Amazon alternative set to go public later this month touted as a 'patriotic parallel economy' that will enable conservatives to keep their money out of woke activists' pockets



PublicSq., a marketplace touted as a pro-life, pro-family, and pro-freedom "patriotic parallel economy," is set to go public.

This initiative is the latest effort by conservatives to divest from a liberal marketplace that appears increasingly antipathetic to their traditional values and hell-bent on their subordination.

Michael Seifert, the company's founder and CEO, announced in a webinar Monday that PublicSq. was going public through the SPAC Colombier Acquisition Corp. (NYSE: $CLBR) on July 20.

Businesswire previously reported that following the business combination, the combined company will be renamed "PSQ Holdings, Inc." and will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbols "PSQH" and "PSQH WS."

According to Seifert, his marketplace will accommodate patriots "passionate about putting your values into the commerce experience, voting with your wallets, [and] supporting the small businesses that make this nations so special."

The CEO told "Just the News, No Noise" that "capital markets are in desperate need of democratization. ... Because unfortunately, the capital markets have been robbed by ESG mandated funds and DEI philosophies. And just like there's a drive for consumers to spend their money in alignment with their values, there's also an equally strong drive for investors to invest their money with companies that do not hate them and actually want to promote America. So that's what we're here to do."

Seifert suggested that the initiative was born, in part, of a reaction to woke corporations' activist responses to the Dobbs ruling.

Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Amazon and a number of companies that peddle their wares on its platform vowed to reimburse those employees who travel across state lines to execute their unborn children. The reality that consumers would be made complicit by way of subsidy struck Seifert as abhorrent.

Omeed Malik, CEO and chairman of Colombier Acquisition Corp., recently underscored the urgency of the initiative, telling Donald Trump Jr. on his podcast "Triggered" that "we can continue to b*** and moan like we have for over a decade, or we can actually create some solutions."

While boycotts of woke products have proven successful in recent weeks and months, as Bud Light and Ben & Jerry's have discovered the hard way, those divestitures have not necessarily translated into support for conservative brands, despite redirection efforts.

Unlike on Amazon and other marketplaces captive to woke doctrines, Seifert said that "every single one of the vendors that have joined this platform have actually agreed to respect our core values. And a majority of the businesses will then give discounts to consumers that are there just for being PublicSq. members."

PublicSq.'s stated core values are: "We will always protect the family unit and celebrate the sanctity of every life"; "We believe small businesses and the communities who support them are the backbone of our economy"; "We believe in the greatness of this Nation and will always fight to defend it"; and "Our Constitution is non-negotiable — government isn't the source of our rights, so it can't take them away."

The values are evidently not empty rhetoric. Seifert has committed to giving his employees a $5,000 "baby" bonus in the event that they have or adopt a baby, stressing, "Strong families make a strong nation."

Seifert indicated that the platform presently has over 1.1 million Americans registered as members already and over 55,000 vendors covering the full gamut of conservative needs.

"Whether you're looking for a bank, new meat, subscription boxes, or hair care products, or pants, or athletic clothing, you name it, we've got it represented on the platform," said Seifert.

Membership on the platform is free for both consumers and businesses.

For conservatives shopping outside PublicSq., Consumers' Research introduced an alert system earlier this year that helps grocery shoppers spot products peddled by corporate behemoths that have a hand in the advancement of the left's woke agenda.

TheBlaze previously reported that "Woke Alert" is a free text service that notifies shoppers which brands "put progressive activists and their dangerous agendas ahead of customers."

— (@)

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BlazeTV contributor Eric July clears nearly $1 million in preorders inside 24 hours for his latest graphic novel, proving once again readers want good stories, not bad ideology, from their comics



BlazeTV contributor Eric July put it all on the line and launched an independent comic book company in 2022, sure that he was not the only "comic book lifer" exhausted by the leftist agitprop and infantilizing regurgitate churned out by woke publishers like Marvel and DC Comics.

That risk paid off big-time last year.

July's Rippaverse Comics released "Isom #1" in 2022, telling the tale of Avery Silman, a valorous Texas rancher who resumes his duties in Cincinnatian fashion after it becomes clear his city once again needs the costumed hero Isom's help.

