Last year the short-lived media company NSFWcorp was purchased by Pando Media, who acquired a number of their writers and took over operations for their monthly magazine, rebranded as Pando Quarterly.

I worked on the first issue, arriving to subscribers this week, with the former NSFWcorp comics crew of Brian McFadden, Jen Sorensen, Ted Rall, and Ryan Pequin, and brought in other cartoonists for five page stories. Susie Cagle dissects the sharing economy, Tom Humberstone looks at the rise of right-wing nationalism in the UK, and Sarah Jaffe and Molly Crabapple tell the story of a Brooklyn hospital fighting to stay open.

The entire issue clocks in at 74 pages and significantly ups the print quality from NSFW magazine. Every article is illustrated, mainly by the two staff artists (!) who work at Pando.

Unfortunately, there is no way to order copies. Only people who were already subscribers to NSFWcorp will be seeing it and there is no way to order single issues right now. I post this to show that it exists, that a publication can hire multiple cartoonists and illustrators, pay them well, and survive with a dedicated subscriber base. I wish there were more like it.

The economics of the whole thing don't seem to be that frightening. It has me thinking about the future of The Nib…