Comic book publisher Marvel has released an API for mobile developers that enables users to access a huge amount of information from the publishers back catalogue, including individual comics, creator details and character data.

The publishers first official RESTful API enables developers to create apps that can retrieve individual comics, entire series, components from issues (for example just the cover) or entire story lines that cross multiple series and titles with a simple API call.

At the moment, the API is restricted to a rate limit of 3000 calls per day, so anyone expecting to launch a new killer comic reading app will not be able to reach a huge audience, but this is little to change as more developers experiment with the systems potential.

“The response to the launch of the Marvel Comics API has been amazing,” wrote a Marvel spokesperson in an update on the project. “Thousands of people have signed up for keys and weve seen some uncanny applications produced by an incredible community of developers.”