Yesterday, all of the internet was ablaze with the news that Saga #12—Image Comics' sci-fi adventure drama by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples—was being blocked from iPads and iPhones by Apple. A new announcement from digital comics purveyor Comixology indicates that they, not Apple, were to blame. It also says that the comic will be available later today.
To our customers -
In the last 24 hours there has been a lot of chatter about Apple banning Saga #12 from our Comics App on the Apple App Store due to depictions of gay sex. This is simply not true, and we’d like to clarify.
As a partner of Apple, we have an obligation to respect its policies for apps and the books offered in apps. Based on our understanding of those policies, we believed that Saga #12 could not be made available in our app, and so we did not release it today.
We did not interpret the content in question as involving any particular sexual orientation, and frankly that would have been a completely irrelevant consideration under any circumstance.
Given this, it should be clear that Apple did not reject Saga #12.
After hearing from Apple this morning, we can say that our interpretation of its policies was mistaken. You’ll be glad to know that Saga #12 will be available on our App Store app soon.
We apologize to Saga creator Brian K. Vaughn and Image Comics for any confusion this may have caused.
All the best,
David Steinberger
CEO and co-founder
comiXology
Sound off and let us know when you see the issue pop up in the Comixology and Image iOS apps.