The Rise and Fall of ComiXology

A great recommendation for the week, paired with a quick personal history about learning to love digital comics.

You Read These With Your Eyes! (July 5th, 2023)

A quick feature about selling stories, featuring the week’s newest reads.

Folks, call me Staind because (deep breath) IT’S BEEN AWHILE¹ since I talk about a good new release. But before we get to that, we’re going to continue this week’s theme about Disruptors and talk about comiXology from an admittedly personal angle.

The company first came into focus for me a short time into their tenure when they started offering a suite for retailers to manage comic shop pulls in 2009. Up until then, they had been more “customer facing”, providing folks with the means to curate their own pull lists and offer information. With the retailer suite, you could utilize those pull lists and offer an online option for folks to curate the books that they would be nabbing every week.

I remember many retailers being enamoured with this functionality, and opting to use comiXology’s suite as their pull list system for customers - a very early example of being able to adjust your pulls online from the comfort of wherever the heck you were instead of having to remember when you popped into your comic shop. That was one hell of a thing.

I remember talking with the owners of the shop that I worked for about looking into the system. I was met with a sound dismissal, as the company had their own system built from the bones of the DOS operating system, which support for stopped several years prior.

To be fair to them, their system was QUITE robust. Not only did it let you subscribe people to a variety of different books, but it also let you pick specific covers, and it would export said orders into your initial orders on the Diamond website. It also kept track of the store the money was making. Not bad for a system past its prime. But that didn’t stop me from pushing for better and better.

Now many would argue (and rightfully so) that pushing to have a file system ran by an outside entity would be foolish. You don’t have control over their functionality, or their intent. This bore fruit when comiXology bloomed into what it is and was mainly known for - a digital platform to sell access to comics.

I remember the initial announcement being met with ferocious antagonism. Hell, I remember almost every single improvement to comiXology’s operation being met with ferocious antagonism. At the start, the company offered a bare variety of books. And then companies kept coming in. And then suddenly, comics were being offered on a day-and-date basis on the day the comics would be printed. Every step of the way, retailers screamed. Every discount was an affront, every promotion, an attack.

Some tried to stop using the pull box functionality of ComiXology, claiming the company was utilizing the contact info of their customers to steal their business. Eventually, the choice to utilize the system or not was taken away from retailers when the program wound to a close. Many were left scrambling to find another way to keep track of their subscriptions, though by that time, Diamond had finally launched a system of their own - though it would be years upon years before they’d figure out how to be able to allow folks to adjust their orders online.

For quite some time, comiXology ran without many issues, other than the background noise of retailers scared about digital comics stealing their business.² They built a program where shops could sign up to have an affiliate site, through which their customers would order books, and the shop itself would see a cut of the profits.³ They built integration with Marvel and DC to have the digital access codes included in their physical comics appear on their apps. It was all pretty neat.

And then Amazon came along.

Shortly after Amazon purchased comiXology, the retailer affiliate program was put in stasis, with only grandfathered accounts allowed to have sites. This eventually evolved into the termination of affiliate sites, as (I assume) Amazon saw no benefit to giving small shops some bonus money for their customer base and recommendations.

From there, things fluctuated like you might expect from a company designed to always make more money. While comiXology would continually make new partnerships with publishers, increasing their reach, a time came when there was a bit of a critical mass. A Netflix style subscription service was offered with selected series available to read. This led into the company producing their own digital comics to add to they system, with some very comics friendly folks at the helm.⁴

This produced a lot of wonderful work under the umbrella of comiXology Originals, some of which wound up in production at Amazon Studios of all places. Near the end of this era, a particularly strong acquisition was announced.

Blockbuster writer Scott Snyder announced a partnership with comiXology that would see him and several collaborators produce stories for the Originals line. Over the course of the following year, all of these titles unspooled and have been followed by print single issues from Dark Horse. Which brings us to our book today.

MINI-SERIES | Barnstormers #1 (Dark Horse Comics / comiXology Originals)

by Scott Snyder, Tula Lotay, Dee Cunniffe & Richard Starkings, w/ editorial and design support from Emma Price, Tyler Jennes & Will Dennis

Let’s start from outside, and work our way in.

As with all print releases for comiXology Originals, chunks of the retail community have acted with hostility. From solicitation, to final orders, to on sale, the simple act of having the content available for people to try in advance of the print product. For a certain amount of folks, if they don’t have their hands on the keys to the gate, they get uncomfortable. I’ve never understood this.

Part of my thinking might come from the fact that I didn’t have a lot of access to comics when I was younger. I could usually get to the comic shop twice a year, once around my birthday, and once a little after Christmas. I’d save and make lists for the rest of the year and plan out my money. Most of those plans would go out the window when I got to the shop, because you can’t always guarantee access to comics when you can only come in twice a year.

