Don’t look now but the digital comics space is interesting again! After a few years of shadow boxing, a few contenders emerged into the light last week with announcements of actual products ready for actual consumers.
Neon Ichiban lights up. Neon Ichiban, né DSTLRY, kicked off the festivities last Monday with the announcement that its digital comics storefront was open for business. The new venture from former ComiXology brass David Steinberger and Chip Mosher wasn’t exactly burying its light under a bushel: Neon Ichiban began inching its way toward the limelight in the summer of ’24 with live demos of its digital remarque and limited edition digital comics, then made a series of announcements of distribution partnerships with the likes of Dark Horse Comics, Kodansha Comics, IDW Publishing and eventually DC Comics and Marvel Comics.
After a few months in beta, the first public iteration of the platform went live November 3, featuring downloadable PDFs of digital titles from participating publishers and full implementation of digital remarques. The latter feature allows the personalization of digital comics by creators, bringing some of the appeal of physical collectibles into the digital realm.
Combined with Neon Ichiban’s ability to deliver limited digital print runs and resaleability on their marketplace without resorting to the dark arts of blockchain technology, this represents a serious attempt to harness the collector juice that’s fueled the comics market for decades into the digital realm.
It also includes creator-friendly features. According to the announcement, “resold editions continue to generate royalties for participating rights holders such as creators or publishers, ensuring artists can share in the long-term value of their work while fans gain a personal connection to the comics they love.”
The announcement also teases the next set of features, including commissionable remarques, which the company describes as “a Cameo-style model where fans request sketches and signatures from their favorite creators, no convention lines required. Instead of requiring fans and creators to meet live, artists can accept signature and sketch requests on their own schedule, from anywhere in the world.”
InkyPen bleeds into Steam. InkyPen, one of two digital comics apps with roots in Norway, has been bringing digital comics and manga to the Nintendo Switch platform for the past few years, announced it will launch on the Steam digital marketplace November 18.
Unlike Neon Ichiban, which is aiming for the center-cut fan/collector market, InkyPen has been banking on synergies between the comics and videogame audiences: close cousins to be sure, if not exactly siblings.
Moving to Steam broadens this base by going where PC gamers go for their latest fix, offering the convenience of an all-you-can-read subscription model and a good catalog of international titles. According to the announcement, the expansion to Steam “comes with cross-platform support, allowing existing users to carry over their reading progress and subscription to the new platform, while new users can jump onto their Nintendo Switch for comics on the go.”
Sweet Shop pours some more sugar on the digital market. Finally, Sweet Shop, which has been much less public about its plans than some others in the space, splashed into the open with the simultaneous launch of its digital comics marketplace on both iOS and Android.
Sweet Shop is the project of Kenny Meyers, who was also a partner in the now-defunct digital comics app Omnibus. Readers of ICv2 and other industry sources know that Meyers has an expansive view of the power of technology to help the comics business (see “Meet the New Tech Helping Close Gaps for Retailers, Creators and Customers“), and has been working on Sweet Shop for the past year as the third leg of his suite of industry solutions.
According to their announcement, “Features available at launch include in-app purchases, offline reading, and the ability to download DRM-free PDFs, among others. Soon users will also have the ability to give and receive recommendations, access sales & bundles, create reading lists, and more. Sweet Shop did it without venture capital money.”
Publishers with titles available on the platform at launch include Image Comics, Kodansha, Fantagraphics, Dark Horse, IDW, Manga Mavericks, Ignition Press, and Panick, with more doubtless in the works.
Small screens getting crowded. These three recent announcements are only the latest twists in a plot that’s getting pretty thick. GlobalComix made waves on the eve of NYCC by adding Marvel to an already-extensive lineup of publishers, including day-and-date new releases (see “GlobalComix Gets Marvel Day and Date“).
WEBTOON announced its own deal with Marvel over the summer, then expanded the partnership to build a new digital comics platform that will attempt to bring Marvel and Disney IP to Webtoon’s vertically-scrolling format (see “WEBTOON and Disney Team Up to Create New Digital Platform“).
Crunchyroll announced it’s moving back into digital manga in a big way (see “Crunchyroll Launches Digital Manga Subscription Service“).
And oh, by the way, the world’s largest online retailer isn’t out of the game either, despite dealing the once-mighty ComiXology brand to the bottom of the stack. Amazon has been showcasing its new lineup of ComiXology Originals at high-profile panels at San Diego and New York, and it’s likely that many digital comic readers still have the bulk of their collections parked on the Kindle App.
Let a thousand flowers bloom. After ComiXology had the market tied up for years, Amazon’s apparent retreat left a vacuum that all these contenders are trying to fill. We’ve seen this before, but not since the heady days of the late aughts, when iVerse, Graphic.ly and PanelFly duked it out with indy-era CX to win the first battles for the small screen.
What’s different now is that the big publishers do not seem inclined to pick favorites. The first Digital Comic War was won when DC threw its weight behind ComiXology with an exclusive on day-and-date release of the New 52. 14 years later, both DC and Marvel seem happy to answer the phone every time a digital platform comes calling. Could it be that something in recent history instilled a distrust of monopoly distributors? Hmm.
Regardless, if digital comics themselves are a commodity and no one can gain the upper hand by cornering the market on content (other than WEBTOON, which doubles as the de-facto publisher for its popular titles), then the ball is in the consumer’s court. That’s why we’re seeing such vibrant competition around platform features, business models, formats and go-to-market strategies.
It also provides a solid business rationale for many of the platforms coming out with creator-friendly language and terms. Neon Ichiban’s plans for creator revenue feature heavily in its announcement; Sweet Shop’s press release is chock full of glowing quotes from creators and highlights the company’s absolute rejection of AI. This plays to comic fans’ desire to support the creative community, and also throws shade on competitors whose labor practices come under scrutiny.
In the first round of digital competition, which I wrote about long ago in Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture, it seemed inevitable that the market would coalesce around a single leader, not just because economies of scale are determinative, but also because comic collectors would likely bristle at having to track their collection across a bunch of different apps and silos.
This time around, there may be room for a bunch of different players, each carving out a slice of the business big enough to pay their rent and reward their investors. If that happens, there’s probably room in the market for some kind of meta-app that keeps a master list of people’s digital collections. Entrepreneurs, any takers?
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Rob Salkowitz (Bluesky @robsalk) is the author of Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture, a two-time Eisner Award nominee, and a proud longtime contributor to Eisner-nominated ICv2.
Source: ICv2
