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Amazon buys popular comic book app platform Comixology (update)

There's nothing quite like taking a massive, heavy library of beloved books and shrinking it into an e-reader. Amazon, having already accomplished that with its tremendously popular digital book service, is now targeting the comic book market. The company is purchasing Comixology, a digital comic book service with hundreds of millions of users and apps for all of your devices.

Comixogy CEO David Steinberger is quite fond of the agreement, the terms of which were not disclosed (we're assuming it's at least $3.50 -- comics these days are awfully expensive). "There is no better home for comixology than Amazon to see this vision through," Steinberger says in the announcement. "Working together, we look to accelerate a new age for comic books and graphic novels." It's just a wild guess, but we're expecting the first such "acceleration" will involve integrating Amazon payments and the Comixology userbase over to Amazon. It's not yet clear if Comixology brand will stand on its own (Amazon already sells single issues and graphic novels on Kindle), but we're asking the company for more, but don't expect to hear much -- the deal hasn't closed just yet, but it's expected to in the next few months.

Update: We heard back from Amazon -- join us below for more.

As expected, Amazon's only saying so much about its plans for Comixology. We asked whether it's potentially headed to Amazon Prime, and were given a no comment. As far as Kindle integration though, that's a given. "We expect we'll find ways to make both comiXology and Kindle work better together," a rep said. Amazon will retain the comiXology branding, and support the existing apps.