Diskette Press is an independent RISO studio that has been operating for a vague amount of time but has been important in the lives of many underrepresented cartoonists and readers alike. Diskette was originally founded by Carta Monir, but operations have recently been taken over by a specialized task force. I reached out to Angel Perez with the hopes of conducting an interview with the Diskette team. Thankfully, despite being way cooler than me, they all agreed.  These are their stories. 

Ruby May Valentine (RMV): Could each of you please introduce yourselves?

Angel Perez (AP): I’m Angel Perez. You may know me previously as Michelle Perez. I am cocreator of The Pervert alongside Remy Boydell. In the past, I’ve done work in game journalism, music reviews, and some commissioned editorial work. I co-own Diskette with Dylan and Robin

Robin R (R): Yeah! I’m Robin (they/them). I’m a cartoonist and, as of taking over Diskette, a printer and publisher. 

Dylan Box (DB): I’m Dylan Box (they/them). I’m a designer and installation artist based in Detroit. 

RMV: Excellent, thank you! I understand Diskette was previously operated by Carta Monir, so what led each of you to running Diskette? What was it like getting operations started?

AP: For my part, it was a middle of the night phone call as it related to Diskette Press. Carta told me Robin was interested in figuring out and running the press. There were a lot of problems amd Carta’s health needed consideration. Carta and I were becoming better friends, I wanted to come back to my home state of Michigan and work on something new again! It’s been an adventure ever since. In terms of getting things running again, I was balancing helping my mother after a car accident as a caregiver, meeting and befriending Robin, and uh, Robin being incredibly chill with me as I started mourning the loss of a friend doing our first new convention. 

DB: I’ve been assisting and helping out from the shadows for years, so when Carta came to me looking for hands to take on a more active role, it was hard to say no. Carta had really set us up to start running–it had been a part of a larger studio space, Small Works, for years, so, thankfully, the equipment was in great shape and just needed new hands. I’ve done graphic design for years, and my printmaking skills have been a little rusty and mostly for commercial work–never artistic pleasure. So, getting an opportunity to learn and use a new set of tools has been a great challenge. It’s been fun just working for hours in the shop just putting the reps into becoming a skilled printmaker again. (edited)

R: Before I started with Diskette, I had first stumbled upon Small Works, which shares studio space with Diskette. They are a wonderful print shop that hosts risograph and letterpress classes for the community. I really wanted to self-publish and print my own work, so I pursued their risograph studio time. After showing up again and again and doing a short residency with them, the owner, Gerald, mentioned that Carta was looking for someone to help her out with Diskette. It was at that moment that I realized the studio I had been showing up at for weeks shared space with a press I had admired for years prior. I jumped at the opportunity right away and reached out to Carta to arrange a meeting. I remember being so nervous; I looked up to her so much! We met at a coffee shop, and she asked me if I wanted to be part of the new era of Diskette. She explained that she couldn’t keep it going on her own and wanted to “Willy Wonka” the press to a new group of trans people. I had no idea what I was signing up for at the time, but obviously I said yes. I’m so glad I did. I work a full time job, and, for the first couple of years, I lived about 45 minutes away. So, for a while, it was just me driving up there and fulfilling online orders for the remaining stock of previous publications, as well as learning how to use the riso by printing my own projects. Once Angel and Dylan joined, and we started gearing up to go back to indie comic shows, that’s when the ball really started rolling again.

RMV: Thank you! These details are important to documenting Diskette’s history, so I appreciate the responses. I’m wondering now what the roles are like at Diskette? Do each of y’all do a little bit of everything? How’s the ship run? Is using the massive collator the coolest thing ever?

AP: I like using the stitcher, the cutter, and I’ve had to do a shit ton of hand collating alongside some of our illustrious and wonderful volunteers. I like doing our sales at conventions and being personable with fans new and old. At the moment, I’m gearing up to do more social media stuff for us

DB : I’m on the design and production side, as well as running some of the business operations. Working with Robin and Angel has been fantastic because there’s a great deal of overlap in our skill sets. It’s nice to be comfortable knowing each of us are able to independently gravitate towards and take over each of the different parts to running a shop. On the tool discussion, I’ve been really drawn to the paper shear–a giant paper cutter that has a massive blade. It’s the ultimate intrusive thought machine, so much so that you have to press two separate buttons at the same time in order to get it to work.

R: I’m personally really looking forward to working one-on-one with artists and developing an editorial skillset, as well as continuing to broaden my knowledge in book design and pushing the boundaries of what we’re capable of making with our DIY publishing methods. 

RMV: Paper slicers really are intrusive thought central.

AP: It reminded me subconsciously of factory work and it clicked into my brain like a lego

DB: Thank god for the collator. I will do everything in my power to not have to hand-collate ever again. I remember sitting on the floor in Carta’s apartment, hand-collating books hours before getting on the road to CXC.

