Comics Culture: A Collective Effort  

Please introduce yourself with your name, pronouns, where home is for you, what you do and one good thing you like or love about yourself. 

My name is Neil Brideau, pronounced “BREE-doe,” my pronouns are he/him. I grew up and went to college in Western New York State. I lived for 14 years in Chicago, IL, and have lived in Miami, FL for the past seven years. They all feel like home to varying degrees. 

I run Radiator Comics, which distributes small press and self-published comics by over 250 cartoonists and micropresses from around the world! We also do a little bit of publishing. I personally self-publish my own all-ages comics, which brings me a lot of enjoyment.

I’m really into riding my bicycle and taking public transportation to get around. Yesterday I traveled all over the city using buses and trains and my bike, and that felt really good. Take that, cars!

This statement from your website speaks to why we wanted to do this project and interview you. 

RADIATOR COMICS DISTRIBUTES, PRODUCES, AND PROMOTES HAND-MADE, SELF-PUBLISHED AND SMALL-PRESS COMICS THAT FOCUS ON SELF-EXPRESSION AND STORYTELLING. At the core of our mission is a commitment to increasing the population of comic book readers, providing support to comic book makers to create the best work they possibly can, and fairly compensating those creators for their work.

Why is it important to increase the population of comic book readers? What does that mean to you? On the same note, what does providing support look like for you and Radiator Comics and why is it important to fairly compensate those creators and how do you do that?

There’s a philosophical side to my reasoning, which is comics have a storytelling power that I think is really under-appreciated in U.S. popular culture. It’s disappointing that most folks think of superheroes and zombies when they think of comics. It’s tough to imagine another medium with such a narrow popular understanding. So there’s a slightly obnoxious side of it, where I want to shake strangers by the shoulders and say “NO! Look at these amazing comics! You’ll find something you enjoy, I swear!”

There’s also a practical component, that’s just, we need more eyeballs if making comics is ever going to be an economically sustainable practice. We need more regular customers, but we also need folks casually buying comics every once in a while the way they might go to the movies once or twice a month, or catch a play, or pay for a music streaming service.

Including the need to fairly compensate creators in my mission statement is a way to keep myself mindful of why I’m running a distro, and to help with the conversation that’s sorely needed in professional comics. There’s a lot of talk about how unfair the comics industry is, so it’s important to strive toward correcting that. 

I pay cartoonists a 65% commission on the comics I sell. So if an individual buys a $10 comic off the Radiator Comics website, the cartoonist gets $6.50. If a store buys that $10 comic for $6, the cartoonist gets $3.90. Paying a 39% - 65% commission on titles I sell is in line with the general bookstore market. I started off paying 70% for individual sales and 50% for wholesale orders, but that was unsustainable for me. Payouts for sold comics are scheduled, so no one has to email me and ask me to pay them. It just happens every three months. 

I also work really hard to be transparent about as much of what I do with my clients, so they understand what’s happening with their comics. They can see which stores are buying their comics, and they’re welcome to reach out to those shops directly. I encourage folks to find as many means of distribution as possible. I don’t want to be the exclusive source for anyone’s comics. I never use language like “Radiator Comics’ cartoonists,” it’s always “cartoonists whose comics Radiator Comics distributes.” It’s clunkier, but I think language is important.

What was going on in 2014 that sparked the idea to start Radiator Comics? 

I started thinking about distribution in 2011. I was working at Quimby’s Bookstore, and learning a lot from Liz Mason. I was also helping organize the Chicago Zine Fest and CAKE, and really loved building structures in which cartoonists could show off their comics, and the public could come and find great comics to read.

2011 was also the year we lost Dylan Williams, who ran Sparkplug Comics, and who I really looked up to. I wanted to do something like Dylan was doing with Sparkplug, or like what Greg Means was doing with Tugboat Press, or Annie Koyama with Koyama Press, or John Porcellino with Spit and a Half. I really admired that they were putting so much work into other folks’ comics, and I thought I could do that too.

