#panelfly

Comixology, Graphicly, Panelfly

http://comixology.com

http://graphicly.com

http://panelfly.com

Definitely a topic close to my heart. I grew up collecting marvel comic cards, especially love the Jim Lee X-men series 1. But though I collected the cards, saving up enough money to get the comics was a totally different matter. Even back in the 80's comics would run $2-3 per issue, with special editions running $5. It wasn't until mail-order catalogs that I was able to fill in the gaps and get the Fatal Attraction series in whole, the Gambit miniseries, the Scott & Jean wedding edition. And then, with the marvels of eBay, I was then tempted to buy large bulk comics in cheap. Booyah!

Enough about myself, we're here about the next step in comics. As most of you probably know, the western comics and graphic novels have been losing some ground to the manga invasion. The manga sections at Barnes and other bookstores are often more comprehensive than the graphic novel section, since comics don't really fit well in discount bookstores. You tend to only find anthologies or true graphic novels like the Watchmen, Walking Dead, Y The Last Man, etc. And the cost of comics now are getting even crazier, it's not uncommon for comics of a dozen pages to cost $4-5. Small wonder sales might be suffering despite the surge of comic-based movies, like the upcoming Avengers film.

In the past I always wished there were free internet comic book sharing sites, especially since I tend to read fan-translated manga freely across various websites. Could these mentioned sites be the coming of that dream? Unfortunately, of course it won't be free, but how's the price?

Panelfly is too new to even discuss in much detail. The sample images they offer make the app look really clean and appealing, but they are still in their infancy and thus I cannot speak to what exactly they offer or how they plan to go about it.

It comes down the comparing Graphicly, with over $4.2M in funding with Comixology. Comixology started in 2007 more as a fan services to enable discussions, connecting with brick-and-mortar stores to purchase physical comics. With the launch of its app and store in mid 2009, Comixology has then entered the selling of digital copies of comics. Graphic.ly entered the market in 2009 just as Comixology did, and thus the services have been competing since their inception.

VS!

Key points when it comes to this face off are partnerships, quality, and UI.

Comixology takes the lead with content. They have relationships with all of the major comic companies (Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, etc.) They are thus positioned to offer many of the #1 issues for free to the users and lure readers into paying for the subsequent issues.

Quality is tough to say, since I have not expanded the image to larger sizes. Let's shelf that topic for now.

UI. Comixology wins this also. The redesign of their site makes it feel more like Netflix and very easy to use. The comic viewing software is simple and elegant. Graphic.ly's comic viewing software feels clunky in comparison.

Pricing is a moot point since they are restricted by the publishers. This is the crux of the problems with the business model. Most of the pricing is at full price of what one pays for the physical copy of the comic. And for someone like me, who looks at comics as collectors items and a piece of art, owning the physical copy is worth 3-4 times a digital version. Unless they lower the pricing, there is no point for users to purchase the digital copy other than convenience.

Format. Comixology restricts comics that you have purchased to be read on their proprietary software. There is no basic epub or pdf copy for you to save for keeping. This makes the high price even more ridiculous as you have no true ownership rights as they keep the copies of the comics for you. It would be akin to paying to use Google Music or Grooveshark even though they store all the songs on their servers.

Graphic.ly has the lead when it comes to social media integration, linking to Facebook and Google Plus.

However, that integration isn't too helpful without more fan functionality. Since Comixology started as a fan service for reviews, discussions, pull lists, and links to retailers, it still has more functionality on its older site found at http://pulllist.comixology.com. Not as intuitive or easy to get to from the main site anymore.

Basically, Comixology wins this hands down. The big problem is getting comic fans to pay full price for digital copies that they can't even save onto their disks.

Also, since I can get a ridiculous amount of manga for free, there isn't much incentive for me to return to comics and graphic novels at such high prices.