About Us
Our Story
The seeds for Bonafide Media Publishing came about 30 years ago in the early 90s when founder, Jerry Holliday returned from travelling in South East Asia with a swirl of ideas and gritty determination to publish a comic magazine. When in Thailand, he had also started to write, what would become the first novella to be published by Bonafide Media’s imprint, Dark Paradigm Publishing years later in 2012.
Jerry had been creating dummy issues of Doxi the Dog to try and sell the concept to publishers and this eventually morphed into Bonafide Comics, inspired by street art and hip-hop culture of the time, and especially magazines like Deadline (Home to Jamie Hewlett’s Tank Girl), together with European, Manga and Underground comics.
From the age of 14, Jerry had been active in publishing home-made comic zines such as Knock Yaself Out and Subterranean. These black and white photocopied zines were stapled, trimmed and sold in comic shops across the UK.
For Bonafide Comics, he teamed up with writer, Luke Fay and they co-created stories like Breakdown (An apocalyptic tale following three female protagonists), Ed n Ed, a self-styled anarchic pastiche based on Jerry and Luke. Then, there was Dooley Dooce – a deranged piece of pond life about which the less said, the better. Jerry and Luke were also joined by artists such as James Fox, Mark Swan, Nick Walker, and many others.
In 1994 Issue Zero sprang onto the streets and the magazine received spots on TV, radio and was featured in ID magazine, DJ, Hip Hop Connection as well as Bristol based Venue magazine.
Co-editor at the time, Luke Fay said in HHC: “At lot of people don’t know what to make of it, especially if they have picked it up in the clothes and record shops, but the people in the comics industry have been very positive.”
In the end, Bonafide Comics only ran for three glorious issues and amazingly there are still rare copies available to purchase.
Click here to grab a piece of retro comics history.
Following an extended hiatus from publishing, Jerry came back to his true passion after re-working a ‘Doxi the Dog’ tale that had originally appeared in Bonafide Comics. The new version, aimed at younger readers was a full-colour graphic novel under the Bonafide imprint. Since then, more children’s books have been added.
In 2011, Jerry also published his first non-fiction book called ‘Internet Pie’, followed by a first novel, ‘False Flag,’ that became the Frank Bowen Conspiracy Thriller series. Dark Paradigm Publishing, an imprint of Bonafide Media was soon formed and Jay Newton joined to become a collaborator in the project.
Dark Paradigm projects will be exploring more cross-over stories in that post-apocalyptic/thriller and dystopian themed universe, as well as exciting projects by new authors. Keep posted by opting into the DPP newsletter or through the Bonafide Media email updates.
Bonafide Media is now looking build the catalogue in a number of areas:
There will be a focus on non-fiction books along with digital eco-systems to accompany those brands, specifically in the areas of business and marketing, finance, current affairs, and mindset.
Look out for more children’s books, comics projects, as well as activity and gift books.
