October was quite a busy month for independent publisher Alterna Comics and its founder, Peter Simeti. In his (sometimes) weekly video update on all things Alterna, Simeti highlighted all of the ups and downs that made the month of October 2018 so hectic, yet productive at the same time. You can watch Simeti’s full remarks below.

October was already off to a busy start thanks to an unfortunate string of events dating back to the summer. Without reopening the wounds of old drama too much, Simeti came under fire online for thanking customers for buying Alterna books. Why would that be an issue, you may ask? Well, according to the angry internet mobs, he had thanked the wrong kind of customers. While this led to quite a barrage of verbal vitriol directed at Simeti, it also prompted a great deal of support from comic readers under the hashtag #TeamComics. A great deal also responded with financial support by ordering Alterna books in record numbers. So many orders, in fact, that Simeti was still backlogged with them in early October.

October also saw the end of the AlternaWeen crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, which raised over $16 thousand. This girthy stack of cash will allow for Alterna to expand its distribution, while backers received bundles of comics at a discounted price to give out to Halloween trick-or-treaters. The hard part was packing up and distributing so many books, particularly with the crunch of a Hallow’s Eve deadline.

Beyond those major events, the film adaptation of Peter Simeti’s graphic novel The Chair launched on the Amazon Prime streaming service in October, several new comics were released, including the final issue of the The XII, issue 2 of breakout hit Blood Realm, issue 3 of It came out on a Wednesday, and the inaugural issue of Midnight Mystery. Add to that all of the new announcements made during New York Comic Con and the reprints of eight books including Go West, Scrimshaw, The Chair, Wicked Righteous, and issue 1 of Blood Realm, and I’d say that makes for a fairly eventful month.

Peter Simeti noted that October 2018 will likely go down as a unique month in Alterna history, and he doesn’t expect to see such monumental sales and success moving forward. I’m sure the hardest working man in comics could use a breather, but a part of me kind of hopes that he’s wrong.