MEET THE AUTHOR

Hello Visionaries! Joey here; I’m the creator behind 50k Comics and New Mafia! If you’re enjoying what you’ve read so far, or you’ve even taken the extra step and purchased New Mafia: Genesis, know that it means the world to me and that I’m eternally grateful! I’m going to be releasing oodles of fun and intriguing stories, so stick along for the ride!

I grew up in a small town in New Jersey, roughly 20 miles outside the birthplace of so many of our favorite comic heroes; New York City. Growing up, I was fascinated with the superhero genre and the hero’s journey. I distinctly remember taking my spiral notebooks that were supposed to be used for school work, and using them to doodle Thor panels. Funnily enough, I couldn’t tell you why I was doodling Thor. He was nowhere near the top of my favorite protag list. But over the last few years, I’ve really grown to appreciate Thor in the comics, so I guess everything comes full circle!

As I grew older, I discovered anime and manga, and my obsession for fiction grew exponentially. Spiderman and Naruto quickly became my top two role models, and my fascination just kept growing and growing. I know it sounds corny, but my favorite stories and heroes really helped shape my character and turn me into who I am today. It was in high school that I started jotting down my own plot threads and character ideas, but I didn’t write my first script until my third year of college.

I uprooted from New Jersey suburbia to Boston to attend the University of Massachusetts. My passion for fiction was always in the back of my mind, but I entered university intent on studying health science, with aspirations of training pro athletes. As I advanced in my college career and began gaining experience in the fitness industry, I realized more and more that while I wanted to keep fitness as I central part of my life, it wasn’t the field I wanted to work in for the rest of my life.

So, I changed my major to psychology in my third year. Why psych? I didn’t really have a good reason except for that I always had a general interest in understanding what drives people to think and act the way they do. I also thought that understanding more about psychology would help me write better characters. So I pursued a psych degree without a clear career goal in mind. It sounds like a scary, and maybe dumb decision to make, but so far, so good!

Overtime I grew fond of the idea of working in higher education. The pandemic hit right as I was in my last semester of undergrad, so I finished school and began university work. I’d written my first comic scripts a few years prior, like I mentioned earlier, but I hadn’t written anything I was particularly proud of, until the summer of 2020. That’s when the ideas for New Mafia began to hit me. I worked on the New Mafia script for about two years, and once I got it to a spot where I really loved it through constant editing, I started tracking down artists, and the rest is history!

I had researched comic book creation all throughout college, but it was in 2022 that I finally started enacting all that information to create my own book. Assembling my first graphic novel was quite a journey, and I’ve learned a lot a long the way. I’ve even been scammed in the process. And while I had to learn some expensive mistakes, I’ve genuinely enjoyed the process of creating New Mafia, and I can’t wait to share more work with you all. Thank you again so much for being here and reading this, and I hope to talk to you all soon.