Aurich Lawson from Ars Technica:
Maybe you’re already an Image Comics fan. It would be understandable—Image is the third largest comics publisher behind industry behemoths Marvel and DC.
But even if you don’t read comic books, it’s worth sitting up and paying attention to Image’s big announcement at the show. Starting now, the publisher is going to sell its digital comic books through its website utterly DRM-free. PDF, EPUB, or comic reader formats CBR and CBZ (basically just zipped or RAR’d collections of JPEGs) are all yours to keep, back up, and read on your device of choice, however you see fit.
This is a huge step for the comic book industry. I’m a fairly regular reader of comics (I just got up-to-date on Saga, a fantastic series by the way) but I’ve never bought a digital comic book–I still buy the dead wood variety.
Why? Because at the moment the comic standard is fragmented across multiple apps & storefronts; DC, Marvel, Dark Horse & Comixology to name just a few. Right now, there’s zero chance that one digital comic will work anywhere but inside the app you bought it in.
Comic book piracy is rampant, and now digital versions are screen-capped and made available just as fast as the publishers can put them out. But if I could dictate the format, like PDF or CBR? And I could store the comics I bought on my Dropbox?
Yeah, I’ll throw some money at that.