Before I get to the next post, which will be about some really cool new books from a publisher called "Alterna Comics," I wanted to write a post about the company itself, and being me, about some other rambling nonsense, too.
Alterna Comics is a small outfit based in New Hampshire, and they rose to some degree of fame several years by putting cheap, creator-owned comics back on the market, and printed on good ol' fashioned newsprint-style paper to boot.
You can learn the rest of their story elsewhere; One of the reasons I burned out on my old blog was that in writing about these smaller publisher's comics, I started to feel like I was writing press releases for them instead of giving my opinions on the books.
Some publishers (okay, one) even started taking to telling me what I could and couldn't say (a bit) in my posts, and started over-reaching in other ways, too, like I was beholden to them or something.
That is not gonna fly this time around, and it really didn't fly last time, either.
Now, Alterna Comics is NOT the publisher I am vaguely referring to. And to be fair, I'm only non-referring to one person at that publisher. But Alterna does come with some baggage.
I wouldn't bother to mention this if I was doing this for some reason other than my own personal journal writing indulgence, but guess what? This is not a Small Press PR web site: this is my personal blog!
So, yes: Alterna comics came with some baggage, from my perspective. Right around the time I was thinking of checking out some of their books, a bunch of Twitter drama erupted about them.
Yes, I know: fuck Twitter drama. I've (mostly) learned. But at the time, I was perhaps a bit hyper-aware of all the "Comicsgate" nonsense being talked about on that particular social media platform. I'm not here to make or get involved with some screechy shouting match about the "true nature" of Comicsgate here, or to explain it to anyone who's reading this. I'd say "do your own research," but really, if you have no idea what the term "Comicsgate" means, I'd advise you just keep it that way.
I'm not saying you should avoid or buy stuff related to that (stupidly named) "movement" for one reason or another. I'm just saying that by the time I was investigating Alterna Comics, they were rightfully or not being associated with the worst purported elements/behaviors of that movement, and such association gave me pause.
I will go this far, for those of you (if there ARE any of you) who may need some indication of my barometer setting on the matter: I don't know Ethan Van Sciver, but I've watched a bunch of his vids just to see what all the uproar around him is about, and I came away absolutely certain that I was never gonna engage with any of that shit ever again.
So, Alterna's supposed "alignment" with the "CG" movement seemed disappointing to me at best and troubling at worst when I first caught digital wind of it.
Therefore, I stayed away from them for over a year. Recently, however, I checked them out again, largely due to some videos I watched on the YouTube channel "John's Longbox."
The owner of "John's Longbox" does not, let's say, share my politics. And that's one of the major things that's flavored my opinion of the entire "Comicsgate" community. It seems to be comprised almost entirely of Pro-Trump Far-Right Types.
And yes: that's a turn-off for me. So if that pisses you off or something: don't fucking tell me about it, because I couldn't care any less than I already do.
However, John's coverage of Alterna's books encouraged me, as did my (small) interactions with him in the Comments sections of his videos.
Plus, seeing that Alterna is a creator-owned company, who was I to assume that everyone they publish is a "Fox News ain't far Right enough for me" unhinged freaking lunatic?
Again: I'm not here to be political. But I'm not here to please everyone either. This blog is for me. Trump lost, January 6th was a Trump-Led Attempted Coup. Fuck off with any noise to the contrary.
Back on "topic:" I went ahead and backed the Kickstarter for "King Cryptid #1-4" at the digital level. This would be the first series form Alterna actually created and written by the founder of the company itself, Pete Simetti. I figured, you couldn't get closer to the "heart" of the company than this, right? And while I was certainly in favor of their "cheap newsprint" model, I opted to take the cheaper (and far less space-consuming) option of PDF copies for my first time out.
Spoiler Alert: I got the comics, and I really liked the comics. As for the "sinister right-wing leaning bias" reputation that I was gun-shy (heh) about; yeah, I'm pretty sure that Alterna leans toward and caters to more Right-leaning creators and for the most part, readers.
However, as a follower of Simetti's YouTube channel and now a reader of (spoilers!) several more titles from Alterna, I've seen zero evidence of the "far right manifestos in comic book form" that I was afraid of discovering.
So: up next - A post about issues 1 through 4 of "King Cryptid!"
.....Surprised??
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