Neon Ichiban Made Me Fall In Love With Digital Comics, Again (Platform Review)

Digital comics are central to every part of our editorial strategy at Weird City, because how and where you read a comic can greatly impact what you are reading. Imagine hating a highly lauded new graphic novel, like Jesse Lonergan's brilliant Drome, simply because you didn't pick the right app? Worse, what if no one told you?

Thus far, we've found that most of the digital comics platforms today have major shortcomings. Some even ruin them and do not translate at all from print to digital (e.g., Lonergan). Plus, the tradeoffs of choosing digital over print are also unfair, in that buying a digital version of a comic too often feels like renting rather than owning. For this review, we tested nearly all of the major platforms, focusing on the reader experience, publisher selection, buying comics, and collectability.

For the sake of simplicity, I'll primarily be referring to the digital comics experience on a tablet or smartphone, which accounts for most readership. Likewise, this critique is based on about 3-5 platforms that prioritize buying comics a la carte: industry leader Kindle (Comixology), Global Comix, Sweet Shop, and of course Neon Ichiban.

Neon Ichiban is currently the only digital comics app with very few compromises. And as we've reported, it is perhaps the only true contender filling the void left by Comixology (right now). It was built by the team behind the original Comixology, who are also the founders of comics publisher DSTLRY. That is to say, their vision of what digital comics should be extends to the print and local retail spheres as well.

They first set out to do something very high-touch and premium in the world of print publishing in the form of DSTLRY, which produced magazine-sized 48-page issues from top-tier creators like Becky Cloonan, Tula Lotay, James Tynion IV, Elsa Charretier, Stephanie Phillips, and others. In its first two years, the publisher earned an Eisner win for Somna and nominations for The City Beneath Her Feet and The Blood Brothers Mother. But they still had an itch to scratch when it came to doing the same for digital comics, which was now made much easier, according to Steinberger.

"We created a following with people that loved those books. We then built Neon Ichiban from that, because we could go into the publishers and say, "Hey, we know that it hasn't been great these last few years for you in digital," he explained. "And then we heard it was really, really bad, like way worse than we ever expected in the three years since we had left Comixology and Amazon."

The "really bad" referred to two key events. The first was comics distributor Diamond filing for bankruptcy, which deprived publishers of payments, as well as inventory it sent to Diamond. But the second thing was a decline in digital comics revenue, due in part to changes Amazon was making to its comics reader platform. Weird City has independently heard from several creators who reported seeing half their usual payouts in the last few years – compounded by new issues being delayed. The ongoing turn of events allowed Neon Ichiban to showcase a working version of the platform that helped to quickly bring in other major publishers like DC and Marvel – though much of that Steinberger attributes to DSTLRY's success.

Steinberger shared more about what's to come with the platform, some of which surprised me, like Neon Ichiban's plans to add in-app purchasing and keeping an open mind when it comes to potential subscription strategies. I'll have a longer piece with more of my interview in the next part of this article series, though if you're too curious to wait, I've sprinkled in some of those details in the review below...

HEY HUMAN PERSON! I'm going to drop the membership-gate at the beginning of this article, for a couple reasons...

First, because I've spent a ton of time putting this feature together, including interviewing the people building digital comics apps, talking to publishers on every level, testing all the app reader views, and buying from every platform. I want people to see my work, but not bad enough that I'll risk it becoming training data for an LLM's "checklist for best digital comics reading experience" via somebody's vibe coding Claude thread.

Second, because I need actual human beings to join Weird City. It's how we aim to grow and expand our coverage. If email newsletters aren't your thing, that's fine – then membership is just how you'll be able to read an entire article we publish (via email authentication, no passwords!). It's a small effort, with a big impact if you care about independent journalism.

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