Paul Constant
Seattle-based journalist, critic, and comic book writer for AHOY Comics. Creator of Snelson: Comedy Is Dying, writer of Planet of the Nerds, and cofounder of the Seattle Review of Books.
đź“Ť Seattle, WA
Paul Constant writes comics that ambush you—laugh first, flinch second, think third. A veteran journalist and critic who spent years covering books and politics for Seattle’s alt-weekly The Stranger, he brings a reporter’s eye for absurdity and a satirist’s instinct for the jugular to AHOY Comics, where he has become one of the line’s most distinctive voices.
From Newsroom to Panel
Constant’s path to comics wound through two decades in the book business—bookseller at Borders and Boston’s historic Brattle Bookshop, then Seattle’s legendary Elliott Bay Book Company. That intimate knowledge of how stories work on the page, and what keeps readers turning them, serves him well on the comic-book page.
After becoming literary critic and books editor at The Stranger, Constant cofounded the award-winning Seattle Review of Books, a vital hub for Pacific Northwest literary culture. His journalism has appeared in BuzzFeed News, the Los Angeles Times, Business Insider, io9, the Seattle Times, and many other outlets. He is a fellow at Civic Ventures, a Seattle-based public policy incubator where he writes about economic justice, labor, and the political forces shaping the Pacific Northwest.
Planet of the Nerds: A Breakout Debut
Constant’s first full-length comic, Planet of the Nerds (2019), lands with a premise that hits like a pie to the face: three jocks cryogenically frozen in the 1980s thaw out in the present to discover that nerds rule the world. Computers are everywhere, fantasy novels dominate the bestseller lists, and superhero movies fill every multiplex. The jocks, naturally, set out to restore the natural order of things.
Illustrated by Alan Robinson with colors by Felipe Sobreiro and letters by Rob Steen, Planet of the Nerds became the first AHOY Comics title optioned for a big-screen adaptation by Paramount Players. Constant’s script crackles with time-capsule comedy that lands equally well on fans of Back to the Future and Idiocracy, skewering nostalgia culture while celebrating the weird, wonderful world that nerddom built.
Snelson: Comedy Is Dying
But it was Snelson: Comedy Is Dying that cemented Constant’s reputation as a satirist willing to go to uncomfortable places. The story follows Melville Snelson, a washed-up 1990s comedian who discovers that complaining about “cancel culture” is the quickest path back to relevance. What begins as a character study of a bitter has-been evolves into a razor-sharp takedown of the grift economy—YouTube grifters, alt-right podcasters, media manipulators who profit from performative outrage.
Drawn by Fred Harper with a gloriously grotesque expressionism that channels Bill Sienkiewicz by way of Mad Magazine, colored by Lee Loughridge, and lettered by Rob Steen, Snelson was named a New York Public Library Best Adult Comic of 2022. The book earned a blurb from Patton Oswalt and prompted The Beat to praise Constant’s “sharp, satirical writing” that “never loses sight of the human cost of the attention economy.”
AHOY’s Secret Weapon
Beyond his headline series, Constant has contributed to nearly every corner of AHOY’s publishing line. He wrote backup stories for Tom Peyer’s The Wrong Earth (alongside talents like Grant Morrison and Ann Nocenti), contributed to Hashtag: Danger (where the Snelson character first debuted), and penned stories for both volumes of Edgar Allan Poe’s Snifter of Terror and Snifter of Death—the latter sending Poe on a drug-fueled tour of modern horrors like Amazon reviews and Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter feed, illustrated by Joltin’ Johnny Lucas.
In 2024, Constant contributed a gumberoo story to AHOY’s first Project: Cryptid anthology, illustrated by comics legend Peter Krause, with colors by Pippa Bowland. And in 2025, he released Trillion Dollar Heist, a free comic illustrated by Alan Robinson that explains—in delightfully accessible terms—how the richest Americans have siphoned over $70 trillion from the middle class.
What’s Next
Constant continues to write journalism and criticism while developing new comics projects. His work occupies a sweet spot between the political cartooning of Matt Bors and the literary satire of Mark Russell—perfect for fans of smart, angry, funny comics that have something to say about the world we live in.
Visit his website at paulconstant.com, find his comics writing on Bluesky @paulconstant.com, follow his Instagram @paulconstant, or subscribe to his free monthly newsletter at buttondown.email/paulconstant.