The book, which received rave reviews on League of Comic Geeks, raised over $3.7 million dollars in a preorder where the stated goal was $100,000, evidencing a significant appetite for compelling content unencumbered by woke innocence-signaling — for books where story comes first.

The Dallas-based podcaster, musician, and author is back with a second comic.

\u201cThe Pre-Order Campaign for ISOM #2 is now LIVE! And check out the FIRST official project from Rippaverse Studios - the ISOM #2 Animated Trailer! #Rippaverse #Isom #Isom2 #comicbooks\n\nhttps://t.co/Plp6D3XC8V\u201d
— Rippaverse Comics (@Rippaverse Comics) 1686578445

Within 24 hours of preorders for "Isom #2" going live, July raised over $863,000 (247% over the set sales goal), proving last year's success was not a flash in the pan but rather an actionable market signal.

In fact, the excitement over the second installment in the series was enough to strain the Rippaverse website to the point of temporarily breaking.

July told TheBlaze that the website went down Monday following an unprecedented deluge of preorders and activity. While he stressed the crash was "unacceptable" and is working to bolster his comic universe's burgeoning infrastructure, July admitted it was nevertheless a "great problem to have."

While there was no guarantee ahead of the company's launch last year that there would be such overwhelming interest, July was convinced from the start he was staring down a "perfect storm."

After all, as a self-professed "comic book lifer" with a customer-centric perspective on the trade, July understood precisely how the comic book industry was "destroying itself."

The big publishers appeared willing to alienate readers who once turned to comics as a form of escapism and excitement — those who sought archetypal characters and transcendent stories that stood the test of time, free from faddish jargon and propaganda.

Oftentimes, where ideology wasn't the leading character, readers still had to contend with demoralizing stories in dead worlds populated by recycled characters.

DC Comics published a comic book in 2021 with a storyline where the Robin character comes out as bisexual after another male character asks him out on a date.

According to the New York Post, Marvel modeled an evil character after former President Donald Trump.

The multibillion-dollar company later hired identitarian leftist Ta-Nehisi Coates to transmogrify Dr. Jordan Peterson's ideas and put them in the mouth of the fictional Nazi villain Red Skull.

Marvel also saw fit to introduce to its bloated fictional universe a pair of affected heroes named "Snowflake" and "Safespace"; the former a "non-binary" character who identifies as a dehumanized plurality.

DC Comics is evidently no better.

Superman, a sometimes-homosexual in a deeply unpopular series canceled after 18 issues, has a son who advances climate alarmism.

"Between changing all of these characters and you have this ridiculous kind of push for social justice, insulting the audience and all of that — and I was like, you know what? I am going to be a solution to the problem," July told TheBlaze last year.

In the way of a solution, July did not set out to pen the great anti-woke comic book. If anything, he wanted to write a "non-woke" comic book that anyone could settle into without having to worry about being sold on some grand political project.

"You have a lot of bad American comic book content. It's terrible," July told TheBlaze Tuesday. "People that have been reading comic books like myself forever finally said, 'Hey look, these guys clearly aren't making these books with an audience like myself in mind, so I'm just not gonna buy it.'"

Comic book lovers turned off by the mainstream output "still like comics," said July. "They like American comics."

The appetite is there, but readers won't necessarily be satisfied by foreign content, even if unwoke. Japanese manga, for instance, "doesn't scratch that itch."

Making the search harder is the impenetrability of certain extant fandoms.

"It can be intimidating for a lot of noobies to try to get in on a character they might recognize from a movie," said July.

One of the apparent benefits of a fresh comic universe unspoiled by focus groups and ESG czars, such as that on offer in the Rippaverse, is that prospective readers don't need to have committed entire genealogies to memory or suffered through convoluted multi-film, multi-series backstories and reboots.

"Isom #2," for instance, "is not intergalactic. It's not interplanetary and all that stuff with none of those crazy crossovers. It's none of that. ... It's a street-level story."

