Izneo.com: The comiXology Alternative for European Comics (2022 Edition)

As comiXology is to North America, so Izneo.com is to Europe.  It is the place to go for all your Franco-Belgian comics needs. They also carry a selection of North American publishers, though not Marvel and DC.

Izneo formed in 2010 in an agreement with a dozen French and Belgian publishers. It has a very large library to choose from, lots of options to pay for them, and an English version of its website.

You can even buy your comics from Izneo directly through their app on the iPhone and iPad via Apple Pay as In-App Purchases.

If you’re adventurous, Izneo also has a comics reading app for the Nintendo Switch.

There’s no desktop app, but the website handles that functionality well enough.

Izneo has a nearly identical collection of European albums translated into English as comiXology. The sources are the same, notably the Europe Comics collective and Cinebook publishing in the U.K.

The prices and the sales are identical, as well.

While they don’t have Marvel or DC, American publishers represented on the system include the likes of Dynamite, Boom!, IDW, and Dark Horse.

If you want to go in the opposite direction, Izneo also has a collection of American comics translated into French in the French half of their store. It’s the only way to read Batman comics there.

If you only want to window shop, every title features a seven to ten page preview (including the cover).  The preview pages are large. They can go all the way up to full screen.  It’s not like comiXology’s old website, where you only got a 600 x 800 pixel preview of each page.  Izneo gives you as big a preview as you’d like.

I can get lost clicking through the previews of the French books sometimes and just looking at the art, while being slightly frustrated at my lack of fluency in French. I can read a lot of the words now, but never enough to get the whole story.

Izneo also has a subscription plan for the all-you-can-eat buffet called Izneo Premium (think comiXology Unlimited), and packages where you can buy up an entire series’ worth of albums, though there’s not a discount there. It’s just there to save you some clicking.

Izneo matches the American market for digital comics, and then surpasses it: Standard priced comics, constant sales, lots of larger previews, a subscription plan, in-app purchases, and an app that’s usable.

On the negative side, If you’re looking for Marvel and DC, you’ll be lost. And the website is definitely slower than comiXology’s — but, then, comiXology’s website doesn’t exist anymore, so that comparison is null and void.

Also, some of the translations on the website are just slightly wrong. It varies from little things like an “E” still having an accent on it when it’s the English language word, to buttons that take you to the Izneo Premium subscription page being labeled “BENEFIT.” I kind of find it endearing, to tell you the truth….

Digital Formatting

Much like comiXology, Izneo does not offer DRM-free CBRs or PDFs. You need to be logged into the app or website to start reading. Izneo only guarantees your right to read the comic you “bought” for six months. Their business plan, I’m sure, includes staying in business much longer than that, and keeping those contracts going all the while. (Per the small print.)

You can only effectively stream them. If you’re using their iPad app, though, you can download them for off-line reading. But they won’t go any further than that. I’m not sure if there’s a limit on that, or not, aside from the size of your iPad’s memory. If there is, I haven’t hit it yet.

So it’s not a perfect world over in Europe. Nor is it any worse. They have many of the same issues that digital comics have in North America.

The Pricing Plan Options

You can, of course, buy individual books.  That’s the bread and butter of the site. You get over 40,000 to choose from when you add up the four different languages they have books in.

There is a $7.99 monthly subscription plan called Izneo Premium.  Izneo says they have 2000 comics available through this plan. It is an impressively deep selection of books that goes beyond just the first volumes of longer-running series. You get a 10 day free preview to start.

You can buy comics through the Izneo iPad and iPhone apps!  No additional charge is made in the process.  Remember how much we complained when Amazon took that away from comiXology?  Izneo still has it.

For fun, check out the Izneo app on the iPhone and expand the “In-App Purchases” section:

It alphabetically lists every comic you can buy at Izneo, though it truncates after the first 10. That list has to be tens of thousands of items long. They must have to update it every time there’s a new item to add or a price to be changed. That’s commitment!

(Izneo also used to have a rental option on albums ($2 to $4 for a week), but that appears to have been scrapped.)

 The Catalog

Izneo has over 40,000 titles, at last count.

It’s a pretty broad array of titles, and there is something for nearly everyone here. It’s missing English editions of “Tintin” and “Asterix” in America for various contractual issues, but does have both the original French and translated English language editions of “Lucky Luke,” “The Smurfs,” and some Moebius, Morris, and Franquin efforts.  

