walking Dead, Saga, Jem and the Holograms, Rat Queens, and the current volume of Batman, as well as Marvel's new Star Wars Preview. The offer ends Nov. 19.

The new features will roll out over the next few days for Android users in the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, India, Singapore, New Zealand and South Africa, with iOS expected to follow soon.

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