We were lucky to catch up with Brandon Bloxdorf recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Brandon thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

It’s hard to choose a project between what I do at Apollo City Comics and Comix Wellspring. I do believe the most meaningful and intentional project I’ve helped create is the podcast/Youtube Show, Inspired Ink. The show is all about the struggles and rewards of making independent comics and uplifting creators. Not only does this give creators a boost and material to promote their work, but through their stories and experiences it has helped other creators get through stagnant creative times and doubtful moments. Through Inspired Ink we’ve developed the “Ink Series” which includes Spilled Ink, a live drawing show where people teach me to draw, and Ink’s Spotlights, the ins and outs of comic book making.

To back up just a bit, I started Apollo City Comics as a podcast in 2018 to try to break into comics somehow. At the 2022 Baltimore Comic Con, right after I had moved across the country earlier that year and was laid off a month before, I met the Comix Wellspring team. Through convention conversations and a few meetings I was brought on to produce Inspired Ink. Six months into doing the show Comix Wellspring was bought out by another company. This led the CEO to want to bring on an indie creator who had connections in the industry to run their marketing. Comix Wellspring has become a company for creators, by creators.
Now my job is to get people to print more comics through Comix Wellspring by inspiring them to make more comics and give them all the secrets possible to sell their work more. It can’t be more rewarding than that.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Hi! I’m Brandon Bloxdorf, I run the publishing imprint Apollo City Comics, and run the marketing and host all the shows for Comix Wellspring (CWS).
I grew up in El Paso, Texas, a musician and focused my attention on learning the bass guitar. Rock n Roll was always prominent in my life. My Dad showed me KISS, Judas Priest, and Iron Maiden at a very young age. Things that he couldn’t explain (more along the “adult” things) were always expressed as, “It’s Rock’n’Roll”. That seemed like a simple enough explanation for me.
At 14 I got my first bass, a gift from my Dad, and I was obsessed. I would come home from school and play until 2am everyday. This continued for years, past high school, as I joined my first successful band, and entered college to study music. Being in a touring band eventually took its toll on all of us at that young age. Once the band fell apart, aligning with splitting with the girl I was living with at the time made me resent music in a way. I put down my bass and needed to find another way to express myself.
Somehow comics were always in my life as well. Music and comics went hand-in-hand. Gene Simmons and Spawn just made sense to me. I gave up drawing early in life with the feeling that I just wasn’t good enough. I hope that there’s someone out there to encourage every child to make art. I wish I knew that things would have gotten better if I stuck to it, but alas.
So, I was lost for a bit but always had encouraging words about my writing. Maybe it was more of the ideas I was trying to get across than the actual writing, but I decided to change my major and focus on creative writing. I found out a lot during this transition. Not every school has the right teachers for every student. Your ideas won’t be enjoyed by many people, and most of all don’t stop, don’t give up. I’m glad I pushed through the negative thoughts of my professors at UTEP, because I flourished at Full Sail University and I’m flourishing now (so what did they really know?).
During my time in college I was looking for a way to gain writing experience and landed a few very amazing writing gigs for websites like ComicsVerse. They sent me to San Diego Comic Con and New York Comic Con to interview creators and celebrities. I just wanted to figure out how to meet people and make a comic. The dream seemed so far away at this point.
Especially since I was just working for those sites for about a year before they really began to tank.
This was the first time I realized that if I wanted something I would have to learn to do things on my own. A lesson that continued to prove true over and over again.
In October 2018, I started up Apollo City Comics. I had a few friends doing their own show so I decided to piggyback off that. The show went through various incarnations, and of course COVID changed things up. A few years later my life really began to fall apart as my fiancé and I split up which led me to pack up and move across the country where I wound up in Winchester, Virginia.
The only consistent thing I had in life was the Apollo City Comics Podcast and the dream of wanting to make a comic. I was a mess when I moved here, broken hearted and lost trying to figure out a new side of the country. I was laid off from my job which dropped me even lower. This is when the biggest opportunities opened up in front of me.
Mark Bernal of Lesser Known Comics, my mentor and who had turned into a great friend after doing an interview on Apollo, brought me to Baltimore Comic Con. It was eye opening meeting indie creators like this for the first time. I met Dan Hills of Comix Wellspring for the first time where we shared a vision of what a great indie comics podcast could be like if they produced it. As I shared my pitch for this, “cosmic, punk rock, love story” I was trying to create, Mark told me that I should first try to make a punk rock anthology to build a fan base that’s interested in punk rock comics before dropping my first book.
I had nothing else to lose, so that’s exactly what I did.
“…And Out Come The Comics” A punk rock anthology was launched on Kickstarter in April of 2023, a year after I moved across the country. The book did amazing and was funded within the first hour and made 5x the goal I was reaching for on the campaign. During this time I met Alex Batts, who is now the other half of Apollo City Comics Publishing. Since then, we’ve transformed Apollo from podcast to publisher, we have 10 releases in just a year and a half and 30 books currently in production. We’re part of Lesser Known Comics (LKC), which is essentially a comic book incubator/hippy commune. Giving creators out there the opportunity to be part of a growing community and have their work out there and promoted by someone other than themselves. We’ve compared Apollo to being the Young Animal/Vertigo to LKC.
In 2025 we have nine books prepped to be released including two of my own: Teenage Babylon, and Fake Your Death.

