Direct market

Your buddy, welcome to Off Panel, a weekly interview podcast about all things comics, brought to you by Sketch.com. I'm your host, David Harper, and this week's guest is the writer of White Ash, as well as the publisher and CEO of White Ash Comics, which is an imprint that will now be publishing in the direct market, specifically as an imprint of IDW Publishing.

It's Charlie Stickney.

Thanks for coming on, Charlie.

Well, it actually started at Comics Pro when you and I saw each other.

Yeah, like earlier this year.

I had been talking with some different publishers over the last couple of years about trying to find the right way to bring what I do To the direct market.

And so that's been an ongoing conversation to try to find the right home.

And, you know, there were one or two places where we almost had something set up.

Today, he is back to talk about Justice Machine.

See, he was an early independent comics pioneer who launched his Justice Machine through Noble Comics in 1981, helping establish one of the first career-owned superhero universes in the direct market, and showing that ambitious superhero comics could succeed outside of the industry's major publishers.

Over the years, I've always been a big Gustovich and Just- Justice Machine fan.

Over the summer, I got to know him and got him to do these two tapings.

From a standpoint of a fan, it is a thrill and honor to have him back on the show.

Now, this show also marks the start of a new series, comes out whenever I can get some shows out, on the rise of the direct market in indie comics.

Future shows will focus on some of the creators, retailers, distributors, publishers who helped build the direct market and reshaped the comic industry in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Also out today are two more about the time of the comic book industry that Justice Machine first came out.