Picture this. You've got this legendary local
punk rock band in your town. Right. The ones
playing in basements and dive bars. Exactly.
And they completely refuse to sign with a major
record label. Like, they won't even put their
CDs in the local independent record shop. Wow.
So really sticking to their guns. Yeah. Instead,
they choose to sell their mixtapes purely out
of the trunk of their car at these underground
shows. And, you know, you'd think they'd just
fade into total obscurity, right? Oh, sure. That's
actually how that story ends. But then out of
nowhere, they end up actually winning the industry's
highest, most prestigious awards for those exact
mixtapes. I mean, it sounds like a complete myth,
like the kind of urban legend that creative scenes
just build up around themselves to feel, I don't
know, rebellious. Right, but that isn't just
some music industry myth, because in the early
2000s, a lone comic book publisher out in Portland,
Oregon actually pulled off that exact trajectory.
Which is just... wild to think about. It really
is. So welcome to today's deep dive. Today we
are going deep into the 14 year lifespan of spark
plug comic books or as it's more commonly known
spark plug comics. Yeah, spark plug comics. We
are tracing how this Fierce, independent operation
managed to survive from 2002 all the way to 2016.
Because for you listening, decoding the why and
the how of this company is basically a masterclass
in how alternative, community -driven business
models operate completely outside the mainstream.
And it's also, well, it's a deeply human story
too. It's about what happens to a highly specific
founder -driven vision when sudden tragedy strikes.
Yeah, that part is so important. It is, because
to really understand the gravity of what Sparkplug
accomplished, we have to look at the landscape
of Portland, Oregon in 2002. The company was
founded by a cartoonist named Dylan Williams.
Okay. And from the very first day, the business
model he chose completely dictated the entire
creative ethos of the publisher. Right, because
from its inception, Sparkplug entirely eschewed
traditional comic book distributors. Like, they
completely bypassed the standard retail shops.
Yeah, they didn't even try to play that game.
No. If you walked into a typical comic shop looking
for the latest superhero issue, you wouldn't
just accidentally stumble upon a Sparkplug book
on the main rack. They focused entirely on direct
sales. Entirely. But I actually want to push
back on this right away because we really have
to talk about the logistics here. If you intentionally
avoid the exact places where people actually
go to buy comics, I mean the retail shops and
the major distributors, aren't you just guaranteeing
that you stay totally obscure? Well, it absolutely
seems like opening a restaurant and stubbornly
refusing to put a sign on the door. Right. Exactly.
But you have to look at the mechanics of the
comic book industry at that time. In the early
2000s, the mainstream distribution system was
essentially a monopoly. It was controlled by
a single massed entity called Diamond Comic Distributors.
Okay, Diamond. Yeah. And to get your book into
a normal comic shop, you had to hit certain minimum
order thresholds with them. Meaning? If you weren't
guaranteeing massive sales right out of the gate,
the distributor wouldn't even bother putting
you in their catalog. Exactly. Retailers run
on super tight margins. They want safe bets.
You know, Batman, X -Men, familiar tropes. If
you are printing weird experimental avant -garde
indie comics, the traditional distributor just
won't touch you. Wow. So for Dylan Williams,
bypassing the mainstream wasn't just some punk
rock posture. It was an actual structural necessity
to publish the kind of art he believed in. But
wait, this was 2002. You couldn't just throw
up a slick Shopify store and like run targeted
Instagram ads. How did they actually physically
move product without a distributor putting it
on trucks? It was incredibly grueling manual
labor. Direct sales in this era meant maintaining
a massive physical presence at underground festivals,
zine fests and independent comic conventions.
Oh, man, the travel alone. Yeah. It meant lugging
heavy, long boxes of books across the country,
setting up folding tables, and literally hand
-selling these comics to people passing by. Just
one by one. One by one. It also meant relying
on mail -order catalogs. Fans would literally
mail a personal check or hidden cash in an envelope
to a P .O. box. And Dylan would pack the comic
in a mailer and take it to the post office himself.
That sounds absolutely exhausting. But I guess,
well... It completely changes the dynamic between
the creator and the reader, doesn't it? It entirely
rewires it. By eliminating the corporate middleman,
Sparkplug was doing something incredibly valuable.
They were building a dedicated grassroots network.
Right. They didn't need a million casual readers.
They were cultivating a few thousand diehard
fans who actually value those face -to -face
interactions at a festival table. Yeah, it's
so personal. Exactly. When you buy a comic directly
from the person who published it, and they hand
it to you and shake your hand, you're investing
in it. relationship. You're not just consuming
a product. Okay, I definitely see the value in
that loyalty, but surely if you have this direct
sales out -of -the -trunk model with zero gatekeepers,
doesn't that just invite a flood of completely
uncurated amateur hour art? You would think so.
