Comics can be a cruel and unforgiving industry. (You might have been distracted by the big explosions and folks in neon-colored tights.) So, for a publisher to last even a few years is a big enough accomplishment let alone an entire decade. And that’s just the latest accomplishment for Magnetic Press.
Founded in early 2014 by writer/video game veteran Mike Kennedy, Magnetic Press has carved out a niche for its various OGNs, periodicals, and art books by maintaining an international focus on talent as well as cultivating an especially high production value. (Standout titles include Sea of Love, Little Tails, and Doomboy.) There’s no denying the results, as Magnetic Press garnered some 23 Eisner Award nods across a six-year span. Since 2021, through its Magnetic Press Play imprint, the outlet’s expanded further by releasing a series of card games, TTRPGs, and other “new media endeavors.” Regardless of what they’re publishing though, Magnetic Press seems to be dedicated to telling thoughtful, inventive stories that dazzle and uplift in the way all media should.
To get a better idea of Magnetic Press at the 10-year mark, we caught up recently with Kennedy. Via email, we spoke about the publisher’s origins, some standout titles, how the company has developed and evolved, its game releases, and even some future goals and releases, among other topics and tidbits. It’s an enlightening chat for anyone who loves exploring the ins and outs of the modern comics landscape and the opportunities (and challenges) it presents to both creators and publishers alike.
AIPT: How does it feel to be celebrating 10 years of Magnetic Press? Did you think you’d ever reach this genuinely significant milestone?
Mike Kennedy: Thrilling and exhausting at the same time. It has been a lot of work, and while I never stopped to imagine where it might lead, the continued growth and support have made it incredibly worthwhile and satisfying. Considering how much personal time has gone into Magnetic, I’m just glad that it has continued to move in a fairly successful direction.
AIPT: Do you have any standout or favorite titles from the last decade?
MK: You’re asking me to pick a favorite child…There are so many standouts throughout the years – we launched with some great titles in 2014, including Naja and Doomboy. The Love series of wordless wildlife graphic novels is a personal favorite (that has also garnered a lot of praise). Several more recent titles come to mind more prominently, such as Frontier, Carbon and Silicon, Aster of Pan, The Monkey King… I’m really proud of our Lupin the 3rd Anniversary book… The Ogre Gods series is fantastic… So many to choose from! Honestly, every book we’ve published has been a favorite at some point. I’ve loved them all (otherwise we wouldn’t have published them).
AIPT: How does Magnetic Press from 2014 compare to the Magnetic Press of 2024? Has every change or development always been for the better?
MK: The biggest difference is that we now have the support of Polarity, our parent company led by David Steward II. Polarity also owns Oni Press, Lion Forge, and a few other subsidiaries in different media fields, with several Eisner and Oscar awards under their belt. When I launched Magnetic in 2014, it was completely out of pocket and a crash course not only in independent publishing but in being an entrepreneur. All the legal stuff, tax stuff, and logistical coordination took a lot of attention away from the fun part of creating comics. When Lion Forge saw how much we had done on our own in our first three years, they stepped up with a generous offer to help ease that burden and to help continue the mission. I don’t know if we’d still be doing what we do today without their support for the past seven years.
We tried some new things (single-issue comics, kids books, and middle-grade titles), some of which did better than others. All of it helped refine our focus on what Magnetic does best.
Courtesy of Magnetic Press.
AIPT: How would you define the kinds of books/projects Magnetic Press puts out? Is there one catch-all description or encapsulation?
MK: It seems to be sci-fi, fantasy, and genre graphic novels, mostly for teens and adults, always with a unique or captivating visual style or design. We’ve branched out into art books and illustrated prose, and more recently into interactive fiction and narrative tabletop games (mostly RPGs so far). We used to say that “If comics were weekly TV shows, we were a feature film studio.” At one point, we also referred to our line as “the HBO of comics,” but neither of those really mean the same thing in today’s streaming landscape. Considering the large percentage of our slate that originates from Europe or Asia, our most appropriate recent slogan has been “Your Passport to a World of Wonder.”
AIPT: Is there one thing you’d like to go back and change?
MK: Not really. I mean, every venture has ups and downs – it’s part of life and growth. The low points are lessons that lead to high points. We’ve had some titles that I’ve adored fall flat at retail, but I’m still proud of them. There have been challenges along the way, but those exercises just made us stronger.
AIPT: Similarly, what about one decision/event you thought was a problem but turned out to be a general upside for Magnetic Press as a whole?
MK: The closest thing that comes to mind would be the length of time it took for us to get our role-playing games – particularly the Plant of the Apes RPG – off the ground. Having spent 20 years producing and designing narrative video games, I’ve always been a gamer at heart and have yearned to develop and publish interactive narrative titles since leaving the video game industry in 2011. It took nine years in comics for that opportunity to represent itself, but it finally did in 2020 when we took the leap to develop Carbon Grey: The Role-Playing Game (based on the Image comic by Hoang Nguyen).
Developing that first title was a challenge that took much longer than we anticipated, and we had no proven track record in what was a completely new market and industry. But we tackled that title with passion and ultimately earned our first ENnie nomination for the effort. We weren’t sure if it was something we were prepared to do again, but the opportunity to work with Disney on Planet of the Apes was as big a draw as it was daunting, so we decided to run in that direction with full commitment. That not only led to our biggest Kickstarter to date, but it has unlocked a floodgate of other exciting opportunities.
