Get Ready for Amazon to Cyber-Punch the Comic Book Industry

Holy e-books, Batman: Amazon announced today it's moving its electronic publishing business into the world of comic books and graphic novels with its latest imprint, Jet City Comics.

Jet City will wade into the market by publishing comic adaptations of hit books, like the novel that inspired Game of Thrones and sci-fi bestseller Neal Stephenson’s Symposium #1. It will also publish serialized comics and bundled graphic novels, available, of course, on the Kindle, with print editions for sale too.

Amazon dropped the news just in time for Comic Con, coming up on July 18. As it happens, the digital future of comics was a main talking point at last year's conference as well. Specifically, distribution—how consumption habits were shifting from print to online, paper to digital, brick-and-mortar shops to app stores.

Tragically, local comic book shops are probably heading the way of Blockbuster and Borders. But, unlike the Big Six, major comic publishers like Marvel (of Spiderman and X-men fame) and DC Entertainment (of Superman and Batman fame) are staying above water. They’ve embraced the new technology, and digital sales are skyrocketing.

Jet City could threaten that. Amazon has a head start on Marvel and DC when it comes to publishing digital-first, made-for-web comic books. The ace up the retailer's sleeve is that it’s not just a retailer; it's also a platform for self-publishing—a whole new model for creating, and selling, digital comics.

The launch of Kindle Worlds, the new publishing platform for fan fiction that Amazon rolled out a month ago, could be a sign of where it’s headed with its comic book business. Like fan fic, comics are a natural fit for e-books. “Comics and graphic novels, especially in digital format, represent a unique area for innovation,” Jeff Belle, Vice President of Amazon Publishing said in today's press release. The visual medium is ripe for advanced graphics, flash, audio, interaction, and so on. The sky's the limit.

After testing the water with adaptations, Amazon is bound to dive into original content. Jet City is "pushing boundaries with new ideas that combine visual and narrative storytelling," Belle said. It's already warming up to it; Amazon launched the Kindle Comic Creator last month, which makes it easier for artists to turn their comics into ebooks.

Obviously this would be a boon for Amazon’s Kindle. You may not buy an e-reader to curl up with the latest bestseller, but a visually stunning, animated, interactive graphic novel could be worth shelling out the $150. Is it worth never again flipping through the pages of Watchmen at your local comic store? That’s the real question.