Fund Me Friday: ‘A Perfect Circle,’ Elizabeth Beier and more

Plus: ‘Blocked: Stories from the World of Online Dating,’ Chris Samnee, Craig Rousseau and the Killer Bees!

As crowdfunding continues to be a viable method for creators to fund their creative endeavors and connect directly with fans, comic-related projects flourish on sites like Kickstarter, Patreon and IndieGoGo. Here’s a look at a few recent campaigns that caught our eyes.

A Perfect Circle minicomic

Creators involved: Writer Eric Esquivel and artist Ryan Quackenbush
Deadline: July 22
Goal: $150 (Funded!)

What to know: Esquivel shared where the story idea for this eight-page minicomic came from on Tumblr. “I got dumped at the tail end of October last year. It was, as these things often are, horrible,” he wrote. “To cope with my confusion, I did what I always do: wrote a comic about it. Specifically: a comic book about a guy who–after realizing that the last three decades of his life have been essentially a repeat of the same sad story over, and over, and over again– embarks on an epic journey to find a supernatural means with which to obliterate his personality, and start fresh.”

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Smash Pages Q&A: Eleanor Davis on ‘You & A Bike & A Road’

The creator of ‘How To Be Happy’ discusses her latest book from Koyama Press, which details her cycling trip from Arizona to Georgia.

In 2014, Fantagraphics published How To Be Happy, a collection of short comics by Eleanor Davis, which immediately established the cartoonist as one of the major figures of her generation. In the book, Davis jumped between styles and approaches, telling different kinds of stories ranging from the fantastic to realistic. Since then she made a children’s book with Drew Weing, Flop To The Top, for Toon Books. She also made the comics novella Libby’s Dad, which came out last fall from Retrofit Comics, and was recently awarded the Slate Book Review 2017 Cartoonist Studio Prize for Best Print Comic.

Davis’ new book, out now from Koyama Press, is You & A Bike & A Road. The book is a series of comics about a bike trip that Davis undertook from Tucson, Arizona, where she grew up, to her home in Athens, Georgia. We spoke recently about the book, the journey, agitprop and more.

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Archie returns to his ‘classic’ style in ‘Your Pal, Archie’ #1

Check out a preview of the first issue, due out July 26.

This past spring Archie Comics announced that their “classic-style” Archie would return in a new series by Ty Templeton and Dan Parent … with a small twist. Parent and Templeton have tweaked the artwork a bit, noting it “will be influenced from the styles and fashion of The CW’s hit new Riverdale TV series, but will remain familiar for fans of the classic style.”

The company has now released a preview of the first issue, which looks and feels more like the traditional Archie, but with the twist they noted in their release. The first five issues will feature connecting variant cover by Les McClaine, and there’s also an Incredible Hulk #181 tribute cover featuring Archie vs. Jughead that’s exclusive to Stadium Comics.

Check the preview out below.

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DC Comics teases another Colonel Sanders comic

Worlds collide again as a third DC/KFC comic arrives in July.

The comic book/fast food crossover event of the decade is set to continue, as DC Comics teases a third comic featuring KFC mascot Colonel Sanders teaming with anyone and everyone in the DC Universe. The last two comics were pretty insane, so who knows what they have in store this time — we only have the promise that he’ll go where “no colonel has gone before.”

If you missed the first two issues, never fear — you can download both of them for free, courtesy of the DC Entertainment app and, of course, KFC. So don’t miss out on The Colonel of Two Worlds or The Colonel Corps. Be warned: they may make you hungry for chicken.

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Gumby tackles fashion in this complete story by Kyle Baker

In advance of the first issue of ‘Gumby’ coming next week, Papercutz shares a story from that issue by one of comics’ greats.

NBM’s kid-friendly comics imprint Papercutz announced a new comic series starring everyone’s favorite bendable green guy, Gumby, earlier this year, and now in advance of its July 5 release they’ve shared a full story from the first issue by the wonderful Kyle Baker, who does not disappoint.

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Read Tom Scioli’s ‘director’s commentary’ for his ‘Super Powers’ stories

The creator shares more about his creative process for the back-up that ran in ‘Cave Carson Has A Cybernetic Eye.’

Tom Scioli’s recent revival of DC’s Super Powers drew heavily not just from the source material, but from “The Source” as well, as he dove deep into DC lore, particularly Jack Kirby’s contributions, to tell a crazy new story. With that material being collected in the Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye trade paperback, Scioli took to his blog to share his commentary on his approach to the new story.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Vanessa Davis on ‘Spaniel Rage,’ Then and Now

When Spaniel Rage was first published in 2005, the collection of diary comics made a splash. Vanessa Davis didn’t come from a comics background, and she had a unique way of laying out and designing pages and her own sensibility. A few years later when Drawn & Quarterly collected many of her short comics in the book Make Me a Woman, it established Davis’ reputation as one of the great cartoonists of her generation.