Right, like if anyone can publish anything, how
do you maintain quality? Well, that is the assumption
most of the mainstream industry made, but Sparkplug
immediately proved the critics wrong in the most
undeniable way possible. Yeah. In 2003, which
is almost immediately after the company was founded,
a spark -clug published comic called FLEEP. by
the artist Jason Shiga, actually won an Eisner
Award. Okay, hold on. For anyone who doesn't
know, the Eisner Awards are basically the Academy
Awards of the comic book industry. It is the
absolute highest level of critical validation.
It really is. How does an award panel even find
a comic that's essentially being sold out of
a backpack in Portland? Don't you have to go
through massive official PR channels to get nominated
for an Eisner? That is the brilliant part of
how independent communities operate. You do have
to submit the work to the judges, of course,
but the judges are industry professionals who
pay attention to buzz. I see. Because Sparkluck
had built such a vocal, passionate grassroots
community, the noise around Fleet just bubbled
up from the underground. So they couldn't ignore
it. Right. The fans and the independent critics
essentially forced the mainstream establishment
to look at this book. Yeah. And when they finally
read it, they couldn't deny the quality. It is
literally like a scrappy. an indie movie shot
on a camcorder taking home an Oscar in its very
first year. And this wasn't just a fluke, right?
Not at all. Because Sheega's later 2007 work,
Book Hunter, which Sparkplug also published,
was nominated for industry awards too. Yeah,
it wasn't a fluke. But the most revealing detail
about that 2003 win is the specific category
that Fleep won in. Oh. It won the Eisner for
talent deserving of wider recognition. Oh, wow.
That is incredible. The sheer irony of that.
Yeah, perfect, isn't it? It completely validated
Dylan Williams' entire mission. Think about the
mechanics of what just happened there. Yeah.
Sparkplug existed precisely to champion the weird,
the brilliant, the offbeat talent that mainstream
corporate distributors were systematically ignoring
because it wasn't financially safe. Right. They
built an entire parallel distribution network
just to get this unrecognized talent into people's
hands. And the result was the mainstream establishment
handing them an award, literally titled, Talent
Deserving of Wider Recognition. The mainstream
basically admitted, you're right, we missed this,
and you found it. Exactly. Earning that Eisner
right out of the gate clearly gave Sparkplug
the momentum they needed to expand. They went
on to publish this wildly diverse, sprawling
catalog of creators. Oh, absolutely sprawling.
You see names like Austin English, Yumi Sakugawa,
Katie Skelly, Rene French. The list of alternative
heavy hitters just goes on and on. And they experimented
wildly with formats, too. They weren't just printing
standard 22 -page monthly floppies. Right. They
published ongoing titles, sure, but also thick
graphic novels, one -shots, which are self -contained
single stories, and mini -comics. Actually, let's
define a mini -comic for a second because that's
a very specific medium. We aren't talking about
a glossy magazine you'd find at a news... Far
from it. Mini comics are often handmade, photocopied,
sold and stapled right down the middle by the
artists themselves. They have this incredibly
tactile, almost punk -zine quality to them, like
you can practically smell the toner ink. Exactly.
The physical object itself rebels against corporate
polish. Mainstream comics at the time were highly
polished, digitally colored superhero stories.
Yeah. Very slick. But the artists Sparkplug championed
were doing something entirely different. Right.
Yumi Sakagawa, for instance, was creating these
surreal, meditative, almost sketchy dreamscapes.
And the titles of these books are just a playground
for the incredibly niche. Oh, the titles are
amazing. You had ongoing series like Elijah Brubaker's
Wrike and Robert Sergel's Eshu. You had graphic
novels like Gay Genius, which was edited by Annie
Murphy. You'd make a great book. And there was
this Victorian horror adaptation anthology called
Orca. edited by Williams and Ben Catmull, but
I have to bring up some of the more eccentric
titles here. Let's hear them. You have a book
by Aust in English called The Disgusting Room,
and then you have Renée French's book, wait for
it, Edison Steelhead's Lost Portfolio, Exploratory
Studies of Girls and Rabbits. That is quite the
title to try and fit on a cover. It really is.
But, you know, looking at a title like exploratory
studies of girls and rabbits makes me want to
challenge the premise of alternative art a bit.
OK, go for it. When you hear titles like that,
is alternative comics sometimes just an excuse
for artists to be as incredibly niche and bizarre
as possible? Like, are they just being weird
for the sake of being weird, knowing they don't
have to appeal to a mass market? It's a common
criticism, for sure. But if we look at the mechanics
of commercial art, we see why this niche approach
is actually vital. How so? Well when you are
beholden to a massive commercial distributor,
you have to hit a certain sales quota. To hit
that quota, you naturally sand off the weird,
specific edges of your story, so it appeals to
the broadest possible demographic. You rely on
standard superhero arcs, predictable mysteries,
conventional romance. Right, you make a product
that is perfectly acceptable to a million people,
but maybe not deeply loved by any of them. Precisely.
