Amazon’s Comixology Overhaul Is Here, and It Sucks

complain off with this week ’s wafture of comic releases midweek , Amazon has radically overhauled the experience of using the grownup digital comic storefront in the industry . modification to the Comixology app have been largely unnoticeable , aside from the full merger of Amazon and Comixology accounts . The update Comixology app now promises libertine downloads of comics to your library , good search filtering , and new navigation features that , by and big , convey the experience of reading comics on the Comixology app in phone line with the experience of reading them on Amazon ’s Kindle library apps — alongside the fact that you may register Comixology purchases in the Kindle app , and previous Kindle leverage vice versa . Comixology ’s “ Guided View”—a slightly active , panel - by - panel reading experience — returns , along with canonical pinch - to - zoom for closer reading . Older releases and digital collections of classic cartoon strip can see a piffling crusty soar all the way in , but newly expel comics seem great with this functionality ; I tested it out onthis week ’s Nightwing # 89 , and Bruno Redondo and Adriano Lucas ’ Dick Grayson still reckon as glorious as ever zoom all the way in .

The most basal changes — and biggest failures — fare in the browser app experience . As of this week , Comixology ’s original native website now re - directs you toAmazon Kindle Comics storefront , a Thomas Nelson Page on Amazon ’s own site . Although have Comixology iconography , it is for all intent and purposes similar to many other in - website storefronts on Amazon — and clumsily awkward to find from the home page of the website , nestled under “ Books > Comics & Graphic Novels ” without a verbatim tie . Purchasing comic is now monovular to purchasing pretty much anything else on Amazon , and as digital purchase you have all the welfare of matter like sync page tracking , so you’re able to pick up in - app where you leave off on a web internet browser .

Which you ’ll plausibly want to do , because reading comic in Amazon ’s Kindle Cloud Reader is a major pain in the neck in the ass . The old Comixology browser app reader was functionally quite introductory , but Kindle Cloud Reader — design more for read digital Word than a in the main visual sensitive like comics — lacks even those introductory functions . Whereas before readers could opt between navigating through a comic by page by page or by a double spread at a time , now the latter is forced on you in Kindle Cloud Reader . This perhaps would be fine if there was a cosmopolitan zoom in routine like Comixology used to have , but KCR lacks that as well : there ’s an bringing close together of the old channelise opinion that lets you whizz in on an case-by-case dialog box , activated by a double clicking a single panel . But it ’s unintuitive to navigate , advance by scroll with the black eye bicycle or using the charge on a keyboard , and it ’s just ugly to bring up on most pages , not filling the entire view of the page .

Screenshot: io9/Gizmodo

That unfitness to whizz along outside of this is most keenly felt on large double - spread head page , which KCR wholly butchers . sandwich between massive black-market bars to preserve the erect ratio , there ’s no way of life to soar in on these Page outside of threefold clicking for the panel - by - panel approximation , but that ’s not go to form for every double - cattle ranch piece of art in a comic Word of God , where such formats may not be traditionally sliced up into jury . It just entail you ’re forget squinting at a book or else of being able-bodied to admire the artwork , and the fact that Amazon thought the way to treat cartoon strip was to just give them the same ( already kind of bad ! ) handling as books in its web browser lector finger , redact it diplomatically , disrespectful for the visual nature of the medium .

Issues with the web browser app experience of Comixology and the red of single-valued function prolong beyond the transition to Kindle Cloud Reader . Accessing previously purchased issues is as well as unwieldy as read them — comics purchases are now tuck away within your Amazon account dropdown , under the “ Manage Your Content and Devices ” lozenge , conceal away alongside other eBook and audio book purchases . Unlike the filtering alternative in the Comixology app , you ’ve got no pick of being capable to see purchases you previously made on Comixology bundled with funnies you may have purchased directly for Kindle , and sorting books by series becomes unwieldy with prominent collections . rather of giving each individual series in your collection its own page to stash away individual effect , sorting by title elementary lists them in a huge block . If you endeavor to look for individual issues through Amazon ’s storefront , it can be a buggy experience as well . I searched for Nightwing # 89 know I had already purchase it and downloaded it in my library , but its page on Amazon just yield me the option to purchase it again , despite also acknowledge that I already had — with the only option to go and scan that issue from its landing page approachable through attempting to purchase it again and being given an error .

While I ’m sure Amazon see benefits for itself in bringing comic strip readers more like a shot to its shopfront , from a user experience , it ’s tough to say what ’s been gained by this service . Turning the Comixology app into the Kindle App , But For Comics just means you now have a mobile interpretation experience with all the military strength and flaws of the anterior Kindle experience for funnies , and nothing particularly gained along the way , and even introductory , previously accessible features now missing with no sign of recall . The browser app experience is now a significant stone’s throw - back , both for reading and purchasing cartoon strip — at best a clunky way to push more multitude to reading on other equipment , and at worse the takeoff of work that made Comixology the premiere digital cartoon strip reading experience for the in force part of a tenner .

An example of maximum zoom in the Comixology android app, featuring Nightwing #89.

An example of maximum zoom in the Comixology android app, featuring Nightwing #89.Screenshot: Bruno Redondo, Adriano Lucas, and Wes Abbott/DC Comics

There ’s been severe repercussion from users and cartoon strip creatives alike — the latter in special raging for , as Polygon describe , change to publishing selection for small option by transitioning to the eBook - focus Kindle Direct Publishing program , which puts more work on comics creators while grant them fewer royalties in comparison to Comixology ’s late submission appendage . And with creators and readers likewise left unsatisfied , it ’s clear Amazon and Comixology have a heap of work provide to do to make the overhaul workplace . Whether or not they will remains to be run across — io9 turn over out to Comixology for comment on the reaction to the redesign ’s launching , as well as on whether or not missing characteristic antecedently available would return , and did not receieve a reaction by the sentence of publishing . So , for now , the internet ’s biggest home for legally produce and reading strip has take a more than a few steps back , with piddling sign of melioration in the nigh future .

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This is ridiculous. It looks ridiculous!