Anyone suffering from Bubbles Magazine withdrawal, and who needs to get their hands on a solid comics zine about comics, need look no further.  Here in the pages of  the ninth issue of Comics Blogger readers will be treated to substantial interviews with both Gabriell Bell – AND Copacetic fave, Nate McDonough!  Plus:  an original one-page comic by Katie Lane, a Bubble Con report, and five pages of reviews. 40 digest-sized pages in all!

The latest and greatest issue – at least size-wise, for sure (and here by a considerable margin) – of Comics Blogger has arrived.  3/4 of this 108-page (!) issue is devoted Frank Santoro’s Destination Dealers Con (DDC) that was held here in Pittsburgh (well, technically, just outside of it) on Sunday, November 22, 2025.  Comics Blogger writer, editor & publisher, Thomas Campbell came up from North Carolina with the aim of documenting the show in a series of interviews with the exhibitors and shares with us here the fruits of his labor.  He also managed to find time to score an amazing selection of great comics (that he enumerates here) that lend credence to DDC’s premise of being an old school show that also features new school comics.

Here’s a list of the DDC interviewees*: Frank Santoro, Sammy Harkham, Kevin Huizenga, Tom Scioli, Jim Rugg, John Kelly, Nate McDonough, Audra Stang, Cameron Arthur, Brain Baynes, Chris Pitzer, Mike Seamans, Bill Boichel, and Bill Wyman (sic; actually it’s Bill Wehmann, of Doomed Planet Comics fame… it would have been interesting if it had been Bill Wyman, tho’…).  There’s plenty of history** and personality on hand in these interviews. and much to glean. The interview with Sammy Harkham is a particular stand out.  One of the best interviews of his we’ve come across; full of insights and empathy.

This issue also features a whoppin’ twenty pages of incisive reviews of recent comics followed by host of “Incidental Announcements” of upcoming publications and events that will keep readers in the know and bring them up to speed in the world of small press and self-published comics.

Plus “Monkeys,” a new, two-page comic by Sara Lautman!

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* It is worth noting that these interviews were conducted in a room full of other conversations going on simultaneously in the background.  As a result, there are transcription errors and lacunae scattered through many – but not all – of the interviews. So, readers should be prepared to encounter the occasional “of” that should be a “for”(and vice versa) along with similar quasi-homophonic errors, as well as, here and there, a missing word that will have to be inferred by a best guess.  Also, the conversational tone of the on-the-fly, informal interviews collected here, which make them engaging reads, goes hand in hand with the hesitations, reversals and switched lanes of thought of conversations conducted amidst a crowd.  So, again, be prepared to encounter inadvertent transpositions and double-negatives that may momentarily cloud meaning, but will take only a moment of  contextual interpretation to clarify; “gems in the rough,” so to speak.

** (not all of it accurate, however)