By Shaun Manning
Ignition Press, the new publisher founded by industry veterans Filip Sablik and Jamie S. Rich, had an eclectic presence at San Diego Comic-Con to promote its launch titles, which arrive beginning in September.
Rather than a booth, Ignition staffed an offsite gallery, offering free coffee to all and a free ticket to a burlesque show promoting launch title Voyeur with merch or comic purchases. It is perhaps fitting, then, that its first-ever SDCC panel was titled “Doing Comics Differently.” But according to Sablik, Rich, and the creators on the panel, the things that make Ignition different go beyond the surface. Joining Ignition publisher Sablik and editor-in-chief Rich were writer and creative director Jeremy Haun and writers Cullen Bunn, Leah Williams, Stephanie Williams, and Tim Seeley.
Rich said that, from their initial discussions at last year’s San Diego Comic-Con, he and Sablik wanted to take all of their experiences with publishers and as freelancers and try to solve the problems they had seen time and again, to help creators tell the stories they want to tell. He said the first titles will arrive in September and Ignition will have launched seven books by November.
In addition to being the company’s creative director, Haun is also one of the launch creators. His book Murder Podcast, with animation artist Mike Tisserand, was successfully crowdfunded and will launch widely in September. Haun described the series as “a story about a cursed podcast that randomly pops up when you’re listening to other stuff, and makes you kill everyone in the room.” It will be up to group of true crime enthusiasts to figure out why this is happening in their town.
Voyeur by Leah Williams and David Baldeón is Williams’s first creator-owned book, and takes the form of a sexy art heist.
Stephanie Williams and artist Letizia Cadonici spoke about Roots of Madness, which sees “a young woman trying to use the tools of survival passed down from the ancestors,” but finding that “sometimes even though the intentions are good, the outcome not so much.”
Deluge by Bunn and Marika Cresta was inspired by a site near Bunn’s house where a women’s prison once stood on a flood plain and needed to be evacuated in the ’90s. In Bunn’s story, “As they are evacuating, something comes up with the water, something that is drawn to guilt and pain and fear, and from there it becomes a survival horror story.”
Along with launching Murder Podcast, Haun is also revisiting his series The Beauty, written with Jason A. Hurley and illustrated by Emanuela Lupacchino. A television series based on The Beauty is also coming soon.
“While I feel we thematically finished the book with issue #30, we always felt we could tell more,” Haun said. And though he himself was the artist for The Beauty’s original arc, he said, “This book has never looked better than with Emma drawing it.” Rich chimed in to note that the first three pages of the new series will follow the same script as the original, allowing an opportunity to compare and contrast.
Next up, Seeley plugged his upcoming series No Place with artist Stefano Simeone. “It’s a dark fantasy story about those kids who grew up in a fantasy land and save the day, but then they come back and they’re just a weirdo,” Seeley said, adding that these former heroes are now being recruited by an agency now using them to save the world, led by Dorothy Gale of Oz fame. He noted that the “NO” in the logo turned sideways looks like “OZ.”
Though series creators Inaki and Roy Miranda were not in attendance, Rich spoke about the brothers’ work on Arcadia. “They sent this package with all this art with amazing iconography,” he said. The Mirandas wanted 10 issues to tell their story, Rich said, but could take eight. “Because we are who we are, I said, ‘How about we do it in 12?'”
The panel then turned to Ignition as a publisher, with Sablik asking whether it was “crazy” to launch an imprint in 2025 and the panelists praising the new enterprise.
“They know they can support the creator in doing what they want to do,” Seeley said.
“I like when I turn in a script I’m not waiting nine years to receive payment,” Stephanie Williams said, as well as not having to wear so many hats so she can take the time to focus on writing and telling stories.
Haun, as both a freelancer and and employee, talked about having “creator me and company me,” stating, “Company me really loves to say, ‘We got this.’ Creator me is like ‘Yeah, that’s crazy.”
Bunn said that before Ignition he had essentially quit working in comics, “because of how this industry is. … I haven’t been this excited about comic books in a long time.”
“I’m also not feeling like I’m just another cog in the machine,” Leah Williams said. “Not only are you a storyteller but you are a human first. Storytelling would not be anything if it wasn’t about sharing experiences.”
Leah and Stephanie Williams joked about being sisters, and said that because of their shared surname some fans mistakenly believed they were the same person. Stephanie Williams told a story of an excited fan coming up to her at a convention holding a copy of X-terminators (written by Leah), gushing over the comic before asking for her autograph. While he was speaking non-stop, she remembers thinking, “Man, this is gonna be bad when he’s done.” Finally she told him, “That is by my sister Leah Williams who is not here, my long lost twin.”
Leah Williams said both of them lean into the bit. “We are sisters, we look exactly alike.”
The panel then welcomed surprise guest Peter Murrieta to the stage to tease his project with Ignition. Murrieta, a screenwriter, and creator of Wizards of Waverly Place and Mr. Iglesias, had been previously announced as an early Ignition creator but no details of his project had been revealed.
“I have a Substack and Jamie is a subscriber to my Substack,” Murrieta said. On his site he had mentioned a project that Murrieta’s manager reportedly told him no studio would make. “Jamie reached out and said, ‘Whatever it is, I want to look at it.'” While he did not offer up a title, Murrieta said the story is one of Chicano futurism in which an Aztec empire still exists, and he proceeded to read an in-story letter from “someone who was sent back to the United States because he was sent there to spy and it didn’t go so well.”
“This is the thing I’ve always wanted to do,” Murrieta said. “I’ve read so much about this [topic], I feel like I’ve been in research my whole life.”
Leah Williams said, “Chicano futurism is dope as hell.”
Several of the writers then talked about their process, with Leah Williams enjoying the greater freedom of creator-owned work in contrast with her previous experience writing superheroes, where she said she was taught to “write in circles” so as not to disturb continuity.
“I try to come up with an idea a day,” Bunn said. “So I have an index card box that is just full of terrible ideas.” Sometimes, Bunn said, he goes through the box, chooses a card, and goes to “sit somewhere and just ramble.”
“Sometimes the stupid yields something awesome,” he said.
Sablik joked that this is also how he runs Ignition Press, but also noted that there’s some truth to that. “Sometimes the best thing you can do as a leader is allow yourself to look foolish,” he said, as this gives others permission to experiment.
Through a series of slides, the panel revealed a slew of creators who are signed up to work with Ignition. No projects were announced, though some were broadly discussed by Rich or Sablik. The lineup includes Dennis Hopeless, Brahm Revel, Phil Hester, Aneke, Shawn Martingrough, Will Rosado, B. Clay Moore, Mack Chater, Aaron Campbell, Rob Guillory, Sam Lotfi, Tini Howard, Joanne Starer, Khary Randolph, Ande Parks, and Dave Wachter.
Rich said that the book by Hopeless and Revel was “a strangely realized white whale” that they had originally pitched to him at Vertigo. Though the book was not greenlit at DC’s imprint, Rich discovered while looking for Hopeless’s email address that he had forwarded the pitch to his personal Gmail. He reached out to Hopeless and told him, “This book that you pitched to me 10 years ago is still awesome, let’s do it.”
Aneke will be teaming with Bunn for an unnannounced series, and the collaboration seems to be going well. “Aneke is awesome. The book we’re working on together is a tough book, and she has brought it to life in an amazing way,” he said. Bunn also said they get along well and share a number of similar interests. “We had not met before this book, and now I’m like, maybe we are best friends!”
Stay tuned for more news from Ignition Press.
English (US) · 