There’s plenty of classic material to keep you busy.

One French publishers is conspicuous by their absence. English editions from Delcourt/Soleil are completely missing. This is the rare case where Comixology has a larger catalog than Izneo. Comixology carries a selection of the Delcourt/Soleil titles like “Ekho” and “Ythaq.”

Reading an Album

Here’s what it looks like on a web browser:

You have the option to read one page at a time, or in two-page spreads.  It tells you at the bottom of the screen what page you’re on and how many pages are in the book.  Your percentage complete is set at the top of the screen as a blue thermometer bar.

And, of course, you can zoom in and out, make the background black or white, read it in full screen mode, or read it in “eazycomics” mode (panel-by-panel), where available.

Oddly enough, the Boom! books show up very small in the web reader. They’re about half the size on the screen as every other book I’ve ever read on Izneo. You can zoom in to have the page fill the screen and it looks fine, but you lose the navigation bar at the bottom. I’m guessing here that it’s the files Boom! is providing Izneo with, because no other publisher I’ve seen has this problem.

The Website

Izneo’s website is available in five different languages. When you go to Izneo.com, if you don’t get the English edition of the page by default click on the flag on the far right side of the header and select the British “EN” from the dropdown

You can search through the catalog by genre, in one of Izneo’s lists (New Titles, Best Sellers, etc.), or through the generic search bar.  The results on search come back separated by Albums, Series, Publishers, Themes, and Authors.

If you click through on a series, you’ll get a list of books that looks like this:

Be careful here. Clicking on the cover “plays” the comic. It’ll open up the reader and start the preview for a book you don’t own, or launch the book if you do own it.

If you want to drill down and find more information out about that particular album, you need to click on the title of the book just to the right of the cover. It looks more like a header than a link, but it is, indeed, a link.

Here are the results of your typical album catalog item on Izneo:

You get a large cover image and a big button to read the preview excerpt they offer. In this sample Blacksad instance, it’s the cover plus title page, and then the first eight sequential pages of the story.

In the lower left column, there are icons/logos that will appear to show what reading modes are available.  In this case, the only mode available is the high def version for the iPad.  You might also see the “eazycomics” logo in this area.  That’s their version of what comiXology called Guided View.  It’s not available across as many titles as it is with comiXology that I’ve seen. It’s not available here with Blacksad, for example.

This doesn’t bother me, since I never use Guided View. It’s an affront to the proper comics reading experience as the creators intended it.  But that’s a rant for another time…

This is also the section where they explicitly spell out if this book is in English or French. With Blacksad here, it says “english version” in bold face type.

There’s also the chance to suggest more tags for the book if you’re logged in. (I wasn’t when I took this screen shot, unfortunately.) In Blacksad’s case, only the “Thriller” tag is currently applied.  Readers can suggest more, with another editorial process keeping a keen eye on things, I’m sure.

The rest of the listing includes the publisher’s summary of the book and reader reviews. There’s a program called “Super Reader” that Izneo has where they offer free copies of books for review. You can pick which book from a very healthy list of options.

If you were to scroll down the page from here, you’d see where Izneo offers suggestions of books either by the same author/artist or books from the same series. I used a listing for “Ken Games” in this example:

In the case of the same series, you have the option to buy the whole bundle and get everything.  You don’t get a discount, but at least it’s a single-button solution.

This is a bit of a weird example in that the “Tebori” series from the same creators ran three books. I’m not sure why the third didn’t show up here, but it is in the Izneo catalog.

How to Give Them Your Money

Prices in the English language store are in dollars, so you won’t need to do the conversions. If you’re looking at the French books, you’ll need to translate Euros to dollars. It’s not in your favor. ($1.13 per Euro.)

Izneo accepts major credit cards and even PayPal. You can charge a new order for each purchase, or load up a wallet at the store and spend as you go.

And, I can’t stress this enough so I’ll repeat it once more: If you’re using the iOS app on iPad or iPhone, you can pay for comics as an In App Purchase through Apple’s payment system.

Just want to emphasize this point: The store isn’t limited to European audiences. As an American, I can still shop there. No region lock on money, though some material won’t be available to buy.

There are also gift cards available that are good for one year.

The Izneo iPad App

I spend most of my Izneo time reading comics in the iPad App. With my 12.9″ iPad Pro, it’s the best way to read digital comics and the closest I’m going to come to reading this many Franco-Belgian albums at their intended size.

