Neon Ichiban Finally Lets You Buy Comics In the App

Digital comics platform Neon Ichiban is pushing out a major update today offering a more unified experience within its mobile apps. That includes letting you buy books from within the app and browse the store, in addition to being a comics reader.

"Restoring in-app purchasing is more than another product feature. It reverses one of the biggest compromises in the history of digital comics," – Neon Ichiban

The move comes just weeks after CEO David Steinberger told Weird City in-app purchasing was coming, but that it was also inevitable: "We just started with the web because it was the simplest way for us to get going... "

It's a bit more emotional for the founders, who were still at Comixology when the decision was made to shift towards a reader-only strategy. Though as for the new update, you'll basically be able to do most of the things that currently happen within the Neon Ichiban web store, with a few exceptions.

For instance we get a dedicated menu tab for comic reviews, but wishlist features aren't available right now. The platform's digital Remarque signature/commission sketches and its marketplace still require visiting the website. You do have access to funds added to your digital wallet for transactions in the app, but still need the web to fund it.

The comics reader experience is largely untouched, but does give users some new preference options for standard or high resolution image quality on smartphones. And you can set whether you see the full comic page upon entrance/exit when in PanelFlow mode – something Marvel Unlimited (and I think DC Infinite) also does. I guess that'll be a might minor detail for some people, but I am constantly toggling between standard and PanelFlow reading mode. Finally, the "open web store" button has been replaced within the series view of your digital library to recommend the next available book (shown below).

It'll be a hit with fans of the old Comixology, still miffed 12 years after Amazon removed the buy button from the iOS apps, who have often cited the friction of being pushed to a web store as a main reason they stopped following as many series. And it comes less than a week after the public launch of rival platform Sweet Shop, which also lets you read and buy in a single app from a smaller catalog of primarily indie comics (11,435 titles, including +7k from Image Comics).

Neon Ichiban also offered updated numbers on its growth. Less than a year after launching, it's amassed 200,000 users and a large catalogue of 60,000 titles in its library, (including 35k from DC, over 10k from Marvel, and +7k from Kodansha). The platform still lacks a handful of key comic publishers (BOOM! Studios, Image, Fantagraphics), but this new app update definitely feels like an upgrade people have been waiting for.

Aleviating Fragmentation Frustration With a Desktop App

And, it's graduating its MacOS Alpha desktop app to a private beta – thus inviting people to import digital comics from outside Neon Ichiban. I've been playing with the company's earlier version, and have already dumped two Humble Bundles worth of books into it.

My initial hesitation was that it would become a chore to juggle two stored archives of my digital comics (once I've tracked them all down from various folders and external hard drives). Comics files are large by nature, so hitting local storage capacity limits from a desktop wouldn't take long – though I'm still playing with it.

I was impressed with the MacOS app's handling of comic file imports, which log the entire attempt within a summary. It tells you the total number of new comic files added, duplicates scanned and not added, and interestingly how many uploads correspond with comics that are available for purchase on Neon Ichiban (which natively feature its guided/ PanelFlow reader mode unlike static PDFs).

I'm planning to do a deeper dive of the desktop app later on, but it's been a solid attempt by the company so far.