Digital comics became a lifeline. Marvel was running select introductory books on their site in a digital format for free. A company called CrossGen had a good chunk of their library up to read through. Getting these bits excited me. I wanted to get my hands on more. Anything. This access lead to more collecting, and when I finally got a car, I started up a proper pull list.

I’ve always seen the digital landscape as being additive to the medium. As such, I’ve never shied away from telling people they can read books like Barnstormers for free if they have an Amazon Prime account. The person can have the book in their hands. If they aren’t sold on my pitch or vibes alone, I’ll tell them that there are ways to try it before they commit to a purchase. I will wager I have won over more customers with this tactic than I have lost. You lose a customer by pushing a book on them they might not like. You’ll keep them forever if you help them discover one they never thought they’d love.

This is why I think initiatives like comiXology Originals are (or in this case, were) a force for good within the direct market. There are a myriad of problems with the direct market system, and access is a huge part of it. Retailers actively bristling at any initiatives that don’t put them firmly in control of product flow is part of the access problem. These retailers often confuse the “cause and effect” of the situation the direct market finds itself in.

The current “direct market” model is proving to be unreliable for the larger industry’s needs. The cause of this has been the insistence of retailers that they be the key holders, while providing dwindling positive results as the years go on. So publishers attempt to drum up new ways to get eyes on their products, and retailers get upset. They accuse publishers of abandoning them. Don’t they know that things would be better if they just listened? Don’t they know what they’re doing is killing us?

Publishers aren’t trying to kill anyone. They’re all just trying to survive like the rest of us, and they’ve identified something that has been clear for a while now: things can’t stay the way they’ve “always been”. The great new resources available to them should be utilized. And retailers need to realize that these new avenues and resources can be helpful.

I did say we’d be talking about a comic, right? Well, here we go:

THE PITCH | Barnstormers is a remarkable series. (You can read the whole thing now for free if you have an Amazon Prime account.) Take all the flair of your Great Gatsbies, add a sharper focus on mental health and wellness, and toss those ingredients with your classic doomed noir-style romance. Filter that through Tula Lotay’s signature style that melds classic beauty with a slightly out-of-focus camera style that always seems to enhance the moments she chooses to spotlight. Combine that with Dee Cunniffe’s masterful colours that work seamlessly with this style (truly, I thought Lotay had full command over the art, the rendering matches so well).

It is a story that allows you to feel the wonder and adventure of a fabled yesteryear, and combine it with a ticking sense of dread. The story make you want to live in this world of escaped consequence, while constantly reminding you this type of life is under threat. You’re living as a barnstormer of your own, living the death-defying life alongside our main characters, and you don’t ever want it to be over.

And yet.

This book is a wonderful thing. It has a compelling story and an artistic style that helps it stand out from the crowd. It features one of the most marketable names in comics to come in the last decade or so. Hell, if you’re having trouble selling the thing, there’s a solid chance your customer will be able to try it for free, and let you know if they want that story to take up space in their lives, or not. This is a powerful resource, because if they don’t care for it, you’re not the person who made them pay for that discovery. And if they do like it, you were the person who empowered them to make that discovery.

This is how to connect people with comics. This, is how you sell comics.

Folks, if what I’ve told you about Barnstormers today intrigued you, I want you to try it. Do it for free, if you’d like, one way or another. Seriously. And if you love it? Let me know, and let your local shop know. And if you don’t? Well, also let me or your local shop know. The more information they are armed with, the better chance they have giving you that next great recommendation, from out of nowhere.

---

Another thing that I want to talk about before I close today’s post:

A short time ago, comiXology was essentially put on life support by Amazon and had fallen significantly from its peak. This, is the result of the horrible, all consuming need for company’s like Amazon to always make more money. Good isn’t good enough. Success isn’t good enough. The line goes up, or it is death.

More and more parts of the industry are being swallowed up by this need, and bits of it will have huge ripple effects on each and every person in this industry just looking to survive. When you’re floating out in the world, for your own safety, don’t ever build a life that is dependant on these companies - because at the end of the day, it will always be their survival over yours… and the world is changing.

Stop complaining about not being the special little boy. You were never their handsome prince. Just find good stories. Sell good stories. It really can be that simple.

Thanks for reading.

Talk with you all soon.

-B.

1. I regret nothing.

2. These self-same retailers will also crow about how digital comics also aren’t a significant part of the industry, and I’ve always found this dichotomy to be hilarious. You can say the format will doom us, or you can say it doesn’t mean a thing, but if you say both, you just look silly.

3. My brain says this was 15% of the comic sold, but I’ve given myself no time to fact check today, so add as much salt as you’d like to this particular dish.

4. I will note - these deals did seem to let creators keep the rights to their IP, but also seemed to require Amazon get first crack at media rights.