
From Humble Beginnings
Calcha Comics started as a private collection that just got too big for its own good. As my collection kept growing I slowly sold off some of my older comics. That process reignited an old flame. The nostalgia of my old days as a salesman hit me like a bag of bricks. But no, I wasn’t selling home exterior design anymore, I was selling one of my life’s greatest passions - COMICS.
Unlike my old job where I worked to make ends meet, I was selling comics to fund my love of buying comics. Very quickly I wanted to make things official because I had finally found what I wanted to do in this world. Within weeks Calcha Comics LLC was formed and the start of my new life had finally begun.
What? You thought we’ve been around for 20+ years? Nope. I’m a new fish in this big pond. Calcha Comics LLC was formed in January 2023. I’m new and I’m small but I’m here to make a BIG splash. Here I am today still selling from my private collection but soon I will be dealing with distributors directly and offering the best prices on the market. Join me on this journey as I rise from a random guy selling comics out of his room to being a staple in the comic book industry. Every super hero started somewhere and my start is here and now!
UPDATE - May 2023
April was a big month for Calcha Comics! Not only can you find me on here and eBay, but I got accepted on Whatnot https://www.whatnot.com/user/calchacomics Stop by and check out one of the live sales! I also got accepted by Diamond Comic Distributors in April! Starting in July I will have all your favorite titles as they release and be able to sell them for cover price. Diamond also has a huge selection of statues, action figures, and collectibles. Although I am solely focusing on comics, feel free to send me a message if you have a request for any of the aforementioned items. I'll show you what I have access to and we can work out a custom order for you. As of today I am receiving multiple orders from multiple platforms a day. Business is going great and it's all thanks to you! Thank you for supporting me on my journey as I rise through the comic industry. My plans for the future are to grow my community on Whatnot, collaborate with other comic retailers and artists on limited exclusives, and finally publishing my own title. As of now I am still a one man army but I may hire help later in the year as the load becomes overbearing. I'll keep you all updated and thank you again for supporting me!
UPDATE - September 2023
I've been busy busy busy!!! I actually had to give myself a week off to update my website and ebay. Whatnot has been going really well. In the 4 months I've been doing live auctions on the platform I've managed to gather over 2,500 followers and made over 3,000 individual sales. I want to say it has been a real pleasure getting to meet and befriend many of you :) I've decided to scratch the plan on working with other retailers and putting out exclusives. I'm still a one man army so it may be a possibility somewhere down the road as I grow. As for right now, I'm heavily focusing on MY comic. As of today I have 11 cover artists still working (might add more, idk yet) and finished interiors. I'm aiming to have physical copies in hand by late October maybe early November *fingers crossed*. I finally got around to actually using instagram so check that out too @calchacomics. I'm still trying to get in the habit of posting every day. I'm not a big social media guy but I'm pushing myself. Overall things are going really well and I'm extremely excited to see how they progress. All I can say is thank you all for supporting me along the way and I'll do my best to keep bringing you all great comics for great prices :)
Update - January 2024
Oh what a wild ride it's been these past few months! Let's start with the major news. I finally completed my comic, Rope Play, and had a very successful launch on Kickstarter. There are 13 different covers for Rope Play, 30 if you include all the different nice and naughty variants, and 60 if you include foils! It's been a blast working with all these amazing artists and beginning what I hope to become life long business partners and eventually real personal friends in the comic industry. It was so much work but it really paid off. The Kickstarter campaign gathered 281 backers that pledged a total of $13,164!!! I never would have imagined my first comic would do so well and I truly want to thank you all so much for allowing me to make a career in a field that is a true passion of mine ❤️
I could talk for hours about my journey on creating Rope Play. The ups, the downs, the long nights, the breakthrough moments, the amazing connections conversations and feedback I received, etc etc. But I like to keep these updates concise and to the point.
Besides my comic, I still have been heavily focusing on Whatnot and building a community over there. The past couple months I have been doing 3 shows a week, 7-9 hours each show. I just recently passed 7k individual sales and in reality I think it's close to 10k comics. Hell just this last week I sold nearly 500 comics. It's absolutely insane. The growth has been great and once again it's been a real pleasure befriending many of you and meeting more and more of you all in person at local cons and shops :)
I'll wrap this up before this update becomes a novel. My plans moving forward are working on more covers for Rope Play. I'm not 100% sure on my exact next step though. Could be variants covers for the #1, could be a continuation and an actual #2, I could introduce an entirely new character. I'm really not sure what path a want to take with everything but I can promise whatever I choose to do will be just as amazing if not BETTER than the #1. I plan on messaging more artists in the next week or 2. Wish me luck everybody :)
Update - June 2024
Wow! So the Kickstarter for the 2nd book just ended. I decided for the 2nd book to be a one-shot rather than an actual #2 and continuation of the story. It's called "Rope Play: Roleplay Special" and the Kickstarter gathered a total of 347 backers and raised $26,753! That's absolutely insane to me and I couldn't be happier with how receptive everybody is to it :) . I also got to work with many artists that I've admired for years so that was just amazing too. Ale Garza, who I've been a fan of since the early 2010's. Jose Varese who's artwork introduced me to this newer style of adult comic. Marissa Pope, my favorite artist! The word that comes to mind is "awesome". To be literally stuck in awe of what I'm accomplishing and how well everything is going. And I couldn't do it without all of you, so truly, from the bottom of my heart, thank you all so much for your unwavering support ❤️
Other than Kickstarter, I'm still pushing strong on Whatnot. I'm still doing shows AT LEAST three times a week. Currently I'm sitting at 6k followers with 14,000 individual sales over there! The growth has been amazing so thank you all so much. Definitely stop by and check out the shows if you get a chance.
