How will Power Pulp save comics? Pinko politics and dinos

If comics will truly break your heart, no one knows that better than self-publishers.

“It’s a grind to get your name out there and to get your work out there,” said Chris Anderson, who has co-released great books like Grey Matter Drip and Spectral. “As somebody who does this for a living, I would say 75% of my day is spent doing emails and other things, and 25% is actually the creative part of the day. In order to get their books to people, you’ve got to show up at shows across the country, and that costs money for your plane ticket and everything. So a lot of people are just losing money and so they treat it as a hobby while they work their day job.”

And that’s not even mentioning the effort of featuring your books in comic shops nationwide.

“Well, you go to the shop, you bring them the books, you talk to the owner, you ask them if they want to buy your book, and they either put it on consignment (which means you have to remember that you gave them your book and go back and see how many books sold),” Anderson said. “I can’t tell you how many books I lost that way. Or you give them a healthy discount because that’s what is required. You’ve got to at least give them, like, 40 to 50% off of your cover price, if not more if you can swing it.”

So, what’s the solution (and not, say, giving up entirely and getting a job as a CPA)? In the case of Anderson and several cohorts (including John and James Coats and Jamie Jones), the answer was Power Pulp Comics.

Described as a “creator-led distro model disguised as a publisher,” Power Pulp is basically a way for this collective (which also features writer-artists Tony Fero, Kirt Burdic, Sam J. Royale, Matt King, and Corinne Halbert, among others) to gather their resources and release books to stores — while netting 100% of the profits for each respective creator. It unites these disparate creators under one easy banner for all your comics-consuming needs.

“Stores can now order directly from one centralized location,” Anderson said. “They pay shipping for one creator as opposed to having to pay shipping for all these other creators, all these other people individually. So it’s consolidated. Or, if they order $200 or more of product, shipping is free.”

And you don’t even need to own a comic shop to get in on the Power Pulp fun.

“It also opens it up for individuals,” Anderson said. “There are so many comic shop deserts, let’s call it, throughout the country, where there’s no shops to go to. Or, it has to be on a special trip into the city or whatever it may be. Not anymore. You can order it directly from us. You can get all of these great self-published comics that you may or may not have heard of.”

The Power Collective

Power Pulp’s aforementioned descriptor is important to note. Because, as it turns out, publishing and distributing comics is way more complicated than you might’ve expected.

“Now, in order to get into the distribution models that are out there right now, you have to be a publisher,” Anderson said. “And I could say, ‘All right, Chris Anderson Comics, that’s my publishing line. I publish Chris Anderson Comics.’ No, that doesn’t count as a publisher. You have to be a publisher that publishes multiple creators, different titles, and on a regular basis. So that wasn’t going to work. So the idea popped into my head, and also a couple of other people around the same time, that if we banded together as self-publishers under an umbrella we could act as a publisher. It feels like it’s a publisher, but it’s not, because every single member who is part of the Power Pulp Collective is their own business.”

Any other outlets in the comics wilderness, it seems, don’t really seem to be in it for the right reasons.

“The thing that I felt was missing throughout all of this was distribution,” Anderson said. “There’s a couple of distributors that are out there for independent comics, but they’re usually regional. Some of them, if you go to the websites…there’s AI chicks in bikinis that are just cash grabs. They’re not people that even like comics, they’re just people that were like, ‘Oh, Spawn’s rad, I remember that in the ’90s. They made a million dollars – I wonder if you can still do that?'”

Anderson noted that the group “were going to try to get into Diamond or Lunar at the time. And while we were working on this, it all collapsed.” Aside from those rather significant operations, there really weren’t many options left available for enterprising indie/self-published creators.

“There’s a Dark Horse model, where they don’t pay you a penny to make your book, but you get to make the money off of the sales and you get to keep your IP,” Anderson said. “And then there’s Image [a creator-owned model]. Other than that, there basically isn’t anything. That’s why Power Pulp is also very important because all of the creators in here control everything that belongs to them.”

Still, there are some outliers in a slightly broader sense. Those brave or daring outfits trying to do something novel to stand out in a sustainable manner.

