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Dark Horse Finds Its Own Digital Path

Published Fri, 08 Oct 2010 18:03:49 -0500

Last updated Fri, 08 Oct 2010 18:04:32 -0500

Dark Horse had a lot to announce and talk about today. From Darth Vader series, to Dollhouse comics to the 100% Man advertising tagline for its Ron Howard-based books to a batch of short stories appearing exclusively in USA Today, inclufing a new Mike Mignola Hellboy chapter.

But the big news (for me at least) is that in January 2011, Dark Horse to launch website-based digital comic on all web platforms on all devices, alongside Apple apps and Android Apps to follow – though Android users can access content through their web browsers until then.

And most importantly, this is a proprietary system, created in house, to avoid censorship and control, and so to avoid paying percentages of the money generated to the likes of Apple, both for the company and for the creators. This makes a distinct difference from the usual solution – "ask Comixology to do it".

And Dark Horse will be using a system with those Apple Apps akin to Amazon Kindle to avoid any interference from the company.

And that Dark Horse's standard pricing will be $1.49 for digital comics for singles (including selected day-and-date titles – thanks for Heidi for asking that) and making collections available from $2.99 to $5.99. They plan to publish twenty books a month digitally from the outset in January.

And to celebrate have released eight free apps with comic content from Serenity, Fray, BPRD, Beasts Of Burden, Terminator 2029, Umbrella Academy and Troublemaker through iTunes.

They are also, as Bleeding Cooled this morning, developing a program to offer product through retailers, but not announcing that today – but it will focus on the direct market to being with.

I also asked about format possibilities. And while initially the publisher is adapting printed comics digitally, the proprietary software will allow for different page dimensions and possibilities of infinite canvas and other digital comic storytelling possibilities.

That's the answer I wanted to hear…

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