Two former heads of comics science unveiled a new creator-owned comics and collectibles publisher Thursday called Dstlry. David Steinberger, co-founder and former CEO of Comixology, and Shep Mosher, former chief content officer of Comixology, hope the new publisher will change the industry around comics and creator-owned collectibles.
Dstlry will offer a limited number of physical and digital items for sale online and in brick-and-mortar stores. Owners of the digital items will then be able to sell their items on the Dstlry marketplace, and the original creators will receive a percentage of what the item is sold for.
Dstlry’s logo.
Dstlry
Steinberger and Mosher tell me in an interview that they hope Dstlry can help ease the pain some creators in the comics industry feel when it comes to compensation. While some characters and comics make millions of dollars as a result of the movies, some creators have felt left out in the cold.
For example, Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting turned Bucky Barnes into Winter Soldier in 2005. However, Brubaker wrote in his newsletter in 2021 He feels that he and Epting were not adequately compensated for their work due to the character’s success in several Marvel Cinematic Universe films and shows.
Brubaker wrote “For the most part, Steve Epting and I get to create The Winter Soldier and his story is a ‘thank you’ here or there”. “I’ve even seen seniors on the publishing side try to take credit for my work multiple times, and it’s very annoying.”
Steinberger and Mosher saw these problems and wanted to be part of the solution by making sure creators were treated well so they could produce their best work for readers.
“We looked at all these problems that creators had and tried to fix them,” Mosher said. “We knew that if we fixed things for creators across the board, on many different levels, we would deliver the best thing for customers.”
Ed Brubaker (pictured) and Steve Epting brought Bucky Barnes back to life as the Winter Soldier in 2005.
Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images
“without [creators] There’s nothing, and they’re not always treated that way when the material they’re creating becomes $100 million or multi-billion dollar films,” Steinberger said. Dstlry is about “honoring their input… There’s a joy in trying to right what’s currently out there.”
Steinberger and Mosher also said they hope Dstlry will bring the fun of print edition collecting into the digital space. They said that when new issues of the comics are released, digital copies of the comic will be sold online at dstlry.co for a week until the next issue.
“Although many digital copies were sold between Wednesday and Tuesday, that’s it, it’s not coming back again,” Mosher said.
But people will still be able to get their hands on digital issues through the Dstlry marketplace, and mass-market digital commerce kits will be more widely available. Physical copies will be available at local comic stores as well. Some creators will also receive free digital copies of comics that they can give away to fans.
Steinberger and Mosher said they hope this helps readers feel closer to all the creators who post via Dstlry.
Dstlry’s founding creators include famous writers and artists such as Eisner Award winners Scott SnyderAnd Becky Cloonan And James Tynion IV. Dstlry’s advisory board consists of film producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, video game industry veteran John Schappert and technical strategist Mike Voorhouse.
You can find the full list of the founding creators of Dstlry at the end of this story.
Eisner Award winner Scott Snyder is one of the founders of Dstlry.
Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
“Artistic growth is stimulated when creators are nurtured and compensated appropriately for their achievements,” Bonaventura said in a press release. “This new system and its shared equity model will provide an invigorating environment that will wonderfully enhance storytelling.”
And understanding how to build this kind of environment is something Steinberger and Mosher said they developed during their time at Comixology.
“Learning how to work with creators at a high level and do the best for them, which led to the best products, was one of the big things I learned,” Mosher said, referring to the individual issues.
“You want to have sympathy with [creators]Steinberger said, “You want to understand what they need, and you try to deliver that every time.”
More details about Dstlry’s plans will be revealed later this year.
Readers will still be able to obtain Dstlry comics from comic shops if they want physical copies.
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How Dstlry can affect the comics industry
The type of commodity market launched in Dstlry has some advantages over other commodity markets.
Namely, the value of other commodities decreases after they have been used up. sport shoes, for example, the second you put it on your feet, the value goes down. The value of the cars also decreases by up to 9% to 11% once you pay one car out of the lot, according to Financial advisory firm Ramsey Solutions.
A copy of Detective Comics #27 sold at auction in 2022 for $1.74 million.
Spencer Weiner / Getty Images
With the Dstlry model, people should be able to read a digital comic as many times as they want, and then sell that comic on the digital Dstlry marketplace at the price they bought it for, or higher. Looking at physical comics as an example, Detective Comics #27, which introduced Batman in 1939, sold at auction in May 2022 for $1.74 million. This is certainly an extreme example that most new comics won’t get a repeat of anytime soon. But Dstlry wants to create a system where creators can still make money selling – and reselling – their comics at any time.
It also means that if you go into a digital series a few months after it’s released, you’ll likely have to pay a higher price for an early comic in that digital series. You’ll likely have to pay more for a physical copy of this comic, too, since it’s also sold in limited quantities, but that’s also true of traditional publishers.
Admittedly, this can create a predatory resale market. It could happen if people buy as many digital copies of comics as they can, and then once the comic runs out, they demand a ridiculous amount of money for digital comics on the Dstlry market. However, this kind of speculation led to A.J The comics industry crashed in the 1990s. People hoping to get rich reselling these digital comics will have to invest wisely and understand that some of the biggest payoffs come after years of waiting.
However, reselling digital comics on the Dstlry market should have an advantage over physical copies of comics.
With physical copies of comics, you need plastic covers and storage space to help keep your comics safe and secure, and you need to be vigilant about how you store them if you plan to sell them after a certain period of time.
Digital copies of comics are only limited by the amount of space on your device. And if Dstlry provides cloud storage, people don’t even have to worry about that.
Digital comics are easier to preserve and transmit than their physical counterparts.
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Beyond these benefits to readers, the benefits of Dstlry for creators are clear, and it addresses an issue that some people in the sneaker community have pointed out.
Nike $46 billion in revenue in 2022. Shoes accounted for about two-thirds of that revenue, at $29 billion. The sneaker resale market alone is estimated to be worth nearly $10 billion in 2021. according to Axios. It is not known how much Nike sneakers are estimated to be worth in the resale market, but you can see that there is a huge profit in the resale market that companies like Nike are excluded from.
With the Dstlry model, every time a digital item is resold, a percentage of that sale goes back to the creators. This means that creators will benefit from their work weeks, months or even years after their digital series ends. Although it hasn’t been revealed what percentage of the item’s resale value the creators will receive at this time, any percentage is better than none.
I don’t expect Dstlry to fix the problems in the comics industry overnight, or even by the end of the year. Systemic changes take time and a lot of advocacy from others, such as creators and readers.
However, I believe that creators should take full advantage of their work. It’s pretty ironic that someone can get rich off of something the creator made while that creator gets little or nothing in return.
I’m Dstlry hopeful, and plan to support the publisher and its creators in the future.
For more information on comics, check out Best comic to read if you are bored of superheroesAnd Graphic comic by Scott Snyder owned by creator Dark Spaces: Wildfire and a A graphic novel that imagines what it would look like if January 6th succeeded.
Here is the full list of the founding creators of Dstlry:
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