Hello and welcome to Pesto Comics. I’m Adriano.
If you caught the recent updates, you know we’ve been teasing something massive for a while now. The ink is dry, the plans are set, and it’s finally time to break down exactly what is happening with Pesto Comics in 2026.
We’re taking the next big step with a new partnership with Prana Publishers.
Today, I’ll give more details on what all this means for our Kickstarter campaigns moving forward, and most importantly, how you can get our books no matter where you are in the world whether you’re a Kickstarter backer or you want to add Pesto Comics to your weekly pull list at your LCS, let’s get into it.
Entering the Direct Market
So first, the headline: Pesto Comics is officially going global in the direct market.
We’ve partnered with Prana Publishing to get our books into comic shops everywhere. Through this partnership, our catalog will now be distributed by Lunar Distribution, Universal Distribution, and Diamond UK.
This is an absolute game-changer.
It means whether you’re in Toronto, New York, London, or nearly anywhere, your local comic shop can order Pesto Comics titles directly from their main distributors. No jumping through hoops, no special orders. We’re going to be in the catalog.
It kicks off in April with a direct market release of From Parts Unknown #1.
Now for those of you that followed the original campaign, you know the story, but for the direct market, we’re breaking it back up into a five-issue series and tweaking it around the edges to give it a slightly more polished look.
So mark your calendars. The final order cutoff for issue #1 is the last Monday of March (March 30th!).
That date is crucial, but just know that April is when the floodgates open.
What about Kickstarter?
“If you’re going into stores, what happens to Kickstarter? Is the platform dead (to Pesto Comics)?”
Absolutely not.
Kickstarter isn’t going anywhere.
In fact, we’re doubling down.
This deal actually allows us to ramp up our production because we need to feed the direct market schedule. We are increasing our output significantly. The goal (and I admit it’s ambitious) is to have a Pesto Comics title on store shelves every other week by the end of the year.
Now, obviously those months with five Wednesdays might complicate the math a little bit, but that is the target:
A steady, biweekly stream of Pesto Comics content on your store shelves.
To maintain that pace, you’re going to see us running campaigns more frequently, and we’re going to be putting more projects on deck than ever before. However, to make this work, we have to update our Kickstarter model.
Here are three big changes that you need to know:
Double Issue Launches: To meet that biweekly retail schedule, future Kickstarter campaigns will launch two issues at a time. That helps us get ahead on production so we never miss a ship date for retailers.
Backlist Availability: We’re making a major shift into how we handle the backlist. In the past, you could grab older books as add-ons forever.
That’s changing.
We’re going to be limiting our backlist on Kickstarter.
Once the Kickstarter editions are gone, they’re gone.Exclusivity: This leads to the third point. If books are coming to stores, why back the Kickstarter?
Simple.
We’re keeping things special for backers. We will have exclusive variant covers for all our releases on Kickstarter that will not be available through the catalog. So unless your retailer backs the campaign, your only way to get these limited variant covers is to back it yourself and get the comics direct to your door.
…plus, you’re getting them early. Kickstarter releases will land three to four months before those comics hit the direct market. And as always, every backer gets a DRM-free digital copy.
So if you want the rarest versions and you want to read them months before anyone else, Kickstarter is still the best way to support the cause.
Ask for ‘From Parts Unknown #1’ at your LCS!
Whether you back us on Kickstarter or buy from your local comic shop, your support means everything. But I have a specific request for those of you who love the comic shop experience.
Tell your retailer you want Pesto Comics.
Walk into your shop and tell them, “Hey, I want the pre-order of From Parts Unknown #1 from Prana and Pesto Comics”.
We are giving retailers massive incentives to stock up on our books, including bundles that give steep discounts beyond wholesale, but nothing moves the needle like a customer asking for a book.
Prana Publishing has been an incredible partner in helping us navigate the complex world of the direct market and together we’re going to be making a lot of noise about this in the future.
So 2026 is just the beginning.
We’re scaling up, we’re reaching new readers, and we are keeping the quality just as high as it’s always been.
Right now, I want to thank you for reading.
I want to thank you for backing.
I want to thank everyone who has supported a Pesto Comics campaign in the past, joined the newsletter, or done anything to support what we’re doing here.
I can’t wait to get these books in the hands of even more people.
People who don’t know what Kickstarter is and are just walking into their local comic shop to see something cool on the shelf. Hopefully, that cool thing that they see is From Parts Unknown.
So I want to thank you all for being here. It means a ton. There’s going to be a lot more coming in the coming weeks, but I wanted to share that all with you, direct and personally from me.
So once again, thank you for being here. We’ll talk again in a couple of weeks.
Snip #1-2
Crimson Frontier 1 & 2
Naked Kaiju Woman #3 & 4
Prime Cut #1-2
Super Secret Epilogue
For those of you who were wondering what the big announcement that I kept hinting at and never really saying... this was it. We’re entering the direct market with Prana Publishing.
It’s absolutely huge. This was a deal that we actually signed back in October or November. We’d been talking about it for a while before that.
If you get a chance, I would check out the announcement on Comic Industry Insiders Live.
That happened on Tuesday. I was a guest on the show to announce the partnership with Prana, and Adam and Brian had nothing but good things to say, which was wonderful.
You know, you never really know.
You always have that imposter syndrome, like, “Am I doing the right thing?”. Even with all the support we’ve been getting, you still have that thought in the back of your mind. Maybe everyone’s just being nice—which feels silly, but it’s always in the back of your head. So to get that support, to hear them say, “Hey, we see what you’re doing and you’re doing it really well”—it was wonderful to hear, especially in public.
Prana is doing some really cool things, like Comics the Magazine. I think that’s going to be huge. That’s like Wizard for a new generation. (I know that dates me a bit, but hey, here we are.)
I think the Zdarsky Comic News kind of proved that people are starving for that kind of content. They want someone to say, “Tell me! There’s too much out there. Tell me what’s cool that isn’t just Batman”.
The first issue does have Absolute Batman on the cover, which is awesome, but it’s easy to look at just the mainstream. I think this is going to be a huge window for indies like myself, too.
The Prana team has been wonderful to me. I’m new to the direct market outside of being a customer. I understand what an FOC is, but I didn’t know exactly how the machine operates behind the scenes. Now I do, thanks to them. With all the confidence they’ve given me, I think we’re going to be able to really ramp things up and have two books on the shelves by the end of the year.
It starts with From Parts Unknown in April, and that’s going to be followed up with a campaign. I was planning on launching it on January 29th, but I may push that out to the following Tuesday, so that’d be February 3rd. That project is Snip. I’m trying to get a little bit more done on the pre-launch just to make sure that launches properly and have the ads set up to make that campaign a big bang to start off 2026.
If you watch the 2026 preview post, you know I have a lot coming this year. Right now I have a slate that goes into 2028 when we’re talking about the direct market. The Kickstarters just go to the end of 2027, but there are more than enough stories actively being worked on right now to get us through the next two years.
One of the big things I’m working on outside of all this direct market stuff is getting the Pesto Comics website up to snuff. Now that this whole direct market thing has been sorted, I can actually update the website with all of the things that are going on there.
So we’ll be back in two weeks with our new campaign for Snip. If you haven’t followed the pre-launch yet, please do that. You can find that at bit.ly/snip1comic.
Give it a follow.
If you’re a From Parts Unknown fan, we’re going to have something really cool with one of the Snip covers. I won’t share too much, but keep an eye out for that.
Anyway, I’m going to get back to work now. It’s going to be a lot of fun. I want to thank you for being here. Have a good one.
