Yeah, I’m five years late to the party (per usual), but that’s because the last time I opened my Comixology app to buy or read anything was in March. While I was sleeping . . .


Comixology was acquired by Amazon sometime last month. Of course, had I been keeping up, I wouldn’t have had a ish-fit wondering what happened to all of my digital comic books, which bitch I was gonna have to cut,


or what happened to the Comixology store front.

Now, for the uninitiated, Comixology is the iTunes of digitial comic books, with storefront banners and all of that, but it’s not just the inventory that makes the site great. They run great sales that tend to coincide with a big anniversary, major motion picture release, tv season premiere, etc.

Then there was the iOS app, which was just . . .


Comixology was one of the first apps I downloaded on my iPad mini when I bought it. No longer was I tethered to a PC when reading digital comics or small panels on my SG3 phone. I didn’t even have to browse the Comixology site on Safari. You could link to the site’s storefront home page, browse titles, buy your books, download them, and read them, all within the app. It was great for not only the type of binge purchasing that I tend to do every so many months, but great for impulse buyers in general, given the prices, free issues, and the recommendations. It enticed customers to try out new/obscure titles instead of always looking toward the big 2 (DC/Marvel).

But all of that is in the past now, because Amazon killed Comixology’s iOS “in app purchasing (IAP).” It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why IAP was killed. Amazon/Comixology doesn’t wanna have to come up off that 30% bite that Apple takes out of every transaction, but in killing IAP, Comixology has inconvenienced a huge swath of its customers. Comoxology was the top grossing iPad app outside of games. Think about that. Do you know how many millions of people need to be buying your ish for that to happen? Don’t you think that such a decision is gonna make us iOS users feel some type of way?

Now, anyone who only shopped Comixology via the Apple app, and still wants to keep shopping Comixology, will have to fork over their credit card or paypal info to the Comixology web site, and seeing as that Comixology was just hacked in March, that prospect does not inspire confidence. There are other pros and cons to this decision, which, if you are interested in, you can read about here, and here.