I've always liked digital comics. Maybe because of Scott McCloud's trust in them and his experiments with the genre. The real problem with them had been that comics are print first and exist within that aspect ratio and digital comics have to fit 4:3 or 16:9 screens. Digital comics for a long time were all pirates sharing scanned Western comics to cheap people or those who lived in a foreign countries and had very little options. Great programs rose to help read these comics comfortably such as Comic Rack, which is somehow still in beta four years later. Anyway, comic book publishers were losing money and needed a platform in which to sell their products in a comfortable and profitable fashion. Enter Comixology.

Comixology has become the leader/monopoly in the field of digital comics receiving support from all major publishers. Apparently on the iPad it's just like reading a regular comic, except for those pesky double page spreads. On my iPod, back when I hadn't lost it, I read the first issue of 52 and was kind of blown away by how well their (patented) guided view works. I tried out their PC viewer which is not their greatest, but if you scoot up close to the screen it works fine. It also has guided view if you so prefer to repeatedly click or mash the arrow button.

So when DC announced they were rebooting and that they would go date-and-digital last year, they also announced that titles would be a dollar less the month after their print debut. That sounded great because I was over my monthly budget for comics. Also online I would hear horror stories of people that had truckloads of long boxes following them around when they moved. Growing up in the home of two-packrats the idea of having less stuff sounded great. Also, I would be able to take my entire collection with me anywhere I went, which is amazing. Even though these advantages are great I still wanted to help out the awesome guys down at my LCS. Also announced with the DC Relaunch was that LCS's could house digital stores powered by Comixology. I think I read on Bleeding Cool somewhere that they get a share kicked back if it reaches $100 minimum per month. Unfortunately, Marvel is joining the Comixology game late and has no titles available through my LCS's store, which is fine because I only buy DC and Image. Oh Image, that reminds me, back issues are all available on Comixology for most titles, so there is no worry of missing an issue. Thus, I am buying the back issues of Invincible and Walking Dead that I torrented to get caught up.

Overall, I'm happy with the service, I can read any comic in my collection without having to go digging and have access to those wonderful $0.99 sales. Since it is a cloud service, there is a feeling of anxiety that you might lose all the titles you bought if they ever go bankrupt. So once a month I printscreen myself copies of my purchases for ComicRack. In a way, using Comixology is kind of like when people put computers into offices and thought they'd use less paper in that I've been buying more titles since switching because they are cheaper. I cannot resell comics if I hate them as there are no refunds, but since I make myself wait a month for the price drop I have that time to mull over my purchases carefully. Unfortunately I can't get my comics signed by creators if I ever do get to a con some day, but I could just buy an autograph book or something. So that I can still see the people in my LCS I do buy at least one print comic a week. Three out of those five have combo packs and the other two I buy digitally later.

So here I am a digital comic book reader. It's probably been easier for me to transition because I only became a weekly comic book reader two years ago and only have two longboxes, one of which is only 1/6 full. I wrote this post because when I was researching whether to switch to Comixology there were very few posts about it in my Google searches. Hopefully someone making the same decision finds this and is helped by it. So in conclusion, I love the service and definitely recommend Comixology for those on the fence about it. Happy reading!