Distribution is such an annoying aspect of the comics-making process. Like, no one is interested in working to get new eyeballs on their comics, and very few are into packing and shipping. Most cartoonists are into hiding and hoping someone will just find their comics and love them. That’s not a criticism. I’m like that too. But I love so many cartoonists’ work, it’s really easy for me to talk about other people’s comics. So I started the distro to be a platform for folks’ comics, and a resource for people who are curious about our type of comics.

You started publishing comics with Radiator in 2017, which was also the same year you met us both. (Lawrence at LA Zine Fest, you introduced yourself and got a copy of a zine from me. It's funny because we didn’t meet through comics, we met because a mutual acquaintance in Miami told you about me or something like that. I just know you knew Zeal and Zeal and I worked together at Otis and Breena at CXC, you came to the table and traded with me, I think.) 

Wow! You have a great memory! If you had asked me, I’m not sure if I’d be able to tell you off the top of my head how we met. BUT I do have to fact check you, I’ve never been to LA Zine Fest, but I think Lawrence, you and I met at Short Run in 2017, because Zeal Harris showed me your From Black Boy With Love, zine when I first moved to Miami. 

Also, now I remember that CXC, Breena! I feel like CXC is a great place to meet cartoonists. There’s so much space and programming during the weekend—including Thursday and Friday—that encourages you to really get to know people there unlike other festivals. I go every year because of that aspect of the show.

In my head, it's still LA Zine Fest, lol. I do have a picture of you holding my zine at Short Run from that year, so that makes sense. But I think I know what it was. I saw Zeal at LA Zine Fest, and then I saw you at Short Run later that year and you mentioned Zeal. Anywho. Working on your piece now, thanks again! 

That makes sense! 

Why add publishing to an already demanding job like distribution? And how was that transition, was it a learning curve involved or did it flow naturally given your involvement in comics and DIY publishing?

I guess I always thought about doing a little bit of publishing through Radiator. The titles I’ve published have all been ones that I think deserve close attention and enthusiasm from someone who cares. Bigger publishers have a wider reach, but I have heard friends’ stories about feeling like their work wasn’t valued by their publisher, whether that’s on a production level or a promotional level. 

I feel like I had a number of skills in place when I started, but I’ve definitely learned a lot. I didn’t realize publishing takes so much time and energy. I don’t know how folks who publish more than a few titles a year do it! There have been times when I’ve had to put less attention on the distro to get titles we’ve published out.

I also didn’t realize how much more prestigious publishing is compared to distribution. I feel like I got more attention and respect when I started publishing. I think of Radiator Comics as a distributor first, but I think the general perception of Radiator is that we’re a publisher that also distributes. When I table now I feel like I should focus on the titles we’ve published, which makes things confusing when I’m like, “we’re a distributor, but most of the stuff on the table is stuff we’ve published.”

I am proud of everything we’ve published, and I’ve enjoyed working with everyone I’ve published, but sometimes I wish I had just focused on distribution. Let other folks do the publishing. Right now I’ve imposed a moratorium on taking on any new publishing projects. There are several projects already in the pipeline, like more Fizzle, UM, and Viewotron, plus a couple books, but I’m not agreeing to anything new for now. I dream about finding someone with similar sensibilities to maybe take over as the publisher so I can focus on distribution stuff.

2022, you took over publishing responsibilities for Viewotron: Comics & Stories from Ad House. Why?! Lol, but seriously we imagine the amount of work that it takes, must stretch you thin. Or maybe it doesn’t. This is also the year, we ask you to take over distribution for Laneha House because of becoming parents and stuff. How did you make all this work?

