'We have the licenses to sell the products, so we are the seller of record,' he said. 'We don’t think retailers have to jump into digital to live.' If they do choose to have digital storefronts, though, the fact is that Comixology, not the retailer, has the license to sell the comics digitally. 'We don’t think the print market is going anywhere,' he said.

Steinberger stressed that Comixology has partnered with retailers from the beginning. Comics retailer Brian Hibbs, the owner of San Francisco’s Comics Experience and an influential voice in the comics retailing world, expressed a more general concern, saying, 'I think the root core of the problem is that Comixology wants to be the retailer of digital, and not the distributor.' He sees sales of digital comics supplanting sales of physical comics, rather than expanding the market, and because Comixology, not the retailer, has access to the sales data, he worries that the result will be that Comixology will eventually do an end run around retailers and market directly to their customers. At pop culture news site Bleeding Cool, blogger Rich Johnston called out several aspects of the agreement, including certain Terms of Use, such as a nondisclosure agreement that could prevent public criticism of Comixology’s performance the fact that Comixology controls all sales data and a requirement that retailers waive their right to participate in any kind of class action suit against the digital vendor.

Nonetheless, some commentators were critical of the program. 'Our original plan was to roll out a couple of stores, work through some issues, and keep working,' said Steinberger, 'but you can’t tell retailers you are going to do a digital storefront for them and have a same day as print start with one of the major publishers and say we are only going to have ten ready.' The program was announced in January, but Steinberger said it was accelerated after DC Comics announced that it was relaunching 52 of its comics series (dubbed the “new 52”) and releasing them digitally on the same day they come out in print.

Comixology website