Community Highlights: Meet Scott Mollon of Bronze Knuckles Magazine

Today we’d like to introduce you to Scott Mollon. 

Hi Scott, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Bronze Knuckles Magazine has its roots thirty years in the past, when, as a teenager running off copies on my grandfather’s photocopier, I printed and hand distributed a fiction and art magazine filled with stories and drawings my small group of friends and I created. We called it “The Fantasy Check” and it may or may not have put me on my high school principal’s radar. Later as President of the University of Michigan Undergraduate English Association, I led the creation of a magazine titled Xylem which was dedicated to an annual publication exclusively featuring fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and art of undergraduates at the university. Xylem not only offered undergraduates the opportunity to be published but also engaged students in all the necessary activities to publish a magazine from fundraising and advertising, to editing, layout, and distribution. I graduated with a degree in English; having always wanted to be a writer. 

Life can be funny though as I promptly began, what so far has been, a twenty-two-year career in software. Other creative pursuits took a backseat for much of that time. I still aspired to write, but writing is hard. It takes energy. Energy that can be in short supply when working a more than full-time job and starting a family and doing all the other things we do as part of our day-to-day lives. The whole time though stories would still spin through my head, especially as I lay in bed at night falling asleep. 

Then one day I met Mike Jones at a mini Comic-Con being held at a local comic bookstore. Mike self-publishes Yeet Presents, an anthology comic book with community produced content. In Yeet Presents I found a very supportive community of creators, most of which, like me, were not professionals in the field. I got more involved with Yeet Presents, coloring covers, submitting comic stories, and helping out in any way I could with the comic book. 

It was also through Mike that I met William (Bill) Messner-Loebs. Bill’s name adorned the covers of many of the comic books I loved to read in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. Not only did he write and illustrate his own fan favorite comic book series “Journey”, but he also penned runs of DC’s “The Flash” and “Wonder Woman” that won him awards and are beloved by readers to this day. I began helping Bill out at local comic conventions; setting up his table, helping sell his books, facilitating autographs. Let me tell you, there is no greater kick to the creative juices than sitting at a table at a comic-con talking with Bill about the inspirations for the stories he’s written and all the ideas for the stories he has yet to write. 

Bronze Knuckles Magazine was the product of all these experiences. The magazine’s slogan is “Keep Pulp Alive.” Pulp fiction, more than anything else, to me represents fun and unapologetic storytelling. Have a story you want to tell? Tell it. If it fits the submission requirements let’s print it. And you’ll find a community of writers and artists that will give you kudos for what you did well and will also give you feedback in a supportive way. Let’s get your work in print and in people’s hands. 

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Starting a magazine can be hard. Not only is there the problem of finding contributors to help fill its pages with stories and artwork, but you have to figure out how to literally create the magazine. 

I wanted Bronze Knuckles to be a print magazine. The old pulp magazines were called ‘pulps’ because they were printed on cheap paper. I couldn’t, in my mind, have a magazine looking to honor the old pulp magazines and not have print copies. So, I had to teach myself how to layout a magazine. Thankfully in this day and age there is a lot of free software available, and I was able to find a free program called Scribus that allows you to create magazine layouts. It also has a great community of users and a forum where more than likely someone has already asked any question you may have. 

And all the while you have to make sure that you are laying out the magazine to the printer’s specifications and producing print ready pdfs, and figuring out what that even means. And even though it’s primarily a print magazine, how to create digital reader pdfs whose file sizes aren’t enormous because they were created from higher resolution print files. 

There was a lot to learn, but it was also fun to learn. Part of the fun of publishing the magazine, for me, was also learning how to publish a magazine. 

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Bronze Knuckles Magazine is a self-published magazine dedicated to printing great stories, whether they be true or fiction. We are focused on honoring the great pulps of old. Characters like Doc Savage, The Shadow. and Dick Tracy. The grizzled P.I. The lone spaceman left to fend off an alien invasion. The captive aboard a pirate captain’s galleon. What want new heroes in the spirit of the old and old heroes in a new spirit! The pulps encompassed many genres, so the sky is limit. 

The magazine is partially supported by a growing number of patrons on Patreon and by sales of the individual issues, though the goal is not to make a profit. The goal is get contributors work in print and out into the world where others can enjoy it. In fact, each issue is printed and shipped at a loss in order to keep the price down in hopes of getting it into as many hands as possible. 

But Bronze Knuckles is really more than a magazine. It’s a community of readers and creatives. 

Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
So many people deserve credit. 

My mother taught me the love of reading. We are both voracious readers. And for some us, reading good stories makes us want to tell good stories. 

Mike Jones of Yeet Presents really showed me how to do this sort of thing with class. It’s not easy getting your and other people’s work in print, and the experiences I’ve had working with Mike have been invaluable. 

Not much can encourage or raise spirits as much as an encouraging word from William Messner-Loebs. 

Bronze Knuckles would not have gotten off to the great start it did without the support and work of the contributors in the first three issues. Shane Luttrell, Kent Clark, Jon Erin Mundy, Rusty Gilligan, James Weaver, Indya Simpson, Ric Croxton, and Alex Moore all contributed amazing work to really start things with a bang. 

And of course, my wife who supports and probably very often humors me, as I talk about print margins and font points, and ask her to read draft after draft of my stories. 

Pricing:

• Patrons Print and Digital $5/issue (US only)
• Patrons Digital only $3/issue
• Non-Patrons Print $7/issue
• Non-Patrons Digital $5/issue

Contact Info:

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bronzeknucklesmag
• Other: https://www.patreon.com/bronzeknuckles 

Image Credits
Envakenkaqti
Shane Luttrell
Scott Mollon
Clark Stout
Kent Clark
William Messner-Loebs
Mike Jones
Mike Gustovich