Tag: Digital Comics

A common comment often heard around the con floor is "Why doesn't Marvel Studios do more to promote the COMICS with all those movies?" Some would think that seeing the Avengers on every product...

As digital comics have become a cornerstone of comics reading, several companies have offered their own version of a technology which allows the panels to transition for digital reading. Comixology has "Guided View," Marvel has its Unlimited technology; iVerse offers uView. The iVerse systems can be applied by users to comics viewed through their platforms, and Comixology also allows publishers to adapt their own comics. Yugoslavian software developer Zoran Bosnjak writes to inform us of a new open source software that allows you to apply this kind of technology to any comic. It's called Comic Smart Panels Creator & Viewer (available for Windows for now) which allows fluid panel animations and scaling for any kind of comic. Balloon sequence can also be defined, as seen with the Thrillbent comics and other "ecomics" platforms.

Dynamite is the King of Bundling—huge collections of comics in digital form for a low, usually pay what you want price. Yhey're so good at it that they've actually persuaded MORE COMPANIES TO START BUNDLING COMICS. This time it's BitTorrent, which is now a totally legit place to download content. They've done music in the past but this is their first comics bundle. This is a mega-bundle of 200 comics, with a minimum payment of $6. So between all the other bundling that Dynamite has been ofering, you can pretty much catch up with their entire oeuvre in no time. This bundle runs through Friday, April 17, 2015.

NOTE: the below is me spitballing at 3 in the morning just to get some dialog going. I invite your comments and corrections. I've had this news item floating around for ages and kept...

Another new line of digital comics? Yes. Comicker, founded by Saori Adams and Sean E. Williams (Fairest) as a plat form to serialize digital comics. Collections can be purchased at DriveThru and eventually Comixology and a subscription mobile app, developed by The Horizon Factory. Adams:

WHO will be the Netflix/Spotify of comics? Several companies have been trying to offer all you can eat comcis buffets, but a lack of top content has been holding them back. But Scribd just made a major play announcing a $8.99 a month plan that allows you access to 10,000 comics, including top titles from Marvel, IDW/Top Shelf, Archie, Dynamite and Valiant. Scribd has been around for a while as en embeddable pdf reader, and already offers over a million ebooks and audiobooks on a subscription basis, so this makes a lot of sense.

Well, this is interesting. Although Dark Horse sells its periodical comics exclusively through its own app, and has never been available on Comixology, they've just signed a deal with Sequential, the stand alone graphic novel app—making it the first the first third-party digital comics app to distribute Dark Horse. UPDATE: Todd Allen has reminded me that Dark Horse GNs were available for a while on Comixology a few years ago but aren't any more.

Comixology's Submit portal is a way for independent and self published digital comics to get onto the largest digital comics service out there, and many people have taken advantage of it. While no one seems to have gotten rich off it, a sale is a sale. And COmixology has just released a list of the top 25 sellers for 2014, topped by Gail Simone and Jim Calafiore's Leaving Megalopolis. This superheroes with a twist story was originally Kickstarted. The impressive Testament Omnibus by Douglas Rushkoff and a bunch of awesome artists was second, and Joe Benitez's Lady Mechanika was #3. Severl anthologies Kickstarted by the tireless C. Spike Trotman were also on the list...she is a powerhouse.

In the post Amazology world. many digital comics apps and companies have sprung up trying to stake their claim in this growing world. Farrago Comics is an app for iPad and android that offers a range of free comics. As suggested by their motto "Comic Book Freedom!" the idea is to provide a manageable app for sampling and reading—which isn't a bad one given today's crazy quilt of digital platforms. Revenue is provided by ads, as it is with many apps. Up until now they were offering mostly Golden Age and indie comics, but they've just sign up with IDW to offer some fan fave #1 from the likes of Steve Niles, Ben Templesmith, Jonathan Maberry, Chris Roberson, Ashley Wood, etc.

Disclosure: Todd Allen is a long-time contributor to this site, so read the following as advanced log-rolling if you will. That said, the book he kickstarted over the summer, Economics of Digital Comics is out. I have an early digital copy and this is really a book everyone in the comics business should read, especially people going into various digital models, from crowdfunding to subscription to pay what you want. Allen casts a cynical eye on most of this stuff, and runs numbers to show what works and what doesn't. But he also looks at print costs, and the economies of other channels to give a strong overview of what we talk about when we talk about selling comics in 2014. The book has new interviews with digital players and statistics on what webcomics earn from advertising, how much it costs to print books, what the big players take out of various delivery methods and more. All footnoted. And an introduction by Mark Waid, who has become something of the spokesman for Generation Digital.

The whole Humble Bundle move to selling comics and e-books worked very well, Calvin Reid reports:

Ah yes and here is the other shoe dropping: all of DC's monthly comics will now be available on iVerse and backlist is coming. While iVerse has been a distinct #2 player to ComiXology's...