Boulder, CO based Graphic.ly has put some of its venture capital to work and rolled up 10-year old comics community iFanboy. Graphic.ly is developing an as-yet unlaunched comic and graphic novel reading application for Windows, Adobe AIR and mobile phones. The company has raised just over $1 million in backing. According to Joseph Tartakoff at PaidContent, the company already has clients, including Disney’s Marvel.
The iFanboy site is a place for comics fans to find reviews, audio and video shows. It publishes under a Creative Commons license and sees just over forty thousand visitors per month, according to Quantcast. Some portion of those visitors are paid subscribers.
The iFanboy community appears to be embracing the merger enthusiastically in comments on the official announcement. That’s not something that can be taken for granted. The site’s journalistic objectivity comes under scrutiny now that one vendor owns iFanboy, something the site founders discuss explicitly in their announcement.
Graphic.ly CEO Micah Baldwin describes the deal in lots of detail on his personal blog and says the two companies were introduced by Joe Stump, co-founder of hot pre-launched geolocation API provider SimpleGeo.
Graphic.ly came from Boulder’s TechStars incubator and raised its money from a diverse group including but not limited to Houston’s DFJ Mercury, Starz Media, Northstar Equity Partners, Dave McClure, Chris Sacca and Paige Craig.
Comics and graphic novel fans eagerly await the launch of Graphic.ly. We eagerly await seeing this tech-savvy startup in an eye-catching niche publishing market make its next move.
