For decades, comic book fans have had only one option for getting digital editions of Spider-Man, Batman, the Transformers or many other colorful characters on the same day they hit comic book shops.

That platform, Comixology, was acquired by Amazon in 2014 and eventually absorbed into its Kindle service. The takeover left some fans grumbling that comics shouldn’t get the same treatment as eBooks.

Now, two industry veterans, David Steinberger and Chip Mosher, are betting they can beat Amazon at e-commerce by catering more intentionally to die-hard comic book fans. Next month, they plan to launch Neon Ichiban, a site they intend to be “a dedicated experience for comics,” Mr. Steinberger said, after raising more than $7 million from investors in the game and movie industries.

“Understanding how comic book fans and people who should be fans want to shop and think about and browse doesn’t exist anymore,” he said. “The Comixology app, where you can have all your comics in one place, does not exist anymore. It’s all just part of Kindle.”

It is a head-turning statement from Mr. Steinberger, who also founded Comixology — and approved its sale to Amazon. Mr. Mosher was the head of content at Comixology.

“At the time, it seemed like the right decision,” Mr. Steinberger said. “Our mission was to make everyone on the planet a comic fan, and Amazon clearly had the resources and the population connected to Kindle that we thought would carry that mission.”

He added, “With what I knew then, it was absolutely the right call.”

Over the past two decades, Amazon has transformed itself into a online retail behemoth, sweeping up smaller companies through acquisitions and attracting sellers to its vast marketplace. But a growing number of businesses have sought to carve out their own online retail niche outside the giant, much as Etsy did for crafting or Chewy for pet supplies.

Neon Ichiban is betting that enthusiasts of comic books — a $1.86 billion industry in 2023 — will be willing to abandon Amazon’s conveniences for its tailored offerings, new features and shared sense of community.

“Anyone who’s watched the comics industry over the course of the past, say, five to 10 years,” said Hunter Gorinson, the president and publisher of Oni Press, whose series include “Scott Pilgrim,” “has noticed that the digital comic space especially has been yearning for a little bit of innovation, a little bit of disruption and just a little bit of some new energy brought to it.”

Amazon declined a request for comment.

Neon Ichiban, named to evoke the signs and community of Tokyo’s night markets, will offer single issues and collected editions of comics and manga on the same day as their print availability. The site and companion app will let customers browse, buy and read their comics. It will also let creators autograph or sketch on the digital issues and offer ways for people to resell their copies and editions.

Its initial slate of publishers includes the two titans of the industry, Marvel Entertainment and DC Comics, as well as Dark Horse Comics, DSTLRY, Kodansha, Oni Press and Vault Comics. Other publishers will be named later.

Amazon’s Comixology works with the same publishers — and many more, including Archie Comics, Boom! Studios and Image Comics. And its management system means that fans who have built extensive digital collections on Comixology won’t be able to transfer them elsewhere. (Those on Neon Ichiban’s site won’t transfer, either.)

But online forums are littered with complaints that the site became difficult to use, the comics became harder to read and the material felt shoehorned into the Kindle library.

Among the features that Mr. Mosher and Mr. Steinberger are most excited about are “digital remarques” — signatures or drawings added to digital copies of a comic book.

Using a different platform, for example, Jason Howard added a character sketch to a digital copy of “The Missionary,” a horror comic drawn by him and written by Ryan Stegman. “I guess we’re in the future now,” Mr. Howard commented on social media.

Those little additions are catnip for fans, and a potential revenue source for artists. The Neon Ichiban site will display the original purchase date, when the creator added to the file and more.

“We know from doing our own books that it’s not a business that too many creators get to be rich from — just from creating,” Mr. Steinberger said. “The signatures and the sketches and drawings are a really important part of their revenue.”