While 2025 becomes a year change for comic releases, other businesses are emerging. Kenny Meyers is a software developer and comics enthusiast, formerly of Digital Comics App Omnibus. However, since the app shut down, he has been launching new comics products as a steady stream of clips, including Bindings, a comics marketing app for the creator.
This week, he has two new apps: Sweet Shop, a new digital comic sales platform that will launch later this year, and Find Your Comic Shop, a new digital platform for …Buy comics with local attractions. That guy is busy! All three are products of Sweet, a technology company founded by Meyers. Ben Carr and Tom Carmonythree tech veterans with extensive experience at Shopify, Adobe, Airbnb, and Reddit. Their stated goal: to make people in comics less mean.
Sweet Shop first: The app will launch this year for Android, iOS, and the web. Features include:
- In-App Purchase: Purchase comics within the app itself. Not going to the website, not signing up for a subscription.
- Reading lists, wish lists and reviews: Curate your collection. Choose your next purchase. Share your thoughts.
- Date and Date Release: Get the comic as it comes out. Rarely seen these days!
- INTERNATIONAL AND ALL AGES: Parental controls let you add children and share comics. Age-appropriate comics for the ages
- DRM Free Backup: We want readers to enjoy our experience and not be stuck with account lockout
- Retailer Affiliate Program: Goods Not Coming in? Come out with comics? Send people your way and we’ll share the spoils.
Details are a bit sparse, and we’ve seen a number of digital comics platforms arrive here. We asked Meyers a few questions. He didn’t have comics, but now he seems to have dragged himself back into it. Why? “For sure, there was a brief moment of, ‘What should I do?'” he told us. “I looked into my other hobbies, like gaming. And then, I just sent the creators that I liked the email, thank you They were supportive and just asked me if I could help them. This led to Bindings (http://bindings.app) and then we became more ambitious.
“Everyone is great. We all just love it. I love this community. I have great partners at Sweet. I’m lucky enough to work in comics, and running a comic shop feels good to my bones.”
Of course, what about the publisher of Sweet App? Who will they carry?
“Cream of the crop! We’re looking for top 20. Comics, yes,” Meyers said. “Then we’ll expand to add more. We have the publisher’s first approach. Getting date and date comics is a real struggle and we want to make sure readers can get the books. That being said, if you have any Beautifully engaging book of a scale we wanted to chat about. ”
So another hat was thrown into the fray.
As for finding your comic shop, it was announced on Blues with some screenshots:
Sweet is very excited to launch our new cartoonist locator. findyourcomic.store. FYCS works around the world and even behind you. It’s community driven, which means you can report bad listings, contact us about new listings, and we’re reviewing them through our paces, like we recently did in Seattle.
FYCS lets owners feature their store with photos, events, and possibly other cool things if they want to in the future.
You can really deck this thing out, store owners (I’m using my local favorite store as an example @utsidercomics.com)
Of course, there’s already an app for finding the closest comic shop, the venerable comic locator service run by Diamond, Sooooooooo. CSL started out as a toll free number – I think this may not exist anymore as I couldn’t find it in a bad Google search. Obviously no one is going to call the phone number to find anything, but CSL exists as a website and will include the URL if anyone wants to help new comics readers find where to buy comics.
We gave FYCS a test run, and it really did spit out most of my complete list of locals: some were missing, some were closed, but some I’d forgotten about. But it puts the Manhattan people in perspective and includes places like Bookoff that sell a lot of comics but aren’t exactly comic shops and that looks pretty good.
I also gave CSL a test and it gave me a closer list of stores, but over the top. Both apps also include extra features like the store’s social media feeds.
Cartoonist Locator Service is for real caricature people but now discover your comic shop has entered the chat.
Clearly a lot is going on with Sweet…. We hear it could be coming from the company soon.