It’s a spare app. There are no fancy gimmicks or tricks to it. It gets the job done, but it isn’t rewriting the rules of what a comic-reading app should be, nor is it adding anything new.

To be honest, it doesn’t need to. What do you need an app like this for? You want an easy way to read a comic and an easy way to find the comic you want to read. The Izneo app does both without any additional frills.

Home Page

Across the top are special selections of books. You’ll find big new releases in there. You’ll see this week’s sales. There might be a themed collection of titles for a specific holiday or event happening in the world.

Below that is a series of smart lists. You’ll see the book you’ve most recently had opened, new releases, trending titles, things on sale, and the most popular books. You’ll also have a series of buttons with genres on them. You can go shopping there for books that are Action/Adventure, Fantasy, Comedy, Documentary, etc.

If you look at the bottom of the screen, there’s a series of icons going across. This is the home page, so there’s a little home icon there.

Search

The next icon is the magnifying glass so, obviously, it’s the search page. Again, it’s super bare bones. It’s a blank white screen with an input field for your search terms.

Honestly, this can be hit or miss. The odds are good that you’ll find the book you were expecting when you typed in your search. But then you’ll get 20 more that often don’t make sense. Here’s my search for “Andre Franquin.” He had nothing to do with most of those books. I’m guessing that it’s a two-word search and so some of those books included someone named “Andre” in them and that was enough.

The more specific you can be, the better off you’ll be. That’s generally true across all kinds of search, though.

Catalog

The next icon along the bottom of the screen is the “Catalog” icon that looks like the front of a long box to me, but it is probably meant to be a stack of albums. This screen breaks Izneo’s catalog up into its 5 main components:

• European Comics
• Manga
• Webtoon
• US Comics
• Graphic Novel

I spend most of my time in the first and last categories. The manga catalog runs deep, and I’m sure Webtoon is very popular with a similar demographic of customers.

Clicking through any of those categories sends you to a new screen that is much like the home screen: It has a series of smart lists to guide you to new releases, good deals, trends, etc.

There’s also a pre-order line there that I just noticed now. That’s exciting because it shows you what’s coming up for releases next. In the case of European comics, it’s generally one big release a month around the third week of each month.

My Library

Moving along, we hit the library next. That’s the two vertical lines followed by a backslash. It looks like a shelf of books. It all makes sense.

That shows you the books you own on Izneo. You can look at them through either the “My Series” tab or the “My Volumes” tab They behave exactly as you would suspect.

Click on the cover to read, or click on the orange bar next to the cover to download the book for later offline reading.

My Downloads

Finally, the down arrow icon on the far right takes you to the downloads page. You can download and store for offline reading any comic you buy at Izneo. I have two sitting on my iPad right now, and they’re both magazines. (That “PIlote” special dedicated to “Valerian and Laureline” is filled with fun short stories by a variety of Franco-Belgian creators.)

Reading your comics in this app is identical to reading them on the website. The layout and the functionality is the same. The comic fills the screen completely.

Izneo Is a Great Resource

If you want your comics collection to be held by a smaller and more independent company than you might find here in the States, Izneo is a great option.

As someone who is specifically interested in what is out there in French comics, Izneo is an amazing resource for me. If you’re not that experimental, though, there’s still a lot to like here.

I can go shopping in Europe for comics without going through any crazy third-party inconveniences.  I can use my credit card, Apple Pay, or PayPal account and be on my way.

There’s also something cool about perusing books that haven’t been translated yet, and even learning bits of the language along the way.

You’ll also subliminally learn some French words that are used in a shopping website from reading Izneo in French. “Je M’Abonne” means “Subscribe” and the “Lire” button lets you read the comics. “Ajouter Au Panier” means “Add to Cart.” “Précommandes” are pre-orders. etc.

If you’re looking for a new source of digital comics for any reason (like your primary one got subsumed by a larger company and now sucks), check out Izneo.com.  Create your account if only to get the free title they’re offering.  You’ll get some great choices, and they are in English, so you can read them.

But then look around. There’s a lot to read on the English side of things, encompassing decades’ worth of comics that have never been printed in English before.

(A previous version of this article was published in May 2017. This is a major rewrite and update of that one. It’s fun to look back at the old screenshots, and to see what features have changed, though. This is not a sponsored post, though Izneo has always been supportive of my efforts with this site and its coverage of Franco-Belgian comics.)