During this same time as Apollo really began to BOOM across the indie network, I launched the show, Inspired Ink in partnership with Comix Wellspring. Getting the opportunity to utilize the interview and conversation skills I built up over the years of doing Apollo as a podcast continues to blow my mind. CWS is an independent comic book printing company that has been producing comics for about ten years. They’re known throughout the indie industry and continue to grow year after year. My job is to share the stories of creators to help encourage other creators to never give up their craft. We talk about what creators experience, their doubts and their successes to prove that you too can do this and your fears and doubts aren’t just yours. I had tried to do a live drawing show on Apollo for a time before the show stopped, so I decided to bring it back with CWS. The new show, Spilled Ink, has me stumble through trying to draw while I have my astonishing co-host, Max Flowers and incredible indie artists join us every week so that I’m challenged to draw.
The astonishing thing about Comix Wellspring is that it’s very much a Mom & Pop shop. There’s about ten of us in total and half of us really do make comics. Running their marketing and shows has been a privilege being a creator myself because I can truly connect with our audience in ways other companies could never. We also created an indie community at CWS. It’s not just a printer where you send your files and get your products. We care so much more than that one moment. It’s a great moment, but what’s even better is that when that moment happens and your books are at your door, you have a community of creators giving advice, cheering you on, supporting your work, meeting up with you at cons, inviting you to share your story to the world.
I suppose I bring people together. I’m there to say that I’m proud of what you do because comics are so hard. I spent so long chasing the dream of making comics, and now that I’m here in the trenches with everyone, I want to see everyone else’s dreams come true too.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I think realizing that there’s so much more to comics than superheroes and Marvel and DC books. If you really want to read something with passion and support an artist, buy indie. Go support local artists. I know we can’t do this for every creator, but if you support someone it means more than you realize. Every piece of art that’s sold, every book, it means so much to us. We treasure those moments because it validates us and gives us inspiration to push forward. It’s rough out there. Making art and sharing it brings all sorts of fears and insecurities out. There’s some brave creators putting things out there that I know you will love, and if you don’t maybe your friend will.
So when you see us posting things, share our work. Maybe think about buying an indie book as often as possible. We are all small businesses and we’re struggling to stay alive. Save a life, buy indie art and comics.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I think a lot of people don’t realize that this isn’t our day job when it comes to making art. We get off work and enter this other vocation to find some happiness and then have to support ourselves and that vocation. That majority of jobs and careers out there involve someone going to school, getting that job and then after work they escape via tv, movies, comics, books, music. They want these things to escape their life but won’t support the creators who make this work? It doesn’t make sense to me. Creators get off work or graduate from school and the grind never, NEVER stops. We create when we’re off work, we create when we’re on vacation or at conventions. We have to or else we won’t get anywhere. We create the things you use to escape this world from. So, maybe throw us bone and also stop supporting AI to take the fun jobs away from us. That’s a whole other topic though…

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/comixwellspring
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/apollocitycomics
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@comixwellspring
• Other: https://lesserknowncomics.com

Image Credits

Brandon Bloxdorf
or a by stander (all these are phone photos from my personal device)

Apollo City Comics Logos by Max Flowers

… And Out Come The Comics Punk Anthology Cover by Jade Lowder

Inspired Ink logo by Brandon Bloxdorf