Until mid 2018, I never had Alterna Comics appear on my radar, me talking figuratively. Nothing, zero percent. Nor was I seeing Peter anywhere on YouTube or on Twitter, but my feed was not recent comics stuff back then (Alex Toth fan appreciation stuff, or EC Comics art). Completely missed out on Comicsgate, too. From September 2015 to April 2016 I was overseas taking a long hiatus from a job that that turned my salt and pepper hair all salt. I've always always loved comics, but from 2004 to 2018 where I took up took up nursing and working double shifts at a long-term care facility, I became jaded by how what I fell in love with about comics becoming less and less present in the growing over-saturation in the market by formulaic decompressed stotytelling. My work life has scarred me with years of anxiety which I used to be able to find escape from when I'd pick up a Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez DC Comics Presents issue, or a Guy Davis Marquis trade. I follow the art side, more than the writer side of comics. But I found I was growing increasingly disconnected, to where I'm no longer going to the LCS that ONLY stocks books that don't speak to me and charges hefty fees I'm at a loss to fork over. So in July 2018, I thought I'd do a search on my day off of how I could go about self-publishing a comic book. Somewhere down the list that popped up on YouTube was a video Peter put together on the Printing Partnership Program. No idea there was such a thing as being able to piggyback on an existing run, web press, newsprint never being a lost and foregone thing, pretty much felt like I was the last to find out all this stuff. I must have watched Peter's video on the PPP over a dozen times. Ever since then, Alterna and Publishin' Pete and the full monty is what I try to escape to, when I feel overwhelmed after I clock out from a day that mentally my adrenaline and my cortisol levels won't let me escape from. As I write this, I'm still working my day job as an RN but my dreams are to tell stories that take place far, far from the things I do. I'm so happy I find I'm travelling on a road with you guys.
