Image Comics is once again poised to change the comic book industry. The rebel publishing house shook the industry in 1992 when a team of all-star comics creators—including the likes of Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, and Rob Liefeld—decided to band together after they were sick of work-for-hire policies that resulted in them losing the rights to their original creations. Twenty-one years later, the company has caused another industry shake-up.

Image Comics is the first major comic book publisher to offer DRM-free digital comics through its Web portal—you can purchase books in the popular ePubs, CBR, CBZ, and PDF formats. This is a major change in a field where digital comics from the major marketplaces (such as Comixology) are locked to the purchaser’s device. No sharing. No borrowing.

In addition, Image Comics has carved a niche for itself by opening the door to non-superhero genres. It now publishes Robert Kirkman’s insanely popular The Walking Dead, Brian K. Vaughn’s critically acclaimed Saga, and John Layman’s quirky Chew.

There’s a lot happening at Image Comics, so we reached out to Ron Richards, the company’s director of business development to talk about comic books.

PCMag: How many Image Comics are purchased digitally?
Image Comics’ Ron Richards: Digital accounts for 12 percent of our sales. We expect it to reach 15 percent by the end the year.

PCMag: Who’s buying digital? Is it the longtime fan that goes to comic shops every week or more casual audiences?
RR: Honestly, I think it’s a bit of both. We have diehards who are moving from print to digital, but sales in the direct market is strong. I don’t think its cannibalizing. I think digital helps pull in an iPad or Android tablet fan who wants to check out comics.

PCMag: One of the complaints that I hear in regards to digital comics is that they aren’t cheaper than print comics, which require printing and shipping. Would you care to address that?
RR: One of the big myths about digital comics is that there’s no production cost. Once a book is done, you have to export to various formats. I know we, DC, and Marvel have entire staffs devoted to digital comics. The comic industry has so much to thank to the direct market. It’s to provide parity. For example, if I tell one store to sell a book for $2.99 and another for $1.99 that’s not fair.

PCMag:Could you please describe the process of creating digital comics?

RR: When a book is finished, we then have to take the printer version of the comic, and re-output per the digital format specs. As you know, print requires very high resolution printing, and while the iPad Retina display calls for high resolution, it’s not print quality, so we need to re-output it.  Additionally, we support numerous formats such as PDF, ePub, CBR/CBZ, and Comixology’s format, so that requires a lot of file maintenance and tracking. Then the files need to be uploaded to the various destinations, i.e. Comixology, Apple, Amazon etc.  Throughout the entire process, we create and manage each title’s metadata (title, description, credits etc) to make sure the platforms have the right information about the title.

PCMag:I’ve noticed that many digital comics lack ads.
RR: Ads are sold for print impressions.

PCMag:Do you foresee more ads coming to the digital space? With digital you could probably create some non-traditional ads.
RR: Yeah, we’re looking at some things. As things develop, you’ll see.

PCMag:Does Image have any digital-only titles in its catalog?
RR: When we launched the revamped site, we launched Warren Ellis’ Scatterlands which is our first digital only book.

PCMag:Is it easier for creators to break into digital comics than traditional paper and ink comics?
RR: Oh, most definitely. If I was an up-and-coming creator, now would be the time to break in. There’s no printing cost, and you can go live at any time and get feedback. Plantetoid was first published digitally. We spotted it, liked what we saw, and snatched it up.

PCMag: Image Comics recently decided to go DRM free. What brought that on?
RR: We were discussing that if you buy something you should be able to own it. That was one of the main things to drive the concept. Back in March, Marvel did the 700 free #1 issues promotion that crashed Comixology servers. Some readers were unable to access their comics. Then in April, there was a content restriction issue with Saga. Apple didn’t approve of some of the sexual content, so our readers couldn’t get that comic. If we can’t have total distribution control to our customers, we have to sell the books ourselves. We had to make them DRM-free.

PCMag: How many of the original Image Comics’ all-star founders are still with the company?
RR: Of the original founders, four are still on board. Larson is still doing Savage Dragon, Silvestri is doing Cyberforce, Todd McFarlane is writing Spawn, and Jim Valentino runs the Shadowline imprint. They also have their own imprints and discover new talent.

PCMag:What are some of the hot Image comics right now?
RR: The Walking Dead and Saga. There’s East of West, a dystopian alternate timeline western where the civil war never ended. Sheltered, which goes through lives of doomsday preppers. Ghosted, a comic out of Kirkman’s imprint, is excellent.

We’re moving away from superheroes. Marvel and DC have that. Sci-Fi is booming. Manhattan Projects is a historical fiction where the Manhattan Project is one of many projects. Humor is doing great for us. Chew is great. It takes place after chicken has been banned, so the FDA is one of the biggest law enforcement agents. Agent Chew can bite anything and get impressions of everything that’s come into contact with it. It’s great stuff.

PCMag: How is the industry doing as a whole? There’s always talk that the comics business is a struggling business.
RR: The comic industry always feels on the edge. The sky’s always falling. But we’ve been hearing that for the past 30 years. Image sales are up across the board. I think the doom is unwarranted.