But when you remove that commercial pressure,
When you know your distribution model only requires
you to reach a few thousand dedicated readers,
you are suddenly free to explore highly specific,
highly personal human experiences and aesthetics.
That makes total sense. Maybe an artist wants
to explore the creeping, mundane anxiety of modern
life through a surreal black and white story
about a disgusting room. It might be alienating
to a casual reader. But for this specific person
who relates to it, that comic becomes the most
profound thing they've ever read. So by sacrificing
scale, you actually achieved depth. Sparkplug
was providing the infrastructure for artists
to prioritize depth. That's exactly what it was.
And what's crucial to understand is that this
infrastructure wasn't being built in a vacuum.
Right. It was supported by a very specific geographic
and cultural ecosystem in Portland. Yes, the
collaborative spirit of the Portland small press
scene. This is one of the most fascinating operational
choices Sparkplug ever made. It really was unique.
From 2008 to 2015, they co -published annual
mini comic anthologies specifically to commemorate
Free Comic Book Day. And they didn't do it alone.
They partnered with Tim Goodyear's company, Teenage
Dinosaur. Yeah. And over the years, they also
brought in other local Portland small press publishers.
Right. People like Tugboat Press, Revival House
Press, Floating World Comics, Snake Bomb Comics.
It was a deeply interconnected local network
of publishers who were, technically speaking,
competing for the exact same alternative readership.
Which seems counterintuitive at first. Completely.
And before we get into the business logic of
that, we have to talk about the titles of these
free comic book anthologies, because there is
this hilarious, pun -heavy progression to them
year after year. The progression is the best
part. Listen to this run. In 2008, it was Nerd
Burglar. In 2009, it was Bird Hurdler. 2010 was
Dope Flounder. Then in 2011, Dan Quayle. Which
then naturally evolved the very next year. Right.
2012 becomes Brad Tripp. So good. And then it
just keeps going. 2013 is Masterpiece Theatre,
2014 is Barrio Mothers, and 2015 is Free Stooges.
It's just brilliant. Turning Dan Quayle into
Brad Tripp is top -tier wordplay. But funny titles
aside, I really want to dig into the economics
of this. Sure. Sharing top billing with three
or four other competing publishers on a single
promotional comic is the exact opposite of the
cutthroat corporate mindset. Why share the spotlight?
On a day designed to get new readers into stores,
wouldn't you want to keep whatever small audience
you attract entirely to yourself? In a traditional
corporate model, absolutely. You guard your market
share fiercely. But you have to look at the harsh
mechanical reality of printing physical books.
Okay. Printing comics is incredibly expensive
because of the fixed setup costs at the commercial
printer. If a small indie like Tugboat Press
tries to print 500 copies of a promotional comic
on their own, the cost per unit is astronomically
high. Ah, I see where this is going. Yeah, it
might cost them three or four dollars a book,
which is just ruinous to give away for free.
Right, economies of scale. Exactly, they hacked
the economies of scale. If four indie publishers
pool their money to print five or ten thousand
copies of a combined massive anthology, the cost
per unit plummets to a fraction of a dollar.
Oh, wow. By working together, these tiny companies
access the kind of volume pricing that usually
only a giant like Marvel or DC could afford.
That makes total sense. It wasn't just utopian
artistic collaboration. It was a highly pragmatic
survival tactic. It was both, really. And it
functioned as a symbiotic ecosystem. How so?
Well, if a reader picked up Brad Tripp because
they were already a fan of a floating world comics
artist, they suddenly discovered a spark plug
artist in the very same book. Cross -pollination
was basically baked right into the business model.
They realized they were fundamentally stronger
together. Man, that's smart. But the true test
of this community didn't come from a market crash
or a distribution failure, did it? It came from
an absolute tragedy. Yeah, it did. Just as this
collaborative model was really hitting its stride
in the late 2000s and early 2010s, the founder
of Sparkplug, Dylan Williams, died of leukemia
in September 2011. It was a devastating seismic
loss. for the alternative comic scene across
the entire country. I can only imagine. He wasn't
just a guy who paid the printing bills. You know,
he was the driving engine, the curator and really
the heart of this entire ethos we've been discussing.
And normally when the founder of a fiercely independent
personality driven operation dies, the company
just quietly folds like the central pillar is
gone. Yeah, that's the standard narrative. But
the community didn't let spark blood die. They
rallied immediately. Three final Dylan Williams
projects were funded posthumously through the
crowdfunding site Indiegogo. Which is incredible.
