History

Back in 1996 Alejandro Cruz and Thomas Doherty conceived of a company where fans had some kind of voice. Both long time comic book fans themselves, they wanted to start a company where fans had the opportunity to get into the comic book industry and have their work be shown in the best way possible. Where quality of the artwork and the story telling were on the same level. In the mid 90's, it seemed that too many companies felt that in order to be an "independent comic" you had to publish comics that just focused on extreme sex or violence. Committed Comics wanted to show that an independent company could rise above the bad stereotypes.

Committed Comics was officially formed in 1999 and since then they have worked extremely hard in making sure they stay on track with the vision they started with. In spring of 2000 they partnered with Dawnfire Inc to produce the innovating RPG Dawnfire. It was released worldwide and had a beautiful original cover by renound fantasy and comic book artist/painter Ray Lago. The summer of the new millennium was also when Committed Comics attended Comic Con International (better known as San Diego Comic Con) for the first time as an exhibitor.

It was there that Committed Comics discovered Dustin Weaver and Camilla D'Errico both which have gone on to do amazing things in the comic book industry and beyond. Committed Comics was proud to produce both of their first sequential work in Committed Comics Presents: Threads (#1 for Dustin and #2 for Camilla). From there Committed Comics produced more and more amazing work. In late 2002 Committed Comics joined forces with the countries #1 distributor of comic books; Diamond Distribution.


In 2003 Neo Dawn #1 was released and was on Diamond's Top 300 books for March 2003. Later in the year Committed released their second full color title; by teacher and creator Kensuke Okabayashi. 2003 was an amazing year for the company, that year they did an industry first by attending the most comic book conventions (14 different conventions in 6 different states) by a small press company.

In 2005 Editor in Chief Thomas Doherty did another industry first and was the first editor to ever do an all day portfolio review at Comic Con International (8+ hours straight). The marathon session was a huge success and has been a staple for the company ever since.

New talent was found at the 2008 show and Committed Comics' new direction started to take shape.

In 2009 Committed Comics realized that they had acquired creators at every San Diego Comic Con they had attended again a first for a small press company. They had amassed quite the talent pool and were determined to make some comics that were going to garner some attention. This is also the year they release the largest and most ambitious project to date, Jackrabbit. An original perfect bound graphic novel sitting at 106 pages, this showcased the company's growing desire to release more and more interesting projects. It wasn't long before Jackrabbit was surpassed as the highest page count project that Committed Comics had produced. Haunting Refrain squeaked by at 108 pages and had an amazing cover by superstar artist Melissa Pagluica.



In 2011 Committed Comic's Alumni Camilla D'Errico is nominated for an Eisner Award...one of the highest honors you can receive from your peers in this industry (think Oscar's for Comics!)

At the 2015 San Diego Comic Con a partnership was created with world famous artist Sean Dietrich. Committed was to be the home of his newest art book. For this project Art Director - Thomas Doherty wanted to really showcase Sean's artwork and decided to make this Committed's largest project...like legit...the book is oversized at 11"x14" and really highlights not only Sean's amazing artwork but also his unique viewpoints on the art community.

Confidence Pig was released in the summer of 2016 and Sean took the project and toured the US with it. Bringing Committed Comics to a variety of new venues across the US.

After working with Sean we decided to keep that momentum going and teamed up with comic legend, Bill Maus to make Committed's thickest book. Celebrating Bill's creator owned project, Nira X: CyberAngel 25th Anniversary. We put together a 306 page book, Nira X: Ground Zero, reprinting Nira's first 3 mini series from
Entity Comics (along with their covers and pin ups!) but instead of just reprinting the stories we bookended the reprints with brand new story and art in preparation of the coming relaunch of a new Nira X series!

In 2018 we teamed up with the wildly popular Cosplayer and Media personality, Miss Miniver, to create a "behind the scenes fun and wacky all ages book". So a nationwide search was started to find the right artist to bring Miss Miniver's thoughts to the visual world. The Editor in Chief, Tom reviewed portfolios from NY, Florida, Spain, San Diego and even Australia. The wildest thing was the portfolio and artist that caught both Miss Miniver and the EIC's eye was a young lady who lived right in Seattle (actually worked down the street from Miss Miniver!) I mean talk about fate! So we signed Liz to a contract and got them started on a silly and wild 4 issue mini-series, telling a great story and also having tutorials for all the fans to follow. Each issue being a parody/homage to a property that was near and dear to Miss Miniver's heart.

 

Committed Comics has lasted longer than hundreds of other small press companies (and even many larger ones) because they truly are COMMITTED!