In June of 2013 Image Comics made a bold decision to strike out offering digital versions of their comics directly through website DRM free. I had mixed feelings about it, though they were mostly negative due to boisterous claims that if just examined a little bit, were easily dispelled as all talk. In a three-part series, I took on the decision and announcement, breaking down the claims and examining what was really going on. You can check that out here, here, and here.

One of the talking points given by Image’s Director of Business Development Ron Richards was other digital service’s going out of business or their system going down due to “act of god.”

And God forbid, if ComiXology goes under or their data center has an earthquake all their hard drives go away — then you’ve got nothing.

A few months before the decision was made, comiXology had a service interruption due to a promotion involving the distribution of almost every first issue Marvel has ever produced. You can imagine the traffic from that and can see the spike in interest in one easy graphic.

I warned that Image’s talking points about a system going down is just asking for trouble, and right about 6 months later, I was right. This is what I said then….

The first time their site goes down, he’ll have to eat his own words.

To celebrate a stellar 2013, Image decided to run a “flash sale” giving away the first issue for each of their releases in 2013. As you’d expect there was a crush of users attempting to take part and their site went down, making it impossible to access my account, but I was able to read my already downloaded comics. Exactly like the comiXology scenario that Richards slammed as he made the news rounds.

Image took to the internet to apologize for the issue.

So a company decides to give a bunch of first issues away, the response is overwhelming and the system crashes.

Some things come full circle. But, Marvel and comiXology worked through their technical issues allowing everyone who tried to partake eventually. In Image’s case, those that missed out sound like they’re out of luck.