Madefire’s website states that on April 7, the company “entered into an assignment for the benefit of creditors (the ‘Assignment’), which is a state-level insolvency proceeding similar to bankruptcy.” As a result, “all new purchases of books have been suspended indefinitely,” “all publication of new books has been suspended indefinitely,” and “access to purchased content stored in the cloud may be limited and therefore customers are encouraged to download all previously purchased content from the cloud onto the Madefire App before the end of April 2021.”
Founded when digital comics were still in their infancy, Madefire featured exclusive titles by co-founders Ben Wolstenholme, and Liam Sharp, and other creators like Dave Gibbons and Bill Sienkiewicz. It made a selling point of offering “motion books,” with visual and audio elements that tried to bring the experience of gliding through a comic closer to the feeling of a film or TV show.
Madefire also carried other publishers’ books, and was the “backbone” of IDW, Archie and Dark Horse Comics’ apps. As a result of the shutdown, Archie have closed their app, and are working with comiXology to offer affected readers a free, one-month trial of comiXology Unlimited, as well as a free bundle of bestselling titles. For more instructions, head to ArchieComics.com.
