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Tiny Onion hires Sami Demonster as Community Manager and Promotes Harley Salbacka to Events & Libraries Manager

Tiny Onion has hired social media and comic book expert Sami DeMonster as Community Manager in the team’s expansion, which has also included promoting Eric Harburn to Director of Narrative & Editor-in-Chief and a number of recent hires. Seasoned industry veteran Harley Salbacka has been promoted from Community & Events Manager to Events & Libraries Manager.

Sami DeMonster

DeMonster will be in charge of communicating with Tiny Onion’s growing fanbase and expanding the production house’s social footprint. She will run the company’s social media accounts and will be producing original content for their channels, including making weekly New Comic Book Day videos in collaboration with popular Los Angeles comic book store Revenge Of, as well as covering Tiny Onion’s activities at conventions and events. She will also be overseeing community management for the production house, engaging with fans online. 

DeMonster’s extensive background in content creation, strategy, and journalism includes collaborations with many major comic book publishers, including DC, Dark Horse Comics, Image Comics, BOOM! Studios, Vault Comics, DSTLRY, Mad Cave Studios, and creators such as Tynion, Tini Howard, Babs Tarr, Patton Oswalt, Jordan Blum, Stephanie Phillips, Jeff Lemire, Melissa Flores, and Dan Quintana. With an emphasis in comic book and horror coverage, she has cultivated an online community with over 30,000 followers on Instagram, and 40,000 followers on TikTok, with over 1 million likes. She has also partnered with e-commerce giant eBay on social media content, collaborating with their team at New York Comic Con and other events. 

Last year, DeMonster hosted Revenge Of’s globally streamed “Comic Creator Couch Party,” sponsored by Dark Horse Comics and streamed worldwide, which featured interviews with stars like Oswalt and Blum, Nathan Fillion and Heath Corson, Brian Michael Bendis, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Hannah Rose May and Utkarsh Ambudkar, Gerry Duggan, and more. In addition to video content, Sami is an editorial columnist for DC.com; among her many articles, she recently wrote a guide to the world and characters of Tynion and Álvaro Martínez Bueno’s The Nice House series timed to DC’s Vertigo relaunch. 

DeMonster got her start in the industry working at her local comic book shop before collaborating with BOOM! Studios in 2023 as a freelance Content Creator, best known for being their “New Comic Book Day” host. She has been covering Tynion and artist Werther Dell’Edera’s hit series Something is Killing the Children for BOOM! Studios since 2023 and is an expert on the Slaughterverse; for the last couple years, she has been the Slaughterverse panel moderator for BOOM! Studios at conventions like San Diego Comic-Con, New York Comic Con, and C2E2.

Tynion and DeMonster have collaborated for several years, inclusive of her work on Something is Killing the Children (SIKTC). In the last year, she has not only partnered with Tiny Onion to create videos about their titles for New Comic Book Day on a weekly basis, but has also shared deep dives on their comics and collections on her channels. She has also hosted several of their panels at conventions and produced short-form video content at events.

Harley Salbacka

Harley Salbacka, the previous Community & Events Manager, has been promoted to Events & Libraries Manager. With the success of Tiny Onion’s convention programming and the Corpse Tour (the global Exquisite Corpses comic book tour with Tynion and the Corpse Crew of creators), the team will be expanding their event footprint; Salbacka will be managing Tiny Onion’s expansion of events and in-person programming even further. In addition to events, Salbacka will also take the lead in launching Tiny Onion’s first ever Libraries program. She will be working alongside librarians to bring Tiny Onion’s titles to more readers, making their books more accessible to the public. 

During Salbacka’s fifteen years working in all facets of the comic book industry, she has gained extensive knowledge of collaborating with librarians. Salbacka started her comic book journey by running one of Los Angeles’ premier comic book shops for five years. She then worked for Humanoids as their Sales & Marketing Representative before moving to BOOM! Studios, where she rose to Sales Lead, handling not only their library market, but also their book and digital market needs, as well as running their booth at San Diego Comic-Con. She managed BOOM! Studios’ library market and ran their booths at the American Library Association (ALA) conference during her time at the company.

“I’m excited to be working with the library market again,” said Salbacka. “Libraries are one of the most important institutions in keeping literacy and comics alive in communities. I’m excited to see what cool things Tiny Onion and librarians will do together!”

“I’ve always admired Harley’s deep understanding and dedication to libraries,” said Tynion. “She has helped Tiny Onion reach new audiences at conventions and our events, and we’re excited for her to help us grow within the library space. We’re so grateful to librarians for the essential work that they do, and we’re looking forward to working with them to make Tiny Onion’s books accessible to more fans and first-time readers.”

In addition to the hiring of DeMonster and the promotion of Salbacka as well as Harburn to Director of Narrative & Editor-in-Chief to reflect their expansion into the multimedia space, Tiny Onion has also recently brought aboard Bryce Gold as Operations Manager for Publishing, Casey Gonzalez as Director of Multimedia Development for Animation, Andra Hermann as Operations Manager for Communications, and Dylan Todd as Senior Designer.

