A few incredible things happened with the release of my newest magazine, MONTHLY PURORESU: Tournament Edition. First my team was blessed with an insider look at the making of championship titles, with IWGP World Heavyweight belt designer Dan Van Alst. The spread I designed for the Making of a Title feature was inspired by a long-ago piece I read in WWF Raw: The Magazine.

I also met an amazing new ad partner in NBA Jam: The Book, a Boss Fight Books classic (for those into gaming literature). The print ad was custom designed just for us based on my creative direction for the Fall Edition.

Starlight Kid, the phenomenal high-flying bad girl of STARDOM was a no-brainer as our cover star, and she was happy enough to feature our magazine cover on her social media accounts. Not only that but STARDOM’s popular CEO and Co-founder Rossy Ogawa tweeted out his copy of the magazine, helping us obliterate every major weekly social metric when his post dovetailed with my widely-shared live event photography of New Japan DETONATION.

Finally, marketing manager Steven R. Jackson and I onboarded three new writers after developing a Style Guide for MONTHLY PURORESU and organizing our content strategy with Sprout Social. The result has been an increase in engagements, magazine sales, followers and turnaround time for our artwork. It’s been an amazing ride now with my team’s second year fully behind us, and I’m happy to say this brainchild of mine has made it to four different continents and into the hands of many happy readers.