The book, written by July, whose writing appears to mine some particulars of his personal story, is illustrated by artist Cliff Richards. In addition to doing pencils for Dark Horse Comics' "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" series and the artwork for Del Rey Books' graphic novel "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," Richards has also worked on various DC Comics titles.

The drawings are colored by Gabe Eltaeb, a former DC Comics colorist who quit in 2021 after taking issue with the woke bastardization of the Superman character and saying, "I'm tired of them ruining these characters; they don't have a right to do this."

The Rippaverse will soon be populated by content from Chuck Dixon as well — the prolific writer who worked on Marvel's pre-woke "The Punisher" comics, "Batman" for DC Comics, and hundreds of others.

Beyond the top-tier artwork and stories, July indicated some fans might see the appeal in the company's independence, decentralization, and personal touch.

"I think the day of the mega-corporation is over. It's not to say this is going to go away. What I mean is that you're going to see a lot more successes like ours who keep it relatively small. ... I'm at the warehouse. I'm packing orders. I have a direct line of sight with my audience. That's something you don't get with the likes of Bob Iger."

This direct line of sight goes both ways, enabling customers to see that they're dealing with people who "cherish what it is they're doing and take care of it. The audience picks up on this and the fact we don't despise the audience," said July.

In turn, Rippaverse Comics "recognizes that in order for us to last, we have to give them something that they want."

So far, so good, July indicated — despite the constant stream of vitriol from the left.

"When people found out that a guy that they feel like is ideologically different from them in an industry they feel like they own built his own sandbox, they got very aggravated," he said. "Despite all my hot political takes, I've not had anything ever in my life that got me more backlash. Nothing comes close. Not even comparable."

"I've got called everything that you can think of in the book, but doesn't matter because they can't stop it. That's the reason why we did it the independent way. We're going to continue to be great. We love our customers. They're gonna continue to support it."

Leftists, simultaneously confronted with the books' wide support and rendered incapable of cancelling Rippaverse due to its independence, "know that they can't do that with us, so they can scream into the abyss. We go virtually unimpacted. If there is an impact, they're just galvanizing the truth, incentivizing people to buy more Rippaverse books."

Eric July's Isom 2 Shane Davis Cover Drawing Process youtu.be

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Chris Pratt's 'The Terminal List' is a massive hit with regular movie watchers — 'red-blooded Americans.' But critics? It's just not woke enough for them.



Chris Pratt's action-packed Amazon series “The Terminal List” — about a Navy SEAL commander on the hunt for those who took away people he cared about most — has proven a massive hit with "red-blooded Americans," as one reviewer concluded.

Indeed, Rotten Tomatoes shows a whopping 94% score for the series from your everyday audience members. But critics? Well, it's safe to say they don't hold that opinion. They give only a 38% score for "The Terminal List."

Why?

As with most things out in the culture these days, the crux of the dislike appears to emanate from a difference in politics.

For instance, the Daily Beast's headline shouts that the series is “an unhinged right-wing revenge fantasy." RogerEbert.com calls it an "alpha male cry for help." EW's assessment is that Pratt's "version of traumatized seriousness is all vacant stares and bicep rage." The Hollywood Reporter says the "target demo" watched the series in order to see "patriotically waving flags" and "substance-free military jargon."

Audience members haven't been swayed by the critics a bit, however. The following are but a few examples:

  • "The difference between the audience score vs critics score tells you everything you need to know about this series," one audience member wrote, adding that it "doesn't shove political correctness down your throat (which is what gets you high critics score)" and that "red-blooded Americans will love it. The silent majority will love it. Wokesters will hate it. Ten thumbs up from this guy."
  • Another audience member wrote, "DO NOT READ CRITICS['] reviews; it is clear they are biased against a show that only represents military life without wokeism in it."
  • "I have a simple rule," another audience member wrote. "If a show or movie makes good content without interjecting left-wing ideology and politics, I support it. I genuinely hope they make a season 2."
  • Another audience member opined, "The critics once again show how out of touch they are with the average American. They got it completely wrong, and it's been fantastic to see them called out for it. Their opinion mean less and less with each passing day."

The Terminal List - Official Trailer | Prime Video youtu.be

(H/T: The Daily Wire)