Amazon’s Comixology Overhaul Is Here, and It Sucks

Since Amazon acquired Comixology in 2014, its bigger relationship with the storefront—which, for these years, has remained the premiere hub for shopping for and studying digital comics—has been comparatively palms off. The capacity to check in along with your Amazon account apart, the 2 storefronts have largely stayed separate. A brand new replace this week modifications that… for the appreciable worse.

Kicking off with this week’s wave of comedian releases midweek, Amazon has radically overhauled the expertise of utilizing the largest digital comics storefront within the business. Changes to the Comixology app have been largely unobtrusive, apart from the total merger of Amazon and Comixology accounts. The up to date Comixology app now guarantees sooner downloads of comics to your library, higher search filtering, and new navigation options that, by and huge, deliver the expertise of studying comics on the Comixology app according to the expertise of studying them on Amazon’s Kindle library apps—alongside the truth that you may learn Comixology purchases within the Kindle app, and former Kindle purchases vice versa. Comixology’s “Guided View”—a considerably dynamic, panel-by-panel studying expertise—returns, together with primary pinch-to-zoom for nearer studying. Older releases and digital collections of traditional comics can look slightly crusty zoomed all the best way in, however newly launched comics look nice with this performance; I examined it out on this week’s Nightwing #89, and Bruno Redondo and Adriano Lucas’ Dick Grayson nonetheless seems as wonderful as ever zoomed all the best way in.

The most radical modifications—and largest failures—come within the browser expertise. As of this week, Comixology’s authentic native web site now re-directs you to Amazon Kindle Comics storefront, a web page on Amazon’s personal web site. Although that includes Comixology iconography, it’s for all intents and functions just like many different in-site storefronts on Amazon—and clumsily awkward to seek out from the homepage of the location, nestled beneath “Books > Comics & Graphic Novels” with out a direct hyperlink. Purchasing comics is now similar to buying just about anything on Amazon, and as digital purchases you could have all the advantages of issues like synced web page monitoring, so you may decide up in-app the place you left off on a browser.

Which you’ll most likely wish to do, as a result of studying comics in Amazon’s Kindle Cloud Reader is a main ache within the ass. The previous Comixology browser reader was functionally fairly primary, however Kindle Cloud Reader—designed extra for studying digital books than a primarily visible medium like comics—lacks even these primary features. Whereas earlier than readers might select between navigating by means of a comic book by web page by web page or by a double unfold at a time, now the latter is compelled on you in Kindle Cloud Reader. This maybe can be nice if there was a common zoom in operate like Comixology used to have, however KCR lacks that as properly: there’s an approximation of the previous Guided view that allows you to zoom in on a person panel, activated by a double clicking a single panel. But it’s unintuitive to navigate, progressed by scrolling with the mouse wheel or utilizing the instructions on a keyboard, and it’s simply ugly as well on most pages, not filling the complete view of the web page.

That incapacity to zoom exterior of that is most keenly felt on bigger double-spread pages, which KCR utterly butchers. Sandwiched between huge black bars to take care of the vertical ratio, there’s no method to zoom in on these pages exterior of double clicking for the panel-by-panel approximation, however that’s not going to work for each double-spread piece of artwork in a comic book e book, the place such codecs is probably not historically sliced up into panels. It simply means you’re left squinting at a e book as a substitute of having the ability to admire the art work, and the truth that Amazon thought the best way to deal with comics was to only give them the identical (already sort of unhealthy!) remedy as books in its browser reader feels, placing it diplomatically, disrespectful for the visible nature of the medium.

Issues with the browser expertise of Comixology and the lack of operate prolong past the transition to Kindle Cloud Reader. Accessing beforehand bought points is likewise as clunky as studying them—comics purchases at the moment are tucked away inside your Amazon account dropdown, beneath the “Manage Your Content and Devices” tab, hidden away alongside different eBook and audio e book purchases. Unlike the filtering choices within the Comixology app, you’ve received no alternative of having the ability to see purchases you beforehand made on Comixology bundled with comics you might have bought immediately for Kindle, and sorting books by collection turns into unwieldy with massive collections. Instead of giving every particular person collection in your assortment its personal web page to retailer particular person points, sorting by title easy lists them in an enormous block. If you attempt to seek for particular person points by means of Amazon’s storefront, it may be a buggy expertise as properly. I looked for Nightwing #89 understanding I had already bought it and downloaded it in my library, however its web page on Amazon simply gave me the choice to buy it once more, regardless of additionally acknowledging that I already had—with the one choice to go and browse that concern from its touchdown web page accessible by means of trying to buy it once more and being given an error.

The storefront will get even worse for worldwide customers, who can not subscribe to an ongoing title—making certain they get each concern routinely bought and added to their library with every launch—an abrupt change Amazon signaled would merely see customers’ ongoing subscriptions to a collection cancelled with the overhaul’s arrival this week, leaving them to manually sustain with ongoing collection. The capacity to subscribe is now solely a characteristic accessible to U.S. audiences, with little readability as as to if or not the long-running characteristic will probably be made accessible once more past these borders—and readers exterior of the U.S. who stay logged into their Amazon accounts can’t go to the U.S. storefront with out it breaking:

While I’m positive Amazon see advantages for itself in bringing comics readers extra on to its storefront, from a person expertise, it’s onerous to say what’s been gained by this overhaul. Turning the Comixology app into the Kindle App, But For Comics simply means you now have a cell studying expertise with all of the strengths and flaws of the prior Kindle expertise for comics, and nothing notably gained alongside the best way, and even primary, beforehand accessible options now lacking with no signal of returning. The browser expertise is now a major step-back, each for studying and shopping for comics—at greatest a clunky method to push extra folks to studying on different gadgets, and at worse the mockery of labor that made Comixology the premiere digital comics studying expertise for the most effective a part of a decade.

There’s been extreme backlash from customers and comics creatives alike—the latter particularly offended for, as Polygon reports, modifications to publishing choices for smaller choices by transitioning to the eBook-focused Kindle Direct Publishing program, which places extra work on comics creators whereas granting them fewer royalties compared to Comixology’s earlier submissions course of. And with creators and readers alike left unhappy, it’s clear Amazon and Comixology have loads of work left to do to make the overhaul work. Whether or not they’ll stays to be seen—io9 reached out to Comixology for touch upon the response to the redesign’s launch, in addition to on whether or not or not lacking options beforehand accessible would return, and didn’t receieve a response by the point of publication. So, for now, the web’s greatest house for legally buying and studying comics has taken a quite a lot of steps again, with little signal of enchancment within the close to future.

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