Yeah! Sam Sharpe is one of my oldest friends in comics, and I’ve always been a fan of his and Peach’s work. He may have been one of the first people I talked to about publishing something as Radiator. I’ve also always looked up to Chris Pitzer. I love so many titles from Ad House. Their design sense is top-notch, and he’s always been such a welcoming and friendly presence at shows. When Ad House announced they were shuttering, Sam and I felt like it was natural to shift Viewotron over to Radiator. Chris has been so encouraging and helpful. He gave me the exact specs he used to print issue 1, so I used the same printer with the same paper, so the change wasn’t jarring. Sam and Peaches changed the dimensions to make it easier to shelve at comic shops, but otherwise, it’s the same.

Your larger question about taking on more projects—I often feel like taking over distribution for Laneha House, or The How Well? Anthology, or offering distribution to all the MICE Mini-Grant recipients as opportunities for Radiator Comics to expand the scope of what we’re carrying and potential readers. Like, for the most part, it doesn’t feel like a burden. It feels like new blood! You’ve sent a few titles that Laneha House has published by people other than you two, and that’s been really exciting. The MICE Mini-Grant winning comics is this great jolt to the catalog every year! Fifteen new cartoonists added on a single day! 

I’m just one person working alone, so I feel like I need those outside forces encouraging me to diversify my catalog. I am starting to bust at the seams a little in my storage unit, and I’m dreading the day I might have to move my operation—either to a different neighborhood or a different town! But for now, I’m like, what’s new? Who am I missing? Who should really be distributed through Radiator??

I guess I also feel like I’m not quite making everything work. I feel like I need a few more hours each day to actually do everything I’d like with how Radiator Comics is set up now. I feel like I particularly need to do a much better job promoting titles.

We read you started in Chicago at Quimby’s. When was that and how was that? Or was there something before you started working at Quimby’s, what was a young Neil into? How did that impact your outlook on the community work you do now?

Yes! I started working at Quimby’s in 2009, which was only a few years after I started making minicomics and tabling at festivals. I worked there for six years, going part time in the final year or two to work on Radiator. It’s the best job I’ve ever had. I learned so much from Liz Mason, who really is the heart of Quimby’s. I also never laughed as much as I did working there, especially when it was me, Liz, and Edie Fake as the full time staff.

I loved working on the consignment system that Quimby’s has. It was so great working with self-publishers helping them sell their comics and zines. I don’t think people appreciate how much the shop does with their consignment system. I did the math a couple times when I worked at Quimby’s, and we averaged 14 new titles every day! A lot of that was stuff Liz was ordering from publishers, but a lot of it was also stuff people were dropping off or mailing in for consignment. 

In my 20’s I was pretty active in leftist activism in Albany and Chicago. I lived in intentional communities, and went to protests, did Food Not Bombs, and volunteered for organizations like Voices for Creative Nonviolence. That all probably helped influence my interest in community work.

When the pandemic hit, you were doing a lot of programming and community building, but you started that project before the pandemic hit and had to adjust and move it online, is that right? Why did you start that project? 

In 2019 I did three pop-up shops in Miami, mostly at art spaces like EXILE Books and Locust Projects. They all required programming in addition to running the store. I was also volunteering at my local library doing a teen comics club on Friday afternoons. The pop-ups were temporary, and I knew I wanted to keep the workshops and readings going, so I applied for a Knight Arts Challenge Grant to open up a physical workspace for cartooning in South Florida. 

I got the grant, and I did this whole search for a space, and got the keys to a studio in an art building the day before everything shut down in Miami Dade because of COVID. So I had to move it online. I did panel discussions and interviews focusing on South Florida cartoonists and organizations for the local community, but I also invited folks from around the country to do programming. That was a lot of fun. All but one of the videos (which was not recorded by request of the panelists) are up on YouTube. 

One of my plans for the physical space was to hold open studio hours for people to come in and work on their comics, so I started an Open Studio zoom that was loosely based on playwright Suzan-Lori Parks’ Watch Me Work events. She moved Watch Me Work online during the pandemic and was doing it every day for a few months, which is how I learned about it.  Her event is a 20-minute silent “performance” in which everyone works on their plays on their own, and then a 40-minute “dialogue,” in which she answers questions from participants about their writing. It’s great. She still does it on zoom on select Mondays, and my spouse and I still attend most of her sessions. I started hosting Open Studio on Friday afternoons, where we did a 20-minute quiet work session, followed by a 10-minute socializing break, repeating for two hours. So you get 80 minutes of work and 50 minutes of socializing with other cartoonists if you’re there the whole time. It’s intended to be a drop-in sort of thing, so you can show up whenever it works for you in that window.

