DSTLRY, a venture-backed digital comic books marketplace, on Tuesday added a pair of features designed to bring customization to the platform. The first feature, dubbed Commissioned Digital Remarques, allows creators to add personalized sketches and signatures to digital comics. The second, Unlimited Digital Covers, expands platform-wide access to alternative comic book covers.
Commissioned Digital Remarques brings the tradition of in-person comic customization into the digital realm. At conventions, waiting in line for an artist’s sketch or signature is a major part of the fan experience. In the comics world, a remarque is a small sketch or doodle made on a book’s cover or pages, often integrating with existing artwork. The sketches are less time-intensive than full character illustrations but still highly valued by collectors.
In DSTLRY’s take on things, it’s the creators who set both the price and turnaround time. Like the books themselves, once a digital comic is remarqued, users can then turn around and sell or trade the remarqued issues on DSTLRY.
When former Comixology executives, David Steinberger and Chip Mosher, first announced the company in 2023, collectability was a tentpole feature. Forced scarcity in the form of limited editions has been deeply engrained in comics for decades now. While Steinberger and Mosher were quick to note that DSTLRY would never be an NFT marketplace, limited editions still play a major role in its built-in comics marketplace — and business model.
Variant covers – when a publisher releases multiple covers for a single issue — have played a key role in comic book collectability for decades. The phenomenon took off during the 1990s comics speculator boom, when things like holograms and holofoil were all the rage. While the bottom has fallen out of the market in the intervening decades, collectors still play a major role in the ecosystem.
The new Unlimited Digital Covers feature means that both the main and alternative covers remain in digital circulation for the life of the book. Some scarcity will remain, however. Along with remarques, “collectible variants” are available for a single week after the book’s release. After that, users have to buy or trade for them in the DSTLRY Marketplace.
Notably, all products bought and sold through the site’s built-in secondary market continue to generate royalties for creators. That’s a key difference between the DSTLRY model and the traditional resale market, wherein artists and writers don’t get a cut when back issues are sold.
