Hello, and welcome to Pesto Comics.
I’m preparing for San Diego Comic-Con, but before I do that, I’ll be at Retro Rocket Comics Mini-Con in Cambridge, Ontario.
So it’s an outdoor event. Hopefully the weather holds up, and you can find me out on the street under the tent selling my wares before I go off to San Diego.
San Diego Comic-Con
And San Diego -- huge deal. I’m officially a pro.
You would think having books on the shelves the way I do, I’d already feel like a pro, but this was just another nice little milestone to say, “Yes, I’ve been accepted by the industry to a degree.”
So it was nice to get a pro badge.
But the other thing I’m happy to announce is…
I’ll be on a panel at San Diego on Friday at 5:30pm in Room 10, Breaking Into Comics Without a Publisher.
I know I work with Prana, and they’re a publisher, and they’re actually the ones that set this up, but they’re not a publisher in the traditional sense. And this is something that to folks outside of the industry has always been a little harder to explain.
Image Comics, Prana and Massive -- and any of these creator-owned publishers -- really want you to come with your book complete. They want a finished book. In the case of Image, they’re going to slap that logo on it and send it out. But outside of that, they’re really just doing marketing and that kind of thing.
When it comes to Massive and Prana, who I’m with, they don’t even ask to put their logo on the front.
The only place you’re going to find Prana is on the masthead on the first page, or if you’re following the solicits, we’re of course under Prana Publishers.
Pesto Comics is the one doing the publishing. We get the book from nothing -- from a script that I’ve written to a comic that an artist has drawn or a colorist has colored -- and then the letterer has done their bit, and the production designer is put together, and then we work with the printers to make sure that they get out to the distributors, a relationship that the publisher has set up, of course, but we’re the ones working with the printers to make sure that it gets to the various distributors.
So really, we’re doing the publishing. There’s just some facilitation that’s happening on the distribution, and of course a lot of marketing help and consultation that we get with Prana.
But as far as the actual publishing goes, it’s Pesto Comics that’s doing the publishing, and that’s what we’ll be talking about at this panel in depth.
I mentioned it’s very hard to explain this to someone that’s not in the industry.
Explaining FOCs and solicits and all that stuff -- it goes right over everyone’s heads. And to a lot of people, it sounds like I’m still just selling books at shows on the weekend, and that’s how I’m entertaining myself.
And we have a full-fledged business that does both B2B and B2C and has all different kinds of income and expense considerations, really running a publishing company from top to bottom.
Whiplash
And it reminds me of a scene in one of my favorite movies, and that movie is Whiplash.
The clip is available in the video, but here’s the screenplay version that plays just as well…
So there’s definitely character bits and things that are happening here that are more than just what I’m going to talk about right here.
But when I see this scene, there’s something that really sticks out to me, which is...
This character Andrew is doing something that only a handful of people in the world have ever done, have ever accomplished. He’s one of the best in the world, and it’s being put on par with everyone having relative success.
And this is where I don’t want people to get it twisted about how I’m interpreting this. I’m not putting myself on any kind of pedestal or anything like that.
But the thing that’s interesting is something that is so important to him -- something that he knows the effort that went in, he knows the struggle, he knows how unlikely the outcome that he has achieved is and how important that is.
That idea just goes over the heads of the other people on the table. They don’t understand why they’re offending him.
And yes, he takes it all wrong, and yes, his attitude is garbage, and that’s more the point of the scene.
But I find it interesting ‘cause I’ve certainly had similar conversations with people outside of comics, with people who don’t understand comics and don’t know what goes into it.
So the #1 question you get as a creative of any kind, and especially as a writer, is when you say, “Hey, I write comics,” the first answer you get back is, “Well, anything I’ve heard of?”
And of course, unless I’m going to say something from the big two, like Batman or Superman or Spider-Man, it’s probably going to go over their heads anyway.
It’s really just them being polite and trying to keep the conversation going.
The Comics Community Sphere
So it just goes to show -- to people outside of our sphere, all of this means nothing.
All of you guys know how much work has gone into building Pesto Comics into what it is today, and how much further we have to go and what we’re striving to achieve with all of this work and all of this effort that’s being put in.
But I always find it funny just how close-knit this sphere is, and how all of this work and all this effort that we are putting in maybe doesn’t get appreciated or even recognized by people outside of our sphere.
And there’s a blessing to that as well. We get to appreciate our medium without outside influence.
You see with the movies where all different kinds of pressures are being put on folks and they don’t always get to tell the story they want. In comics, because we’re kind of in our little bubble, we get to tell the stories we want without too much interference.
There’s still stuff happening within the sphere, but for the most part, we’re not worried about the same things that the larger mediums are worried about.
So I could be mad about it like Andrew is in this scene, or I could take it as a positive and say, “You know what?”
And getting to meet with all kinds of cool creators and having some common ground with them that maybe doesn’t carry once I go back to LAX to fly home. But when I’m in San Diego, I get to walk around with my head held high.
Thanks
And I’m very happy to be where I am representing Pesto Comics, and the only reason any of that can happen is because of people like you, who listen to me yammer on every week and who back the campaigns, including Naked Kaiju Woman #3, which is still available on Kickstarter this month.
It’s available for the rest of July. That book’s really important to the health of Pesto Comics, so I really do appreciate your support.
But it really means a ton whether you support that book or not -- the fact that you’re here listening, the fact that you support Pesto Comics at all, even the nice comments you guys put on socials, or reviewing the books on League of Comic Book Geeks or on your own socials and just spreading the word about the books.
It all means a ton. It all helps build what we’re trying to build, and we’re trying to do even more cool things in the very near future, and it’s thanks to you that any of this is possible.
So as always, I want to thank you for being here. It really does mean a ton. We’ll talk again next week. I’m going to do a video from the hotel room at San Diego, so we’ll see how it goes.
We’ll see if I regret doing so.
Thank you so much for appreciating everything we’re doing and allowing it to all happen.
It only happens because of you. So once again, thanks. We’ll talk again next week.
Upcoming Comics
In Comic Shops
From Parts Unknown #3
On Sale NOW
From Parts Unknown #4
On Sale August 5th
From Parts Unknown #5
FOC August 10th | On Sale September 9th
Snip #1 - Local Comic Shop Day - Exclusive Early Advance Variant
FOC August 24th | On Sale September 26th
Snip #1
FOC September 7 | On Sale October 7th
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Snip #3-5
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August 4th to August 21st
Crimson Frontier #1-2
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September 1st to September 18th
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Crowdfunding
Switch/Restart
Backerkit (Printopia 2026)
September 10th to October 1st
Leo Lucas #1-3 (Backlot Babylon, The Price of Fame, Cult of Glamour)
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November 10 to November 27th
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