We started getting a regular set of folks coming to Open Studio, and another peer-to-peer event called Cartoonist Coffee, and we started a discord server to keep the comics conversation going. Once the funding and my interest in organizing panel discussions ran out, I suggested we just keep doing the peer-to-peer stuff, and turn the discord into its own entity, independent from Radiator Comics. So now it’s the Heatsink Comics Collective, and anyone’s welcome to join if they’re looking to be a part of a supportive community of cartoonists online.

Do you remember the first comic you made? What was that feeling like? Similarly, do you remember the first comic you distributed? What was that feeling like? And what would you tell past Neil to help them prepare for all of current/future Neil’s achievements and adventures?

I think like a lot of self-publishers, I was making comics and zines before I realized what I was doing. 

When I was in high school me and my friends would make each other mix tapes, and my friend, Josh Farnum, would make these elaborate liner notes using typewriters and photocopying stuff, and I really fell in love with the aesthetic, so I started copying (ha ha) him. Near the end of high school I started sending samples of the comic strips I was drawing to alternative newsweeklies, so I was doing a lot of photocopying for that too, though those were stacks of paper, stapled in the corner, not really zines.

In college I drew comic strips for the school paper, and eventually became the editor of their Lampoon section, which also involved a lot of photocopying and taping. Your Bay Area neighbor, Ed Luce of Wuvable Oaf fame, graduated the year before I was a freshman, and I think he was the editor of the Lampoon section too. One semester I started collecting friends’ comics and art and photocopying them into these 8.5 x 11” flyer/posters I would post up around campus and in the town’s one coffee shop. And then after I dropped out of grad school I’d make weird art zines for my friends’ birthdays in Albany.

It wasn’t until I moved to Chicago and started shopping at Quimby’s that I realized that I could earnestly make comics for a wider readership. So my first “official” mini was an illustrated poem called The Trugglemat, about a kid who befriends the monster who’s eating all the other children in her town. I printed up a bunch and put copies on consignment at Quimby’s, and I took a bunch of them on a summer trip visiting friends back in New York State, and it was really exciting to hand copies to friends. That was 2007, and I’ve been hooked on making minicomics and zines ever since!

The magic I feel when I finish a comic, go and photocopy it, and then cut, fold, and bind them into little booklets has not diminished over time. I think a lot of folks see self-publishing as a way to get picked up by a publisher, but for me, self-publishing is its own thing. My personal comics have been getting too big to photocopy and hand-bind, so I’ve been sending files to printers, which is far less exciting for me. A couple years ago I started a minicomic series called Sally’s Mean Bloodstream, for which I set a couple rules: I have to photocopy them, and I have to give them away for free, just to keep myself centered in that DIY spirit. 

I launched Radiator Comics in 2014 with 25 clients. But I unknowingly did distribution when I was just starting out making comics. The first comics festival I ever tabled at was the 2008 Stumptown Comics Fest, and I only had two minis done at that point. I felt like that wasn’t enough for a half-table, which in hindsight would have been fine. But I was nervous, and asked a couple webcomic friends, Shayna Marchese and Robert Sergel, if they'd be up for me selling their comics for them, just to fill out my table. Sarah Becan had published a small collection of my webcomic, Sock-Monster, and so I also brought a copy of everything she had published through her small press, Short Pants Press, just for people to look at. I think I paid my friends 100% of the sales for their comics, and I sold only a couple of my own comics at that show, so it felt kind of silly doing it like that. Oops. 