And then the company was actually taken over
and run by a trio, Virginia Payne, Tom Neely,
and Dylan Williams's widow, Emily Nelson. And
by 2013, Virginia Payne actually took over as
the sole publisher to keep it going. It is a
remarkable testament to what had been built over
the previous decade. It makes me think about
how businesses are structured. In a traditional
corporate model, a company is essentially a centralized
server. If the main server, like the founder
or the CEO, goes offline, the whole website crashes.
Right. But Sparkplug hadn't... built a centralized
server. They had built a decentralized network.
That's a great way to put it. Because the fans,
the artists, and the publishers were all directly
connected to each other through years of those
face -to -face convention sales and mail orders.
So when the central hub went down, the nodes
just routed the energy around it. They kept the
system online themselves. That is the perfect
way to look at it. If we look at why they were
able to pull off those Indiegogo campaigns and
sustain the transition, to Virginia Payne. brings
us right back to the beginning of our discussion
today. Yeah. Sparkflug's non -traditional out
of the trunk business model is exactly what created
the safety net for this crisis. Because they
actually knew their customers, like really knew
them. Exactly. They hadn't spent a decade relying
on faceless corporate distributors to push their
books to anonymous big box stores. They had spent
a decade looking their readers in the eye at
convention tables. They had an actual tangible
community of human beings who felt personally
invested in the survival of this art. So when
tragedy struck, those readers didn't just see
a brand going under. They saw a friend's legacy
in jeopardy. And they immediately opened their
wallets to ensure the final cargo got delivered.
Yes, they absolutely did. That is incredibly
profound. They invested in people and the people
literally invested back when it mattered most.
But as we know, independent publishing is a grueling
endeavor, even in the best of times, even with
the most supportive community in the world. Oh,
without a doubt. Carrying that weight eventually
takes its toll, which leads to the company's
eventual sunsetting. Sparkplug officially shut
down its operations in June of 2016. However,
their story didn't just end with a locked door
in a dumped inventory. The company's entire backlist
was deliberately moved over to Alternative Comics,
and that ensured that all those weird, beautiful,
Eisner -winning books would remain in print and
available to readers. Which raises a really important
analytical question for us to consider. Okay,
what's that? When an independent company like
this shuts down after 14 years of grueling work,
how do we contextualize that? Right. Do we view
a closure as a failure? Or is a decade and a
half simply the natural, healthy, maximized lifespan
of a passion project? It is absolutely the latter.
And I think it is vital to reframe that 2016
closure. It was not a failure in any sense of
the word. Not at all. It was a highly successful
14 -year intervention in the comics industry.
Think about what they accomplished. They set
out to do something highly specific. They wanted
to champion the underdogs, bypass a monopolistic
mainstream distributor, and build a sustainable
community of artists and readers. And they did
exactly that. They did. They proved the model
could work. And by deliberately passing their
backlist to alternative comics, they ensured
the physical legacy of that work was preserved.
Yeah, that transition was key. In the world of
independent art, indefinite corporate immortality
isn't the metric for success. Impact is the metric.
They ran their leg of the race brilliantly, they
elevated artists who otherwise would have been
ignored, and then they successfully passed the
baton. Impact over immortality. I love that.
So let's look at the totality of the journey
we just explored today. Sparkplug Comics started
as this rebellious direct sales anti -establishment
startup in 2002. Yeah. They reached these incredible
critical highs, forcing the mainstream to recognize
them by winning an Eisner right out of a gate
in 2003 with FLEEP. They hacked the economics
of printing to co -publish those hilarious, deeply
collaborative Portland anthologies for free comic
book day. Bird hurdler. Yes, bird hurdler. And
when the ultimate tragedy hit with the devastating
loss of Dylan Williams in 2011, the decentralized
network they built naturally routed the energy
to carry them forward, cementing a lasting indie
-like all the way to 2016. It really is a masterclass
blueprint for how to build something meaningful
outside the conventional rules of commerce. It
really is. Which leads us with something I want
you, the listener, to really mull over today.
Think about your own media diet right now. We
live in a world that is increasingly dominated
by massive algorithms, automated feeds, and mega
distributors that constantly, frictionlessly
serve you exactly what they think you should
be reading, watching, and listening to. Right.
It is all designed to be a safe and broad as
possible. It's basically the modern version of
the diamond distribution monopoly we talked about
earlier. Exactly. So the question is what local
spark plugs in your own life I mean, the small,
direct -to -you creators, the people running
the zine -fests, the independent podcasters,
the local bands, might be quietly producing the
next award -winning masterpiece right under your
nose, completely hidden from the algorithm. Yes.
Who is out there right now in your city selling
the equivalent of that legendary mixtape out
of the trunk of their car? Go find them. Go buy
their work directly. Thank you so much for joining
us on this deep dive. Stay insanely curious,
and we'll see you next time.