“Bad Idea survived with their wild PR stuff that they would do,” Anderson said. “People have a lot of conversations about Bad Idea. With DSTLRY, they came in with this money to pay their creators upfront and this different idea of a marketplace. Those are two companies that are still going and surviving.”

But the Bad Ideas and DSTLRYs of the world clearly aren’t the norm. Anderson and company are aware that their work with Power Pulp is both an individual expression of their love of comics as much as it’s also a reaction to another terrible trend in comics in the 2010s/2020s.

“For the last 10 years maybe, a new [comics] company would pop up,” Anderson said. “They’d be flush with cash. They’d be ready to spend it. And you had to dive on them, or have already been on their radar talking to them before they announced and get something greenlit and put out before they lost all that cash and collapsed.”

And while he can’t discourage any of these groups, Anderson did admit there’s one essential difference between some other outlets and Power Pulp — and it’s why the collective are so intent to bet on themselves entirely.

“The difference between us and these companies is that those companies will take all or part of your IP, and that’s huge for me,” Anderson said. “I don’t want to give up my IP. The very first book that I put out has been optioned three or four times now. And you just never know. That book has made me more than all of the other books that I have combined. Probably not many people have read it, but there’s the chance that something that you put out can make money. Instead, you’re giving that to the publisher. So why would you do that?”

Why would you, indeed? Well, sometimes it’s a lack of awareness and education among comics creators. As such, it can be hard for these creators to trust new businesses.

“In the very beginning, when I first started approaching creators, the reaction on people’s faces was just priceless,” Anderson said. “It was like I was selling snake oil. It was like, ‘What’s your angle here? What do you mean you don’t make any money? You mean I make all the money? This doesn’t sound right.’ I know it sounds like a pyramid scheme or something, but it really isn’t. We just really wanted to create something that was healthy for the comics community in a community that is so unhealthy.”

Feel That Buzz

Speaking of unhealthy, Power Pulp could have been worried/terrified that, around the time of their announcement, Diamond’s ongoing bankruptcy reached a chaotic peak. Instead, they look at the whole “saga” as a great opportunity.

“Having distribution in general be in the conversation, and having Power Pulp come in right at the same time saying, ‘Hey, a new self-publishing distribution model has popped up,'” Anderson said. “You get one that is awful news and one that is great news. People love to talk about doom and gloom, but when we launched…you could just feel the buzz [at HeroesCon].”

Power Pulp’s members fully leaned into that air of chaos and uncertainty. They built the collective’s model in a way that people could be sure they were going to do the right thing the very best way possible.

“Every time we would get together, we’d say, ‘Let’s try to break this thing to make sure that we’re doing the right thing,'” Anderson said. “And we came up with reasons why the plan in the beginning wasn’t going to work. Then we figured it out and we pivoted. We approached these people with a fully big, fully formed idea. That it was something that all these self-publishers were probably already thinking anyway to some degree and just not putting it together. They had all the Lego pieces, but they didn’t have the instructions.”

And while Power Pulp has only been around for a couple months by now, the collective are already quite confident in what they’re doing.

“I feel like this has now created a model for the self-publishing industry to potentially raise the status of a lot of these self-publishers and raise the awareness to the rest of the comics community of all these great comics that are out there,” Anderson said. “I think that self-published comics can really flourish beyond the selling by hand in the comic con crowd and to get to a wider audience in shops.”

And who can blame them for feeling optimistic? Sure, the industry at-large isn’t always so accessible to self-publishers like these. And the ongoing saga around Diamond’s distribution will likely generate further ripples for years to come. But one self-publisher can break through all the noise, and that’s really all you need.

“I don’t care if you’re the Fantagraphics crowd, or if you’re the Marvel and DC crowd, everybody’s heard of Copra,” Anderson said. “Michel [Fiffe] figured out how to real hit the stone so hard and do it at a time when he was able to break out and it became a buzz thing. But there are so many books like Copra that are also great. People just don’t know about them because they don’t go to shows, or they’re not following things online or for whatever reason. There’s been this barrier.”

