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!
Joey at Indie Comics Creator Con, March 2025
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.