I’m not sure what I would tell myself. But I do want to reflect that some of my closest friendships have come out of meeting folks at comics fests and trading comics. It would have blown my mind if someone would have told me in 2008 or 2009 that the person I just traded comics with would become one of my best friends and closest collaborators, or I’d attend their wedding. Stuff like that. Maybe I'd tell myself to be more daring and less serious about all of this too. But then, that's advice I'd have to follow in 2025! Hahaha!

What does the future of Radiator Comics look like? Only share stuff you are comfortable with. 

That’s a great question. A lot of things are up in the air, and I want to be more open about that. When I started Radiator Comics I thought ten years in, I’d be at least breaking even, and maybe even making a tiny profit, and that the distro would be a reliable source of income for some cartoonists. That hasn’t happened, and I find myself wondering what the heck I’m doing sometimes.

I’m super dedicated to continue to distribute self-published comics. I love it, and I know not a lot of people do, so I think it’s really important that’s the core of Radiator Comics. I think I mentioned I’ve thought about figuring out how to bring on someone to focus on publishing, and I’d love to have someone focus on promotion and marketing. But like, how do you bring someone onto a project that actively loses money every month? I’ve taken out a couple Kiva business loans over the years, and have thought about doing it again to hire someone to take on promotion and marketing.

I fantasize about Radiator Comics having an office/warehouse space. It’d have a little loading dock I could sit on when the weather’s nice. Id’ have an office space, and then a well laid-out packing area with all the comics shelved nicely, tons of packing supplies, and a work counter. And the mail carrier would bring boxes to me, and pick up the outgoing packages! Right now I do all my computer work at my apartment, and then ride my bike over to my storage unit, where I have a packing station and pack up orders. Then I come back to the apartment to print up postage, and then go back out to the post office to drop off and pick up packages. 

I think a lot about contributing somehow outside of running the distro. I’ve really loved seeing the Cartoonist Cooperative, the Comics Advocacy Group, and the Boston Comic Arts Foundation all doing a lot of great work. I sometimes wonder if Radiator Comics should be a nonprofit, or have a nonprofit wing, or if I should work with friends to start a nonprofit to advance our ecosystem of comics. I think I’m ready to work with friends on a project again.

Ashanti Fortson’s essay about burnout, The Broken Heart at the Center of Comics (with Sunmi, Lillie J. Harris, and Shannon Wright, originally published in Gladiolus Magazine No. 1 from Black Josei Press), has been haunting me for a while now. I find a lot of Sunday breakfast conversations at comics festivals turn to “how can we save comics?” Part of the answer is it’s going to take a lot of people doing a lot of different things. One person’s not going to “save” comics. But I’d like to be part of the solution, and I have a lot of ideas that I’d like to try.

When you think of comic culture what are the things you appreciate that exist and what do you want to see change or see more of? If anything. 

Woof, this might be the toughest question because it’s tough to quantify what I appreciate. I love going to festivals and finding all these weird little books. There’s always something new that expands my idea of what you can do with comics or self-publishing. I love how supportive our world of comics is. So many people are cheering each other on, wanting to see each other succeed.

I think we need a lot more people taking on support roles in comics. We need more small presses, distro’s, reviewers, promoters, festival organizers, labor advocates, grant providers, etc. etc. We also need larger systemic changes, like universal healthcare, housing as a right, universal basic income, reparations, radical investment in public transit and public schools.

Any last remarks?

I did a really sloppy presentation a couple years ago for MICE over zoom about prepping your comic for print along with long-time friend & collaborator Jeff Zwirek who runs PrintNinja, and who, along with me, Edie Fake, Max Morris and Grace Tran was a founding organizer of CAKE. 

I tried to frame my part of the presentation around four slogans that I thought were the important take-aways from the presentation. Any technical advice I gave, I tried to connect back to these slogans. I keep the slides I drew for the slogans taped to my drafting table to bolster myself, and I feel like it’s just good advice for making comics or working in a support role, so I feel like they’d be good last remarks.

Be kind to yourself!

Try to have fun!

Ask for help!

Your comics are worth it!