Since then Davis has been making short comics and illustrations for many publications, including The New York Times, Tablet, Lucky Peach, and elsewhere. Her work has appeared in Fairy Tale Comics, Nursery Rhyme Comics, Kramer’s Ergot, and Best American Comics. D&Q has just reissued Spaniel Rage with a new introduction by Davis. The book remains a striking and vivid book about life in one’s 20s, about New York City, about the life of the young artist. Davis spoke about revisiting her work, what she’s working on now, and The Terry Southern, which she was just awarded for her work for The Paris Review.

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Comics Lowdown: ECCC volunteer suit settled

Plus: the ALA, Jillian Tamaki and more.

The former owners of Emerald City Comic Con will pay $493,227.84 to former volunteers and the attorneys who represented them under a settlement that will keep the matter from going to court. Jerry Michael Brooks, a former volunteer at the con, filed a class action suit on behalf of all volunteers who worked at ECCC in 2014 and 2015, claiming that they were treated like employees and therefore should have been paid for their work. (Seattlish posted the details of the suit when it was first filed.) Under the settlement, Eitane Emerald Corp. and the Demonakos family will pay almost $500,000 to the volunteers, with the lawyers scooping up $123,300 for their troubles, Brooks getting $5,000, and the 250 or so other “volunteers” will divvy up the rest according to how many hours they worked. Although the defendants admit to no wrongdoing, the payments to the volunteers are to be regarded as part wages, part settlement for nonpayment of wages. ReedPOP, which purchased the con in 2015 and ran the 2016 and 2017 events, does not use unpaid volunteers.

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Variant ‘Redneck’ cover spawns a shirt for a good cause

The Pride Month variant covercby Ed Luce for the Skybound title is now a T-shirt benefiting The Trevor Project.

Redneck #3, the Image Comics/Skybound title about Texas vampires by Donny Cates, Lisandro Estherren and Dee Cunniffe, will help celebrate Pride month this week with a variant cover by Ed Luce. That cover features a vampire wearing a shirt that sports a variant of the LGBT slogan “We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it.” Only more NSFW:

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Help ‘shine a light in all this darkness’ by resurrecting Pepe the Frog

Matt Furie attempts to #SavePepe with a new crowdfunded comic about the stoned frog who was hijacked by white supremacists.

The Associated Press reports that Pepe the Frog, like all good comic book characters, is returning from the grave.

Pepe’s redemption will come via Kickstarter, where creator Matt Furie and his brother Jason are attempting to raise money “to positively resurrect Pepe through the creation of a brand new comic in the spirit of the original Boy’s Club.” Per the AP story, Matt’s attorney, Kimberly Motley, is exploring possible litigation against those profiting off Pepe’s image without Furie’s permission.

Pepe the Frog debuted in 2006 as part of the Boy’s Club ensemble, appearing on MySpace and in comics published by Buenaventura Press. Later his chill nature became the subject of many memes. In 2015, the white supremacists in the far right “alt.right” movement co-opted Pepe for their own white nationalism campaigns, leading to the Anti-Defamation League branding him as a hate symbol in 2016. Furie killed Pepe off on Free Comic Book Day earlier this year. Since then, the ADL has worked with Matt Furie to help #SavePepe.

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Newlyweds fight boll weevils, drug cartels in ‘Gasolina’

Skybound editor Sean Mackiewicz teams with Niko Walter, Mat Lopes and Rus Wooton for horror-crime series.

Readers of The Walking Dead or Invincible are likely familiar with Sean Mackiewicz, editorial director for Skybound, who can be found on both book’s letters pages. But responses to questions about when Daryl’s going to show up aren’t the only thing Mackiewicz is writing; he’s also branching out and writing a new comic called Gasolina, with artist Niko Walter, colorist Mat Lopes and letterer Rus Wooton.

“So, the pitch: Gasolina is a horror-crime epic set in Mexico, full of gun fights against cartels armed with tanks and perverse creatures… shot through the eyes of newlyweds fighting against a world quickly going to hell, who put a human face on a conflict that’s both harrowing and outrageous,” Mackiewicz wrote on the Skybound site. “The short version: shit goes down.”

The first issue arrives in September. Check out some preview pages for it below.

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Comics Lowdown: IDW adapts ‘The Force Awakens,’ Ringos slated for BCC

Plus: Jack Kirby and William Messner-Loebs to receive the Bill Finger Award, why millennials like webcomics and more.

IDW announced its all-ages Star Wars Adventures comic series a few months ago, but they sprang a surprise this week: In August, they will publish an 80-page graphic novel adaptation of the movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The graphic novel, which is also intended for younger readers, is part of Disney’s Journey to Star Wars: The Last Jedi publishing program, which is designed to gin up excitement for the eighth movie, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which will be out in December. The writer of the adaptation is Alessandro Ferrari, and the art is provided by “a group of Disney artists intended to bridge the gap between Star Wars and traditional Disney animation, making it more attractive for younger audiences.” You’d think people with that sort of ability would merit an actual name credit, but I guess not. This same anonymous group has done other Star Wars graphic novel adaptations that were published by Disney Lucasfilm Press, and in fact, Bleeding Cool notes that this graphic novel was announced in an article about them almost a year ago. That means the big news is really the publisher—it looks like IDW, will launch Star Wars Adventures in September, is becoming the chief publisher of Star Wars comics for young readers.

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