“StarWarp Concepts Re-enters Small Press: New Titles, Reprints Herald Company’s Return” declared publisher Joe Bagdon’s newszine Comic Book Publisher #5 in January 1998. It was a story also picked up that month by the eighth issue of the premiere magazine of the small-press movement, Tim Corrigan’s Small Press Creative Explosion (formerly known as Small Press Comics Explosion).
Yes, after my adventures in full-size comic publishing, and my near miss with writing a young adult book series for the company responsible for Goosebumps, I’d returned to my small-press roots. As corny as it sounds, comic creating is in my blood—I just couldn’t walk away from it entirely without doing something with this company I’d spent so much time constructing. (I’ve also referred to it as being “too stupid to give up,” but such is the publishing life!)
Among the titles I announced for this go-round were Heroines and Heroes, a collection of superhero and superheroine pinups and comic stories I’d written and drawn (and which you can currently download for free as a digital comic), and a reprint of the canceled miniseries Heartstopper: Sorrow About to Fall—which is now the free, retitled, digital-comic trilogy Heartstopper: The Legend of La Bella Tenebrosa.
Sales were definitely lower than those during the full-size days—after all, SWC was out of comic shop distribution and back to mail-order sales (e.g., send us $4 and two postage stamps for a digest comic)—but I was happy enough just to be doing comics. And it was nice to be so enthusiastically welcomed back to small-press publishing.
And yet, just like Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, I wanted more…and started making plans…
(By the way, Joe Bagdon recently returned to publishing his own small-press projects after an absence of many years. Out right now is Micro Adventures, a series of trading-card-size minicomics sold in packs of three—think of it as the small-press equivalent of Topps baseball cards, only without the slab of stale pink bubblegum to stain the paper! You can order them by writing to Joe at BantamHouseComics@gmail.com.)