I FINALLY have hired my first employee and he has been such an immense help. As of now, I mostly have him packaging orders (we're shipping out about 100 packages a week) but he's also helping bag and board new weeklies, price out and post new books to resell, and just overall helping me stay organized. His help makes it so sometimes I'm able to do more than 3 shows a week on Whatnot. Once my new book is in hand, I plan on having him or somebody else run some shows on Whatnot too. I'm still working out the kinks of everything but we'll see how it goes. Anything that gives me more time to work on my own book is a net positive.
Plans for the future - I'm hoping to launch another book on Kickstarter before the end of the year. I'm leaning towards 2 different ideas right now. Either A) Another Rope Play book. I'm hesitant to make a Rope Play Comics #2 so it would probably be another Rope Play #1 with a new character besides Veronica, or just doing another One-Shot like the Roleplay Special. Or option B) Creating an entirely new title. That will definitely happen at some point in time, I'm just not sure if I want to do a new title now or later down the road. I'm just taking it all one day at a time so we'll see what the future holds in store :) Thank you all ❤️
Update - September 2024
Hey everybody, it's been an intense past couple months for me. Nonstop work but that's overall a good thing. I'm writing this about 3 weeks before I launch my third comic, Night of the Giving Head. I decided to do an adult horror comic because I'm a giant fan of the genre so I knew I could actually write something captivating. I know 99% of us mainly buy adult comics for the cover art, but I highly implore you all to give it a read when you get a chance, even if it's just the digital version. The interior art is FUCIKING AMAZING. I had to give Alfret a nice tip for this one. He absolutely killed it (pun intended).
I'm still pushing hard on Whatnot, but I have dialed it back a bit these past couple months to work on this new book a bit more. Instead of 7-9 hour shows 3 days a week, I'm doing 5-7 hour shows 3 or 4 days a week. It's about the same amount of hours live, but it's less exhausting on my end. Also, I'm finally picking up some traction on my website, so maybe some of you are actually reading this right now lmao. I have been launching new Rope Play covers every week, and plan to do so for ..... well, hopefully forever. I have everything scheduled until mid December so hopefully sales keep pace or improve to make everything financially viable. My current plan is to work with 1 or 2 well known comic artists every month and 1 or 2 lesser known comic artists every month. I've been launching them for presale on the website to incentivize sales here and it's been working so far. Thank you all for purchasing directly from me here, it definitely helps when factoring fees into the mix.
Well let me wrap this up before this update gets way too long again
Plans for the future - My main goal is to keep launching new covers every single week. There are so many amazing artists out there and I just want to work with them all lol. My current main focus is on the new Kickstarter comic, Night of the Giving Head, so I'll make sure everything goes just a smoothly as the previous two Kickstarters, if not better. And a big goal for me will be finding a new employee. I definitely need some more help on the Whatnot end so I can focus on my own books and the publishing side of everything. I'm swamped in work 24/7. I swear sometimes it feels like I just need an assistant to remind me of everything I need to do on a daily and weekly basis.
As always everybody. Thank you so much for your support. Without all of you, I would not be able to do this for a living. I never imagined I'd truly be able to work a job I love. It's never-ending and it gets stressful at times, but I promise you the saying is true "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life." I used to not believe that but it's so damn true. Thank you all, truly ❤️
Update- January 2025
I'm writing this on my 2 year anniversary of my very first comic sale, January 5th 2023. What a time for reflection and some deep introspection. I just finished launching my 3rd comic Night of the Giving Head and it did absolutely amazing! Exactly 575 backers and just $70 shy of $40k on the Kickstarter. That's crazy! I'm currently writing the next book, Night of the Giving Head #2 and I have some really good ideas for it. After the last book was so successful, I had some serious internal struggles on how to make the next book even bigger. I think I finally figured it out though. I guess we'll see if I'm right or not in the next update lol.
I'm still working about the same amount on Whatnot. I'm also still running shows solely by myself, but I'm HOPING to make some progress on finding a new employee this week *fingers crossed*. After seeing how well the last book did, I definitely want to find somebody else to run shows so I can shift my focus to my own books and Kickstarter 100%.
Since I first decided to start my own business, I made the decision to take risks and invest in myself 100%. As soon as I received the payout from the last book I immediately went on to commission about 15 new covers just as weekly releases for Whatnot and my website. So be on the lookout for all of those over the next couple months. I have a TON of art just waiting to be released and a ton more being worked on as I type this out.
Plans for the future - 1. Do some absolutely insane numbers for the next Kickstarter (I have some plans that I think will make this happen). 2. I have weekly releases planned until about May but I'm hoping it all makes sense financially and to make weekly releases a standard. It honestly seems a bit farfetched at the moment, but only time will tell if it's a good idea or not. I'll definitely need to grow quite a bit more on Whatnot to make that happen. 3. Work with more retailers. I'm releasing 6 exclusive covers for 3 different retailers at the end of the month. I'm hoping they all make some good profit from it so it becomes something I do more often. 4. Hire a new employee to run Whatnot shows ASAP
Wish me luck in my endeavors. Things are definitely scaling up for 2025 so hopefully I can keep up with all my insane plans and ideas. Love you all and I hope your 2025 is better than ever!
- Caleb Chavis, Owner of Calcha Comics