Courtesy of Magnetic Press.
AIPT: Magnetic Press has launched a ton of solid, successful Kickstarters as of late. How important is crowdfunding to the company at-large?
MK: We’ve been fans of Kickstarter since the beginning – our very first published title, Super-Ego, was our very first Kickstarter. We have since run over 40 successful campaigns, with most of those happening since 2020. (COVID) and the temporary closure of traditional distribution and retail led us back to the platform in 2020, and it proved to be not only a viable alternative to traditional distribution but also an exciting way to engage with the community and to supercharge our brand identity. By focusing on our repeat customers and rewarding them for supporting each consecutive campaign, we’ve built a healthy following that keeps growing with each new project.
I will be honest in admitting that 90% of our output premieres on Kickstarter or BackerKit these days, and the majority of our manufactured products are campaign-exclusive items. Our campaign schedule is the priority focus on a daily basis, with traditional retail distribution taking a backseat. We may be reaching a smaller audience, but that audience is much more passionate, and the direct sales margin helps offset the slowdown of sales in traditional brick-and-mortar stores.
Having said that, we are looking at several ways to build our retail presence in 2025.
AIPT: How has being a writer helped shape or influence Magnetic Press’ success so far? Has it also had its share of downsides?
MK: On the upside, in our particular case, with so many foreign titles in our slate, translation and localization are the areas where I’m able to exercise my creative writing muscles the most. Although the stories themselves have already been written, the “rewriting” in English can be just as creative. It’s more than just “translation” – too often, you’ll come across a foreign title translated verbatim and put on a shelf with no consideration for how natural it sounds, or how foreign some of the references might sound with a particular reading audience.
I personally translate or localize each title we publish. Even titles turned in by another translator will get a personal “localization” pass in my editing – script doctoring to make sure all the dialogue sounds natural, slang translates and references aren’t lost, idioms are culturally relevant, etc. My goal is to make it read as if the book were originally written in English. I’ve done this since the beginning, and we take pride in that consistency.
On the downside, with so many varied tasks necessary to keep the train running, I haven’t had much time to do any real creative writing from scratch. Beyond outlining a dozen or more projects and plots, I’m hoping for that window of creative free time to present itself someday…
Courtesy of Magnetic Press.
AIPT: What’s the single best part of your job? And the single worst part?
MK: The best part is working with some of the best material from some of the best talent in the world. It is so fulfilling to be tangentially connected to some amazing books by Guillaume Singelin, Mathieu Bablet, Chako, Tony Sandoval, Sergio Toppi, Georges Bess, LRNZ, Merwan…While those books may have been done already before Magnetic Press acquired them, being able to bring those works to an English-speaking audience, on behalf of those authors, is very fulfilling. And when the readers thank us for the introduction, it’s even better.
The worst part would have to be the everyday business of keeping things afloat – all those boring, non creative things necessary to market, print, and sell these great works. Having Polarity available to help with certain tasks is a godsend, but if I could offload the full time logistics of inventory tracking, campaign fulfillment, and manufacturing so that I could focus on the fun part of creating cool books, that would be heaven.
AIPT: How do you think you compare to other similarly-sized indie comics outfits? Do you think those comparisons can be harmful or beneficial?
MK: To be honest, I’m not sure I would know what other indie comic outfits would be considered similarly sized… I’ve watched several other small companies emerge (and arguably surpass us) in the past 10 years: Mad Cave, Ablaze, Vault…While I know the folks at those studios well and consider them friends, I can only speculate on their size and success. It certainly seems, from the outside looking in, that they are all doing extremely well! And hopefully, the same thing can be said about Magnetic Press. We try to appear like a big publishing house, but we’re still very lean and indie – aside from the high level assistance of Polarity, Magnetic only has one employee on staff: myself. Everything else is handled on a per-project basis by contractors. We don’t have a staff of salespeople, marketers, editors, etc. That looks like it may change very soon, but for the first 10 years, it has been a personal passion project.
Courtesy of Magnetic Press.
AIPT: What does the future look like for Magnetic Press? (In terms of big releases, new projects/initiatives, or other things you’d like to see come to fruition.)
MK: 2025 is going to be a real turning point, I believe. Not only are we “leveling up” with our Planet of the Apes RPG releasing next summer, but we also have several other exciting licenses and partnerships in the works. We recently signed an agreement with Hasbro to develop books based on three of their popular properties that we will shed more light on soon. We have an exciting tabletop game based on the classic anime series Robotech in development for next year. We are also about to announce details behind an exclusive partnership with famed French comic studio LABEL 619 (the creators of titles such as Frontier, Carbon & Silicon, Shangri-LA, and more). We will also be announcing details behind a new interactive fiction series that will further bridge the gap between our linear graphic novel library and our nonlinear tabletop games. I’m really excited by that new initiative.
AIPT: If you could tell yourself from 2014 just one thing, what would it be?
MK: “You can do this! Don’t give up! Rome wasn’t built in a day! Just, you know, take care of yourself in the meantime. Don’t let the stress wear you down. Stress comes from narrow perception, and perception is all in your head…”