RMV: Hand collation is kind of a nightmare but becomes meditative sometimes, I think. I used to run a small riso studio, and I remember my first big order still because of collating everything by hand.

R: I think that as time goes on, we’ll continue to figure that out! We’re only just starting to publish again, so I think 2025 will be the year that we get a better understanding of where our individual strengths are. Up until now, I’ve done a lot of digital file preparation and printing – digital file preparation and riso printing has been a steep but rewarding learning curve. It’s a great feeling being able to get a machine that’s as old as you are to function properly and get the results you’re looking for.

RMV: Yeah, riso are kind of a beast to operate. I remember when I first got mine, Carta was nice enough to help me troubleshoot it for a couple of hours over text.

R: Carta is an angel, and I have definitely been on long calls with her, trying to figure out how this all works.

AP: Yeah. I straight up envy Robin’s ability with the publishing process, and it’s what I want to learn most. In general, all the machines create a very soothing vibe

RMV: Running a press is a secret ploy to operate cool machinery. 

DB: Honestly, I trust these machines so much more than anything I’ve had to use that was made recently. That may make me sound like a boomer, but I’d rather use a Riso from the ’90s than try to deal with the nightmare that is a modern laser printer.

RMV: I feel that. I appreciate how honest a RISO is. If there’s something wrong, it tells you what’s up, and, usually, you can fix it yourself by just opening it up.

R: So true. At least the riso doesn’t require you to sign up for a monthly subscription in order to operate it.

RMV: You don’t have to worry about your riso still working or not if some servers reach end of life. I found a third-party ink service that spoofs the chips on my inkjet’s carts, and I haven’t looked back.

DB: I won’t say anything in the press so as not to void my warranty

AP: The output is so much…warmer? The aha moment for me on whether or not this was gonna work was Robin showing me a copy of Datura as we were both getting hyped up as he said We Can Do This. I loved how those colors looked.

RMV: I was going to ask next about printing backgrounds; it seems Robin and Dylan have prior experience. Do any of you have earlier printing experience? Riso or not?

AP: My only printing experience, and my folks can vouch for it because I got in trouble for it, was drawing vulgar comics in high school and taping them together.

R: Prior to finding Small Works, the only printing experience I had was with at-home printers. I remember my dad helped me print my anime fan art out on glossy photo paper so I could sell them at anime conventions in middle school.

DB: I did more traditional printmaking in my earlier practice: woodblocks, letterpress, screen printing, and some intaglio work.

R: Oh–I suppose I do have experience with linocut.

DB: Yeah, it’s good to see where a lot of the technical details of printing came from. I’ve found myself going back and forth between a lot of techniques I’ve learned for other practices, but I’m really just a sucker for incorporating some cool tool or technique.

R: I appreciate how user-friendly the riso is. It requires a willingness to troubleshoot (rather frequently) when it comes to the older models, but, at the end of the day, the instructions are pretty clear: put huge ink cartridge into printer, put paper into printer, send photo, hit buttons. I think that all things considered, it’s a great segue into printing larger projects that you can’t achieve on your at-home printer. For someone with little to no previous printing experience, I’m grateful riso was there waiting for me.

AP: We now have three in the office!

RMV: Wow! That’s great. Have you named them?

R: The original Diskette riso is named Babygirl, and we recently acquired a second one from a former studio mate named Jellybean (to clarify, the riso is named Jellybean, not the former studio mate). I was offered an opportunity to get a free riso from a local school that no longer needed it, and I’ve named it Enterprise.

RMV: Okay, before we get to the closing part of this, I wanted to ask what each of your histories with comics/cartoons/etc is? As far back as you want to go.

AP: I made shitty comics as a child. I was into capeshit symbols and saw the question mark the Riddler used and named a villain in my comic called the Hooker because I thought it would be cool to have question mark hooks. The folks did not like the Hooker. In high school, I worked in the school’s library, doing stuff like rebinding because it’s a rural school that can’t necessarily afford to buy new books. I curated so many comics. I became a comics pirate who bought back all the CBRs I downloaded. Some time later, in adulthood, after writing about other people’s stuff, I wanted to make my own. My friend Francine introduced me to Remy Boydell, and I wrote about my time in sex work in a drunken stupor. Now, much older, I wanna be closer to the process of art. I’ve always had a DIY mentality. The people and experiences you get in comics are all over the place, but my life is all the richer for it. I… have read so many Punisher comics. I could be a Punisher scholar. Batman scholar is a fake job. Punisher is cool. He kills the bad guys.

