7 superheroic companies that are kicking ass in digital comics

Emanata

How it’s changing digital comics: Founded by former AdMob employees former George Chen and Ehren Kret, Emanata is an iPad app with a storefront that sells comic books on an open platform. Creators retain the rights to their work and also set the prices of each issue. As it stands, there aren’t a ton of platforms available to sell independent comics, so this is definitely a good start. Additionally, Emanata creates white label digital comic book platforms for other creators and publisher, thus improving the business of independent comics in general.

Above: Archie Comics

Image Credit: Archie/Tapjoy

iVerse / Tapjoy

How it’s changing digital comics: Digital comic book platform iVerse has teamed up with Tapjoy to provide a new business model for making money on comic books. For fans of Archie Comics, Tapjoy is employing a reward-based ad model that gives readers free content by completing offers from the monetization and distribution services provider Tapjoy, as VentureBeat previously reported. (Note: Offers are special ads that users can view in lieu of paying for a virtual item.) For example, instead of paying 99 cents for a digital comic, you can watch a video ad, take a survey, or interact with an advertisement in some other way. Once you’ve completed the interaction, Tapjoy unlocks the digital comic for you. This new business model is available for over 2,000 Archie Comics, and could be a good alternate source of revenue for the comic book industry’s older, more niche content that doesn’t sell on its own.

Panel Syndicate

Why it’s important: Panel Syndicate is a new venture by acclaimed writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Marcos Martin. The two creators decided to sell their next project — a 10-issue maxiseries called The Private Eye — on their own, via a pretty simple store on Panel Syndicate’s website. PayPal processes the payments, and fans get to determine what they’d like to spend on the book. That means you can pay nothing and get the book for free, too.

How it’s changing digital comics: As legendary creator Warren Ellis points out, this isn’t the first time such a project has been attempted: “There is no reason why any number of comics companies could not have been funding, facilitating and producing this kind of original creator-owned comics work on the net two, three, five years ago. There is no reason why any of them could not have been absolutely bullish about driving this –- except that they just didn’t want to. So it remains something that happens in fits and starts, done DIY by the creators.” That said, the success of Panel Syndicate could mean that more creators start selling comics on their own.

Narr8

How it’s changing digital comics: Narr8 is a digital comic book startup that is available on Android, Kindle Fire, and iPad. It produces original motion comics that are similar in scope to what Madefire offers. Creators can come in and make their own original comics, and it even get a cut of the revenue if their work gains popularity. Its business model is, however, much more similar to what iVerse/Tapjoy is doing with Archie Comics. With Narr8, you can read comic books it produces in-house for free by redeeming points awarded for doing different things within the Narr8 platform. The biggest difference with Narr8 is that the content will always exclusively live within its own platform. It’s definitely a company to watch out for in the future of digital comics.