In August, Filip Sablik, Jamie S. Rich, Erik Gitter, and Jeremy Haun announced a new publishing venture but didn’t name it. Today at The Beat‘s 20th anniversary panel New York Comic Con, its name was revealed: Ignition Press.
Sablik left Boom! Studios in June after a long tenure overseeing acclaimed books including Lumberjanes and Something is Killing the Children. Rich similarly left IDW Publishing in June following a tumultuous year. Now, Sablik will be the publisher at Ignition Press, with Rich as editor-in-chief, Gitter as president, and Haun as creative director.
“A lot of what we’re going to be trying to do is going to be invisible depending on the market you’re in. If we’re doing our job right, then you’re a fan,” said Sablink during the panel. “In independent comic book publishing, in the North American market with single issues at least, the last real innovation had taken place in 1992 when Image comics was founded. Prior to that, the last real comics innovation was in 1985, when the explosion of Dark Horse happened.”
When tasked with talking about how Ignition Press would be different, he said, “By and large, every indie publisher followed a variation of one of those two playbooks. Mixed licensing and original publishing. It seemed bizarre to us today as markets don’t exist in what they did in ’85 and ’92.
“So we’re taking a market strategy into account for all the different channels available now. We will see how they equally take an important approach and how the holistic fit with each other. Instead of fighting for a tiny piece of the pie… we make the bigger pie.”
Ignition Press already has profiles on Instagram, Twitter/X, and Bluesky, all featuring its logo, which has a key for the “o” in Ignition (seen above).
Stay tuned for more NYCC ’24 coverage from The Beat.
This article includes reporting by Christian Angeles.
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