DB: I think I slept with an absolutely decimated copy of Calvin & Hobbes for years. My father was a religious Batman collector, so comics were a lot of my primary reading material when I was younger. I gravitated to webcomics as a teen and had one or two that I made in MS Paint in middle school that I hope have been fully expunged from the internet. By college, I was instead on the production end, teaching myself InDesign by doing print layout for the Gargoyle, the campus alternative magazine. It’s always been a style of work that I’ve latched onto. It’s such a direct and emotionally resonant medium.

R: I’ve loved comics and animation for as long as I can remember. I spent a lot of time at the library after school and read just about every manga they had on the shelf. My favorite was Ranma 1/2. I’ve been drawing for just as long. When I was in high school, I really dreamed of being a storyboard artist (as most artsy teens who loved Adventure Time probably dreamed of being). Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford to pursue art school, so things went in different directions as I dawdled through community college and eventually state school. Soon, I realized that while a storyboarding career was maybe out of reach, comics were there with open arms (and always had been). I’ve always wanted to make narrative art, and I have pursued it in every avenue I can. I used to mostly make Adventure Time fan comics as a teen and young adult, but now I make other things too, haha. A few years ago, I moved to Michigan and started working at a comic book shop. After a year or so, I asked if I could curate the independently published/micropress department at the store, and I’ve been doing that ever since. I’ve gotten to connect with so many amazing people through that, it feels really good to be able to put money into artists’ pockets and get more eyes on their work. Comics have become my great passion in life. Since joining Diskette, I’ve really shifted my gears into pursuing comics as something I spend more time doing. Going to indie comics shows has blown my mind. Every day, I feel like I’m finally doing the things I’ve always wanted to. I’m currently enrolled in the year-long comics intensive at SAW, and I’m really looking forward to making more comics in 2025. 

AP: Yeah. Right now, we are all very passionate about art in our lives. It is fantastic. 

RMV: These are great responses; thank you. Also, yeah, Adventure Time definitely impacted me as a high schooler, and I started making comics because of it. I printed them at home, and the local comic shop put it in their small press section. So now it is 2025! What does the future of Diskette look like? Any projects you want to shout out that you have planned? I love notebooks. Are there other non-comic projects you have planned?

AP: We have new output coming. As well as wonderful stationary Dylan just brought up out of the blue as a fun idea. People love ‘em.

R: Yes–dear anyone reading this, please go check out the really awesome and cool notebooks Dylan designed. They’re seriously so awesome.

RMV: These are great responses; thank you. Also, yeah, Adventure Time definitely impacted me as a high schooler, and I started making comics because of it. I printed them at home, and the local comic shop put it in their small press section. So now it is 2025! What does the future of Diskette look like? Any projects you want to shout out that you have planned? I love the notebooks. Are there other non-comic projects you have planned?

AP: We currently have a riso comic by Haus of Decline that collects Igor The Assistant and other fine artists we are in talks with. I’m humbled to speak to so many talented people. As for the future. I think we wanna continue the mission Carta laid out, this being a bridge publisher that helps someone along the way towards better and brighter projects

DB: There’s also a bit of personal work I’m publishing through Diskette: A set of zines from and about A Night At The Orfelia, which was an interactive installation set in a utopian queer nightclub from 2054.

R: We have some really exciting projects lined up for the next few months that I don’t think we can go into too much detail about now, but they are really very cool. 

DB: I’m also working on a couple of other weird stationary items and products, so look out for some other printed things to come out of Diskette in the near future.

R: I’m also in the middle of designing a sexy new mascot for Diskette, who you will definitely be seeing in the near future. 

AP: Yes, we all want to marry the mascot. She’s so cool I’d be embarrassed to approach her

R: She’s based on the original Diskette riso, Babygirl. I’m going for a sort of “what if the riso was a transformer and also a cute girl” vibe. The first name I threw out was “Babygirl V1” but if you have any suggestions you’d like to add, feel free to throw them out there.

RMV: Babygirl Prime

R: LOL, that’s good

AP: I thought of Eject because of uh, this cool trick she can do. The lore of the risograph is not an afterthought with this mascot. Upwards of ten people have asked me if I’ve fucked the risograph.

RMV: Alright, I think I am ready to close out the on the record interview unless y’all have any final words you want to throw in. I promise it’s not because of Angel’s comment about fucking the risograph which she has definitely never done.

AP: I have never fucked the risograph

DB: I have only fisted the risograph, but that was purely for maintenance purposes.

RMV: Fisting the risograph is a necessary procedure unfortunately. It’s just business.

R: We’ve all fisted the risograph for maintenance purposes once or twice.

AP: I have not, but I’m positive I’ve seen one of you do duck hands for it

DB: It’s an important part of the bonding process

AP: One day, a girl can dream

R: So there I was, cornflower up to my elbows…

DB: Fin.

RMV: I hope SOLRAD lets me put that part in.

(editor’s note: we did)