Part of smashing through that barrier has been to ride the line between consumers’ tastes. Power Pulp doesn’t just cater to the indie crowd, and they really try to elevate comics in a novel and exciting way.

“The great thing about Power Pulp in particular is that the lineup that we have is full of creators that walk the line between Big Two books,” Anderson said. “There are superhero adjacent books and also the Fantagraphics crowd (as a genre, not as a company).”

Anderson added, “Even the shops that tell us, ‘Our customers only buy big two books.’ Well, you know, if you put these in front of your customers, you could almost guarantee they’re going to be inquisitive about it and check them out and maybe broaden their scopes. And then maybe you as a shop owner who only sells DC and Marvel books will find that there’s a world that you can expand your audience to and make more money.”

Thanking The Comics Gods

In that vein, there’s plenty of titles that could entice and delight everyone across the comics-reading spectrum. That includes the Coats’ action-packed Dino Beasts; the oddball space tales of Mattchee’s Galaxy Brigade; Jones’ human-but-brutal Spakow; and the inventive, peculiar sci-fi of Royale’s Dishoom. If you’ve got a hankering for bright, intense stories, Power Pulp has something to satiate any appetite.

“It’s hard for a lot of people to wrap their brain around, to be honest with you,” Anderson said. “The fact that it looks like a publisher, but it’s really not. Where it’s just a brand of quality. And you can put us all together in the shop. That’s really what we’re going for – to have our own section of Power Pulp comics. We fit in all over the place.”

If anything, Power Pulp’s members are betting that this “comics is for everyone” model will help them carve out a spot in the industry that some folks just can’t seem to grasp. A little bubble where the aforementioned indie vs. mainstream debate seems trite.

“The thing that people get told all the time is that our stock is too indie for mainstream and too mainstream for indie,” Anderson said. “And so because people will say that immediately, that just means there’s nowhere for you to go. That’s saying that you’re either a mainstream reader or you’re an indie reader. When our books cross both, that to me doesn’t say there’s no place to go. That says to me that there’s every place to go. These are comics for you because they’re going to hit the notes of all the comics that you love. It’s going to resonate with you on some level no matter what.”

While the reaction of some folks has proven excited but confused, many of the most important people/players are already on board with Power Pulp’s business model.

“Comic shops are like the rest of the population: They’re owned by people,” Anderson said. “But for the most part, it’s been, ‘Thank God you guys are here. We cannot wait to get these books into our stores.’ Howling Pages in Chicago put our books right up in the window the second that they got them and were hanging them in the window. They were so excited about us.”

Anderson added, “HeroesCon did a big launch with us. They put them out just a couple of days before the actual con. And by the time I got there, I think there were two books left.”

It really is the “small” victories that can make a world of difference when you’re trying to sell 100 copies of a comic you put out yourself.

“Say you’re a creator. You’re invited into Power Pulp and the first week you sell just five books to shops,” Anderson said. “It’s pretty good, I guess. But what that is is five books that would have otherwise been sitting in your closet. So you’re already making money.”

Slow And Low is The Tempo

Even with the solid reaction by the industry, Power Pulp still have proper challenges to face. For one, the collective, which already has 16 to 17 members, must remain concerned with not growing too big too fast.

“We can’t handle that many people. As a collective, we’re doing this all on our own and it would just become overwhelming,” Anderson said. “We have to weed through submissions and things that we get, and as a group vote on the quality of the books that we’re bringing in, which is subjective, obviously.”

Similarly, they also have to be careful with how they’re communicating and collaborating with one another as they release new books.

“It would kill the spirit of what the self-publishing initiative even is…if all of a sudden I was telling other members how they need to print their books and how things should go,” Anderson said. “That would not work at all. It needs to stay weird. It needs to have the spirit that it still has. Members that come in, they’re free to go at any time.”

That same attitude and approach extends to what happens when members get bigger career opportunities outside the Power Pulp collective.

