Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Comixology, Current News, Dark Horse Comics, DC Comics, IDW, Marvel Comics, Oni Press, Vault, Viz Media | Tagged: amazon, Neon Ichiban

David Steinberger & Chip Mosher Create Comixology Killer, Neon Ichiban. And yes, it will have Marvel and DC Comics from next month.

In 2022, after seeing David Steinberger and Chip Mosher taking certain meetings at Thought Bubble in Harrogate, I thought I had a scoop and asked “Chip Mosher & David Steinberger to Announce ComiXology Killer in 2023?” I was wrong. By a whole two years. I guess they had a whole decade on their non-compete clause with Amazon. Because it has been announced that Chip Mosher and David Steinberger, the founders of Dstlry, and the co-founder and head of content of Comixology, are taking it to Comixology and Amazon, which bought it off Steinberger back in 2014 and, in the subsequent decade, stripped it to its core. The new app is called Neon Ichiban, and has been created by David Steinberger and Chip Mosher, and will start selling digital comic books next month. And will include Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Dstlry (of course), Kodansha (also of course), Oni Press and Vault Comics. Other publishers will be named later.

I bet you will be able to have in-app purchases and subscriptions from the off. It will offer single issues and collected editions of comics and manga, day and date. And, bringing in aspects from their Dstlry app, it will also let creators autograph or sketch on the digital issues and offer ways for people to resell their copies and editions.

It looks like the app address will be www.n9n.app but the website wait list to sign up is at https://neonichiban.com/waitlist

The New York Times quotes David Steinberger as saying it will be “a dedicated experience for comics… Understanding how comic book fans and people who should be fans want to shop and think about and browse doesn’t exist anymore. The Comixology app, where you can have all your comics in one place, does not exist anymore. It’s all just part of Kindle.” Yes David, because you sold Comixology to Kindle. “At the time, it seemed like the right decision. Our mission was to make everyone on the planet a comic fan, and Amazon clearly had the resources and the population connected to Kindle that we thought would carry that mission. With what I knew then, it was absolutely the right call.”

And as for the “digital remarquing”, they innovated on Dstlry, this will be a potential revenue source for artists, and the Neon Ichiban site will display the original purchase date, when the creator added to the file and more. “We know from doing our own books that it’s not a business that too many creators get to be rich from — just from creating,” Mr. Steinberger said. “The signatures and the sketches and drawings are a really important part of their revenue.”

Oni Press Publisher Hunter Gorison is quoted as saying “Anyone who’s watched the comics industry over the course of the past, say, five to 10 years has noticed that the digital comic space especially has been yearning for a little bit of innovation, a little bit of disruption and just a little bit of some new energy brought to it.”

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