Dying Scene interviewed Brian Bloxdorf, musician and recorder of a podcast called Apollo City Comics, about how to make indie comics, and he says:
Dying Scene: For the people who read this and don’t know about Apollo City Comics, give us a little bit of a history.
Brandon Bloxdorf: Essentially, this was a podcast I started because I had been writing for comic book websites and I was trying to figure out how to break into comics. I was a musician most of my life. I had been in bands and they just didn’t work out the way I wanted. It was too much drama and too much crap. And so I thought, “I love comics. I love literature. I should try this out.” I just didn’t know how to break into the industry. I didn’t know how to make a comic. I didn’t know how to find an artist or how to pay an artist. Just all of it was a mystery. So I started the podcast in 2018 to find a way to study craft. If I could study craft, I could learn some secrets and develop a series. I’ll go to school for English. I’ll just take a creative writing approach. If you fast forward a few years, I was just stuck doing the podcast and talking about books. I actually started interviewing indie creators primarily because I wanted to find out stuff from them. They’re the ones who I’d be on the level with. It didn’t make sense for me to interview Scott Snyder and Tom King and all these bigger industry people. And I was like, indie people, that’s what I got to do. So we started interviewing them.
I met a guy named Mark Bernal and he was starting up a publishing house called Lesser Known Comics. It seemed like such a good opportunity to be a part of. They’re like a hippie commune that kind of exists through one another. I had a bunch of life stuff happen that caused me to move over here to Virginia. Luckily enough, that’s where Mark lives, too. He lives right outside of DC. I got fired from my job. I was at a low point. We went to Baltimore Comic-Con trying to pitch Teenage Babylon. He suggested just making a punk anthology that’s on theme with your story, build an audience, and then you’re not starting from zero. I put together this punk anthology. I opened submissions through the podcast. I had like eighty people submit. The Kickstarter was funded in under an hour for a $1,000 goal. We made five times our goal with that Kickstarter. Then I had people asking me questions about how to put together an anthology. Apollo just took off in 2023. Like, right when that punk anthology finished up. It’s been a year and a half, and we’ve put out 14 books. We just launched a dual anthology this morning. It’s crazy where Apollo’s gone from to a pinnacle point in the indie community. I also work for a very popular printer that indie comic creators use, Comix Wellspring. I’ve just maneuvered myself into the indie comic scene in an insane way.
We could probably give him some credit if he recognizes why King’s a bad writer, and Snyder’s nothing to write home about. What matters now are the people who don’t work for Marvel/DC, if anywhere. And the really talented indie artists are surely the ones who take the best care of drawing their art too. But unfortunately, one of the comics the guy’s publishing dampens the impact:
So, the newer anthology is, “This Comic Kills Fascists.” When does the physical version come out?
I got it from the printer on Tuesday. So, I’m gonna go to this convention. After that, I’ll be mailing out all the physical copies. The digital version came out in January. I think we put it up just to start raising funds when we go to print since we didn’t do a kickstarter for it. That’s one of the most exciting books we did. It was such a fast turnaround and kind of showed us that we know how to make a book on the fly. The election happened and literally the day after we decided we were doing this book. We opened submissions within our circle. We got twelve in and we narrowed them down and we created this resource book.
I really liked that part of it.
And honestly, so much has changed since the election itself. We’ve already wanted to do part two. There are so many communities that are heavily affected by what’s going on. We really want to keep on doing this. It really came out being a big fan of Anti-Flag. Chris No. 2 was who I modeled myself after as a bassist stylistically. I really loved Anti-Flag because they gave me hope. They informed me about politics, gave me a viewpoint and gave me something to understand that was tangible. Since they’re not around anymore, I wanted to do that, but through comics. How do I figure out how to be what Chris No. 2 is and Joe Strummer was, but through what I have and what I could provide in my community?
That was the missing component and missing your favorite band in general. They would inspire me and just be the anchor I needed to know things would be alright in the world. What happened to that band hurts a little extra because of those details, but we’re always trying to be our heroes. We want to respect our heroes and do what we can for them. So I thought it was a good way to honor them in a sense, you know?
The comic anthology about “fascists” regrettably appears to be yet another demand for the right to perform abortions, and also a complaint about medical rights. A woman in one of the stories talks about having endiometriosis, and a claim’s made that “as women, we literally are not allowed to express pain during our day to day life”. Which is ludicrous, but hardly surprising if leftists choose to use such “talking points”. Oddly enough, in the following about another comic:
I was looking at your other books. What are some of your other favorite books? Are they ongoing series, or are they on going as they can be?
Hyperforce is an ongoing series. That’s with Adam Matthew Smith. Issue two is launching at the end of March. That’ll be on Kickstarter. We’re actually opening up the pre-launch page. That could be up to twenty issues, but there’s a long stretch for that series. Outerspaced, that’s with our friends, Eric Allred and Ben Collins. That has about ten issues planned as of right now. Another part of Apollo that works out really well is our stoner line. All of us are very 420-friendly. They’re doing another book called Too High to Die, which is probably coming out next year..
Oh, nice. Is it like a horror thing?
It’s actually Home Alone meets Die Hard. It’s about big pharma versus little farm growers and how big corporations are taking out these like the bottom half. It’s a comedy, but we’re going to have them making these crazy devices to fight off this brigade of big pharma people trying to take over their shop. There’s a lot of humor in it. There’s a lot of anti-establishment stuff sprinkled in.
This is a complaint conservatives had in the past decade too, and still do. But while it may be admirable if they’re raising an issue involving high prices for pharmaceuticals as much as groceries, any left-wing causes they take up spoil everything.
I wish I could say it’s impressive when musicians try out the comics scene, but when they let heavy-handed politics get the better of their storytelling, it makes it hard to appreciate their contributions to the medium. If they’re really serious about buulding up the independent scene, they should play down use of leftist politics.
Originally published here.
English (US) · 