Saturday AM’s origins begin with Founder, Frederick L. Jones’ earliest memories.
A lifelong Anime/ Manga and Pop Culture enthusiast, he loved the more adult style action, detailed character designs, and outrageous plot lines that all went far beyond his beloved American superhero comics and cartoons for the 70’s and 80’s. This interest existed in a time where being a comicbook fan was nowhere near as hip as it is today and thus, feeling a little weird and out of the mainstream was a typical reaction. Great properties like MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM, Claremont/ Byrne era X-MEN, LEGION OF SUPER HEROES, and SUPERFRIENDS became an indelible part of the pop culture education for most people during that era. Nowadays, the fun of comicbook anthologies, interesting and diverse IP, and even SATURDAY MORNING CARTOONS has become far-less common.
After a decade-plus career as an Executive in the Videogame Industry, Frederick decided to finally start his own company focused on his two loves – anime/manga and new Intellectual Property. MYFUTPRINT ENTERTAINMENT was created to assist in developing and marketing new manga concepts for up and coming creators from around the world. Utilizing social media, discovering a new crop of creators who had grown up with a love of anime/manga and could replicate the aesthetic but new artists who were interested in and were themselves, DIVERSE — was becoming quite efficient. Since the 1980’s anime/manga had grown globally but the racial diversity had actually diminished. Characters like Claudia Grant (i.e. MACROSS/ ROBOTECH) became invisible while characters who looked distinctly European were more and more prevalent.
It didn’t take long to discover popular creators and new comics like APPLE BLACK from Nigeria, SAIGAMI from Hungary and BULLY EATER from the USA. Saturday AM was born as a vehicle for new properties that would enable us to not only capture the look of a classic comicbook anthology magazine but likewise, recreate the aesthetic and FEEL of manga by serializing content on a bi-weekly basis. To that end, Saturday AM has become a far-stronger brand than we could have ever imagined with a videogame on the way and more media adaptations coming.
Saturday AM today has dozens of creators, thousands of fans and nearly 100 issues of our magazine and in inspiring young, diverse, creators much the same way that Shonen Jump. cartoons, and comics did with Frederick back in the late 70’s.
We’re just getting started!
