Posted in: Comics | Tagged: comicspro, silver sprocket

That Utterly Unforgettable Silver Sprocket Presentation At ComicsPRO

That Utterly Unforgettable Silver Sprocket Presentation at ComicsPRO including Superman, Illegal Aliens, Billionaires and Gimp Snoopy

The Silver Sprocket Comics presentation at ComicsPRO was quite the thing. Owner Avi Ehrlich has suffered more than most from the travails of comic book selling, publishing and distribution this year. Something he reflected on at the beginning. " Look, all of us in this room, we're f-cking here in 2026. It's certainly a year, Silver Sprocket has new book distribution with Ingram Publisher Services, and it is not exclusive. We will sell to whoever the f-ck we want that will best serve your needs. You can still get everything we publish from us directly, from Lunar, Universal, whoever you want. If you want us to work with a distributor we don't work with yet, just tell us. We're easy to work with, direct."

So what else has gone well? Well, Silver Sprocket is not just at ComicsPRO as a publisher, but also as a store.  "We just won the Lambda Literary Award for Very Best Queer Comic with Putty Pygmalion by Lonnie Garcia, and it's going back to print. Thank you so much. And a lot of you may know, we're not just a publisher, we've got a store as well. And just this past Saturday—we were recognized by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, as our space is now formally recognised as a sacred site, which is like the highest honor that we can plug. Oh my God, like I'm crying."

It's been an emotional journey. "We just flew to ComicsPRO immediately after co-organising this year's Pride and Panels Festival in San Francisco, with the public library. We had over 2,000 attendees and over 100 exhibitors, and it was completely free for all attendees and exhibitors. We used city resources to avoid spending any money and had a budget for hospitality for guests. If we could pull that off, you can too. And I never like cowards, so many of us know that we're about community and not just being the company store from Marvel and DC. So I'm glad that we know why we're here and what we're trying to do, and it's not to compete with Amazon, right? Being the demon chaos goblins of comics for the past 16 years, it's certainly been fun, but the fact is, we've been publishing for 16 years now. We're almost not even teenagers anymore, and so we're gonna, we're gonna be going straight. It's time. It's time to chill out and get serious. Wait… what the hell is that?"

Ah yes, certain giveaway stickers that are somehow in Silver Sprocket Comics' possession. Somehow. Avi continued, "We don't know where those stickers came from, but they're free. All right, Joe Cool…. So, all our comics will always be our number one. We are not an IP development company. We don't have money from Hollywood, we have our hearts and comics to make comics. But we've got sick-ass merch, stickers, pins, patches. We know they've been doing really well for a lot of you carrying our stickers and merch and sh-t. Oh my God, you guys, thank you, getting artists paid is amazing."

I mean, that issue had come up before. He added, "These are honest, they're about the books, they're literal shelf-talkers for our comics. Flip them over, they got barcodes and sh-t, they're ready for your POS. We'll eventually have a standard for stickers. You can get all these directly from us, from Lunar, we're here for you. And I'm gonna talk real quick, just about some comics we've got coming up, not too long. I know you know how to read catalogues, but I'm just so excited."

"We've got Grandpa by Travis Rommereim from Seattle. It's about a teen witch graffiti artist owning the night with a spell book. The cops don't stand a chance. It's a great fun story, on our normal deluxe – not normal – just f-cking deluxe-ass printing quality, with full-colour fluorescence foil cover coming in… the smell… it is so good."

"We are the only publisher who can do a book called Demon F-ggots. This is by the very Swedish Fred Delanka, just a heroic, amazing artist who runs lqueer teen centres, and you know, get ready for daddy issues and genitals. Welcome to this raunchy, horny critique of bad days, our worst instincts, on a high-fibre diet, insatiable, flamboyant, and hairy."

"So our too-hot-for-Free-Comic-Book-Day heroine is back, we've got Fun Girl Forever on the way. It's 320 pages of brand-new chaotic adventures about love, friendship, and it's being released in English, German, and French at the same time, as an international sensation. It's so f-cking good, it's got underground turtle races, depravity, sh-tting the bed and landing in the most satisfying ways."

"We're also gonna be reissuing Fun Girl Book One, which is a hardcover right now, it's like a murder weapon. It's beautiful and amazing, but it's hard to cuddle with, so we're reissuing it as a paperback, 10 bucks cheaper, a more accessible amount of paper. We've got a lot of requests from you for this, so we're really excited to bring that out."

"Now, every publisher here has to have their own Absolute Universe, this is our universe – that's not true either, but the Demons series by Hyena Hell is a cult sensation. It's so funny and amazing, for fans of What We Do in the Shadows, Hellboy, Deadpool, Love and Rockets, but the first two issues were staple-bound, before we get to the thicker books with a spine, so we're reissuing the first two staple-bound comics with a brand-new story, to give it a spine, a nice retail packaging. Easy to cuddle with in bed, or put on your bookshelf."

"We've got Corinne Halbert's trippy, scary follow-up to Acid, called Scorpio Venus Rising. Outside Are The Dogs by Em Hoover, it's a spell-binding and queer horror graphic novel about belonging, identity, and survival, Scott-like magical realism, like Junji Ito but for the Tumblr/Tinder queer guys."

"There's one vendor here brave enough to go on after Sprocket, our comrades-in-arms, the Bad Idea folks, so we were stoked to have them go next. But in a time when simply existing is a political act, we are truly thrilled and privileged to be here with everyone. Comics you want to read, we got 130 of them going strong. We don't spend money on ads. It's all word of mouth, that's all you guys, you're letting us live the dream. Thank you so f-cking much,l thank you for the kindness and love and support. If you carry a lot of Sprocket, want a metal sign for your shop? Just find us."

With a pink beanie, Avi was certainly hard to miss…

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