BOOM! Studios Announces New Promotions and Hires for 2022

BOOM! Studios has announced that it has promoted and hired several key employees in the Sales and Marketing teams following a historic year in which the company launched the record-breaking series premieres of Keanu Reeves’ BRZRKR and the Something is Killing the Children universe-expanding series House of Slaughter, earned nine Eisner Award nominations, saw the premiere of R.L. Stine’s Just Beyond television series with Disney+, and announced a Mech Cadets animated series with Netflix, based on the BOOM! Studios comic by Greg Pak and Takeshi Miyazawa.

Breanna Sarpy has been promoted to Manager, Digital Marketing & Advertising. Sarpy began as a BOOM! Studios’ Executive Assistant in 2018, before moving to the Marketing team where she took on various aspects of BOOM! Studios’ digital growth initiatives and advertising, including hosting the company’s video interview series, BOOM! Chat.

Harley Salbacka has been promoted to Sales Lead. Salbacka joined BOOM! Studios as a Retail Sales Coordinator in 2021 where she oversaw a variety of responsibilities in the comic book specialty and book markets. Previously, Harley was Sales & Marketing Representative at Humanoids and prior to that spent five years in comics retail.

In addition to these key promotions, BOOM! Studios also recently hired:

Manny Castellanos has joined as Sales Coordinator. Castellanos was previously Director of Retail-Sales Development for publisher Mad Cave Studios from 2018 – 2022, where he established a communicative relationship with the direct market and directed the sales campaigns for hit comic book series such as Nottingham and The Last Session.

Greg Hopkins has joined as Retail Sales Coordinator. Hopkins joins BOOM! Studios with 17+ years of comic experience, from owning a comic shop to producing and distributing comic exclusives for acclaimed illustrators, including Stanley “Artgerm” Lau, Derrick Chew, Kunkka, Ejikure, Alan Quah, Bill Sienkiewicz, and Leirix. Hopkins also owned and operated North Florida Comic Con for six years. He was also co-creator of Comic Conline, wherein he teamed up to produce 3-day online conventions to help bring creators support after conventions were shut down to the pandemic.

Humanoids Names Ailen Lujo As Director of Sales & Marketing and Announces New Sales & Marketing Structure as Well as Two Additional Hires

Humanoids

Ahead of BookExpo America, Humanoids has named Ailen Lujo as Director of Sales & Marketing and announced a new Sales & Marketing structure. Lujo will oversee distribution, sales, and marketing for Humanoids’ publications in English (print & digital), and report to Humanoids’ Chief Operating Officer Alex Donoghue. Lugo is the latest major publishing figure to join Humanoids. Last fall the company announced John Cassaday as Chief Creative Officer and named Mark Waid as Director of Creative. The Los Angeles-based publisher of some of the world’s most iconic and groundbreaking science fiction and fantasy graphic novels is currently celebrating its 20th anniversary.

Humanoids has recently expanded its efforts to reach new readers across different markets with a series of publishing initiatives: the literary graphic novel imprint Life Drawn, which features deeply personal, slice of life stories; the all ages imprint, BiG; and an ambitious shared universe, H1 which officially launches on June 6th with the publication of IGNITED issue 1 by co-writers Mark Waid and Kwanza Osajyefo, artist Phil Briones and colorist Leonardo Paciarotti.

Lujo is a publishing veteran of nearly two decades, having worked most recently at DC Comics as Director of Books Marketing. Lujo began her publishing career at Soho Press, where, as Director of Sales and Marketing, she enabled the independent NYC press to achieve a worldwide reach into brick and mortar bookstores and online retailers. During her tenure at DC Comics as Executive Director of Trade Marketing, she was instrumental in the successful launch of multiple global imprints, including DC Black Label, and DC Ink and Zoom. 

Harley Salbacka has been named to the newly created Sales Representative role, which will interface with direct market retailers, booksellers and librarians. Salbacka, who was previously the Sales & Marketing Assistant, has been with the company since June of 2018, after years of experience as a manager in comic book retail, as an educator, and as a lifelong comic book fan.

Andrea Torres has joined the company as Sales & Marketing Assistant. Torres began her career as a Digital Marketing Intern at a Big 5 publishing house after attending the graduate certificate program at Denver Publishing Institute. Previous to joining Humanoids, she was an Editorial Assistant at a university press.

Both Salbacka and Torres will both report directly to Lujo.

“As Humanoids expands its catalog, with an aggressive slate of major graphic novel and comic book releases, it’s vital that we approach our distribution, promotion and sales strategy with the same care and creativity that we bring to the acquisition and creative process,” said Humanoids’ Chief Operating Officer Alex Donoghue. “We’re thrilled to have Ailen – with the support of Harley and Andrea – join us to lead those efforts.”