COMIX35 (ROX35 Media, Inc.) began with a vision to make better use of comic-style literature in missions. Nate Butler wanted to use comics and his 20+ years as a professional comics producer to reach people for Christ. The Lord brought him together with Christian missionaries, nationals, and publishers who wanted to develop print material that would actually be read. With more people reading comics-style literature than any other printed material on earth, it was a natural to think in terms of using comics for Christ in the many nations of comics readers.
From the start, the goal was to provide seminars, consulting and coaching to missionaries and local believers to produce comic books within their respective countries. This eliminated the minefield of cultural unknowns, eliminated translation, and maximized the impact of a small teaching team by empowering many others in their local contexts.
In January 1996 the First International Christian Comics Training Conference was held in the Philippines with participants from 12 countries. Over half the participants were decision makers in literature ministries, and over half were also non-Western. The conference so exceeded the expectations of both leaders and participants that it created demand for more such training, and for on-site coaching and consultation for missionary and national comics production teams.
Since that first successful event, the ministry has held over 30 other COMIX35 events of various sizes, lengths and formats around the world for over 750 attendees representing 49 countries, including India, Nigeria, Israel, Czech Republic, Mexico, Cambodia, Thailand, Japan, UK, Turkey, Bulgaria, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Hong Kong, Albania, and Australia.
Nate Butler has served as the primary teacher at these events with local Christian comics producers and young “teacher trainees” assisting at seminars in the US, Mexico, India, Russia, Thailand, Japan, Hong Kong, and the UK.
A number of publishing projects have been launched from the seminars, some with circulations of over a million issues. Many people are being reached through comics produced as a result of these events.
In October 1999 Nate Butler met Roald Lidal of New Life League, Japan, (NLL) at a Christian comics meeting in Tokyo. The two men found that they shared the same vision and passion to reach the Japanese people through manga, the very popular style of comics in that country. They also saw the potential for Christian Japanese manga to reach youth all around the world due to the international appeal of this style. For several years the two ministries have been working together on NLL’s Japanese graphic novel series in five editions: Manga Messiah, Manga Metamorphosis, Manga Mutiny, Manga Melech, and Manga Messengers.
In 2007 COMIX35 began to initiate and facilitate "special focus" publishing projects helping Christian creators more directly with the publication of their own projects. This is in keeping with the original philosophy of COMIX35 to encourage and enable Christians within a culture to create their own Christian comics without extra influence from outside their culture.