“Say a member gets approached by a big publisher and says, ‘Hey, this book is really great. We would love to collect it and release it.’ You’re free to take the book over to that publisher,” Anderson said. “You can put whatever book you want in there. We have no say in any of that. And even if you do get into a bigger publisher and you talk to them, you can still distribute it through Power Pulp.”

And while nothing has actually happened in this specific arena just yet, the same is true for the prospect of film/TV adaptations. Some comics outlets are mere IP farms, but Power Pulp looks at it another way entirely.

“I’m sure that there’s going to be some people that’ll say, ‘No, never make my thing.’ And then there’s me on the other hand, who’s like, ‘Do whatever you want with it.’ If it comes out and it is reminiscent of my work by name only, as long as I get the check, I’m fine,” Anderson said. “That means that I can make more comics. We’re comic creators who know how comics tell a story uniquely. It’s not about trying to make it into a movie – that is not on any of our radar when we’re creating these things.”

Still, the conflicts haven’t ‘t always been from outside the castle walls. While a minor enough issue, they did recently disagree about branding books with stickers and instead opted for bookmarks. Regardless of the “size” of the disagreement, this back-and-forth is essential if Power Pulp wants to do this thing the right way every time.

“When you’re going to print your book, you don’t have to put the Power Pulp logo on it,” Anderson said. “We would love it. It’s preferred. But the choices of the paper that you use and the size of the book and everything is going to be completely up to you. The only thing that you need to know as a creator is that we are going to be giving a 50% discount to all the shops that order from us and all the retailers that register through the website. So you need to make it make sense for you as a creator to be able to offer that. It can be tricky.”

And while there’s always more room for further disagreements, you’d be surprised just how well 16 to 17 separate “bosses” can function together.

“With self-publishers, there’s a little bit of an element of being a control freak,” Anderson said. “Trying to get that many control freaks to agree on something is…I thought going into it was going to be very, very hard. It turns out that we all seem to be on the same frequency.”

It’s ultimately about helping each other the best ways they can, and to recognize that rising tides lift all boats. (Even if those boats are weirdo little comic books.)

“Some of us are getting ready to crowdfund some things, and so there are conversations between all of us on the best ways to do that and how we can help each other out,” Anderson said. “Or, blasting out information if somebody has a show. As a group, we’re just all trying to lift each other up. Every member has to pitch in a little bit here and there in one way or another financially for certain things or through their talents.”

Yes, that means even helping with, say, buying envelopes or other supplies.

“Right now, every once in a while I have to go, ‘Hey, anybody want to pitch in a couple of bucks for this,'” Anderson said. “It really is the most pinko commie company in comics right now. We are a digital commune.”

Dreams Still Percolating

Power Pulp embraces that commune vibe with gusto. Because despite their big dreams, and all of the big talent within the collective, the members readily recognize that the outlet is very much a homegrown operation.

“It’s two of our members who are housing and sending these books off every weekend,” Anderson said. “They’re kind of the fulcrum of everything and taking on a huge responsibility. It’s really going to be up to them.”

Plus, it’s not like Power Pulp and its members are in a rush to grow/expand. Especially if just such a rush might tarnish their dreams of a truly egalitarian comics collective.

“We were approached by some publishers to try to take on their whole lines because they’re high and dry with Diamond,” Anderson said. “And, gosh, as much as we wanted to – two of them in particular, their books are just so good and we wish that we could help them – it wouldn’t be manageable. We would need to get a warehouse and then we would need to start charging people to be members. And then it would become a whole different thing. At this point, we’re not ready for that. I’m not saying anything about the future. Five years from now, who knows? Maybe Power Pulp is, like, the distribution [model] for comics.”

They’d also like to further engage comics shops, including scheduling special events, because as Anderson noted, “we’re all, individually as creators, small businesses, too.” But all of that’s for much farther down the road. In the meantime, through all the shiny industry trends, upheaval and shifts, and general madness that is modern comics, Power Pulp are focused on getting even more people (creators and fans included) on board their quirky lil’ ship.

“If you love comics,” Anderson said, “Power Pulp is the place to be.”

For more info on books, creators/members, and much more, visit PowerPulpComics.com.