Hello everyone! It’s been a minute… or, if we’re being honest, more like a year, give or take.
We know a lot of you were used to seeing us on the convention circuit, especially across the midwest, as well as seeing our books in the pre-order catalogs and on comic book shelves everywhere before we largely “went off the grid” for a bit. If you’d be willing to join us for a few minutes, we would like to explain where we’ve been, where we are going, and what to expect from us moving forward.
Where We’ve Been
Going into 2022, Source Point Press employed over a dozen creative professionals full-time and was looking to maintain our publishing schedule of approximately ten comic book titles a month, focusing on the best horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and pulp comics we could find by creators we were excited to help promote through over 50 convention appearances a year and international distribution opportunities through the direct comic book shop market, in addition to our partnership with Simon and Schuster.
We enjoyed some strong success on some of our books, and even when we stumbled, we were still stumbling forward, enabling us to expand into manufacturing games and toys while we also looked towards continuing to diversify our comic book and graphic novel output with more licensed property partnerships.
Then, as anyone working in the comic book industry can tell you, a series of challenges and obstacles arose across the industry, including paper prices increasing by over 30% (and some months over 100%), shipping costs increasing dramatically, and the direct market sales bubble that many mid-sized publishers such as ourselves were riding high on following the pandemic quickly and unexpectedly bursting.
Despite our best efforts, we quickly found ourselves in a position where our real-time expenses were outpacing our projected income, resulting in us having to delay and then cancel many comic book projects we had planned to publish, which created a domino-effect of us then having to lay off most of our staff, drastically reduce our convention presence, and finally cause our ability to produce and/or publish new comic book content in 2023 to slow to a trickle.
With mounting debt, limited means to produce or support new work, and virtually no staff, we realized that we needed to take some time to step back, reevaluate how to best move forward, and then find out how – or, honestly, if – we could rebuild Source Point Press.
We never gave up, and while it took a little longer than we (and many of you) would have liked, we’re excited to announce that we’re now moving forward into reentering the comic space once again!
Where We’re Going
The limited offerings we produced in 2023 all saw enough success to remind us what fans expect from Source Point Press: Josh Werner’s interactive horror/mystery comic Murder by Mail excited and enthralled readers who were able to get it, leaving them anxious to get more. The wrestling biography Arn Anderson: My Life as the Enforcer has already almost sold through its first print run and has been getting rave reviews from readers. Left Turns, Josh Ross’s creative nonfiction original graphic novel about the sacrifices one makes to pursue a life creating art earned a review in Publisher’s Weekly – a stunning achievement for a debut graphic novel. Our recent publication of Nightmare World: The Complete Collection by Dirk Manning and friends celebrates the 20th anniversary of that series and has been generating strong sales and just as much hype as the several other titles we’ve published with his teams.
All of these projects – as well as some others we’ve been working on developing – have offered us clarity regarding what we want to do moving forward in terms of our professional output and the opportunities we will be offering our past, present, and future readers as well as aspiring and established creators looking to get their work a larger publishing and distribution platform.
What to Expect Next
Internally we are currently prioritizing finishing production and distribution of Crossbone Skully and Doom Kitty, two projects whose production was stalled due in large part to the circumstances described above (and their unique unexpected hurdles), as well as delivering on any other outstanding obligations to past supporters and professional collaborators. Limited staff and resources have made this difficult, but as we begin to reenter the comic space, we recognize the importance of reestablishing and maintaining transparency with those who’ve supported our efforts to bring the best in genre-based comics and graphic novels into existence.
We’ve also taken the last year to look at our back catalog of graphic novels in the genres of horror, pulp, science fiction, and fantasy with a fresh set of eyes. We’re proud of everything we’ve published, and we’re going to also use 2024 to give a “second push” to some of those titles that you may have missed the first time around alongside some limited new releases as we start to “go back to our roots” in regards to what we publish moving forward.
Upcoming Source Point Press projects that have already been announced and are in active production include graphic novel adaptations of the lost horror classic London After Midnight and the never-produced sequel Curse of the Wolf Man, both created in partnership with Chaney Entertainment. We will also be releasing a debut graphic novel with a New York Times #1 Best-Selling horror author, and have even more surprises in store as well that will be debuting in 2024 and into 2025.
Past these currently in-progress projects, we are also excited to announce going forward that we will slowly but steadily begin taking submissions from creators interested in publishing their creator-owned work as original graphic novels with us to get the support of our brand combined with international distribution through Simon and Schuster. We believe we are living in a new “Golden Age” of creator-owned comics, and while we will be focusing solely on graphic novels rather than periodicals/issues, we look forward to partnering with aspiring and established creators alike to bring their offerings in the genres of horror, sci-fi, and pulp forward into the world alongside other aligned licensed projects in these spaces that have yet to be announced.
During this time of rebuilding our convention appearances as a publisher will be limited, but some of our active creators will continue to be appearing at various conventions and we will be promoting their appearances accordingly.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we appreciate your grace as we had to take some time away during the rebuilding and restructuring process. While there were times when we were not sure if we would be able to keep Source Point Press operational, we’re now to a point where we can confidently not only reoffer you some of our past work but also new work that will maintain the high standards of graphic novel entertainment our previous supporters were able to expect from us in our prime.
Publishing comics is not easy, but it is our passion, and we look forward to working with our readers, retailers, and present/future creators to continue to be your #1 source for the best in horror, science fiction, and pulp graphic novels moving forward! We hope you will join us and “Get to the Point” at www.SourcePointPress.com and/or via your social media platforms of choice for our “Book of the Week” promotions, exciting upcoming announcements, and more!
If you’d like to stay in touch, connect with us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/sourceptpress, Instagram at instagram.com/sourcepointpress, and/or Twitter/X: at x.com/sourceptpress Updates regarding the next window for open submissions will be posted at www.SourcePointPress.com and promoted across our social media outlets soon, so stay tuned there…
And if you’re looking for the #1 Source for horror, sci-fi, and pulp comics… get to the Point!
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