Welcome to Crowdpuncher, where we round up cool comics crowdfunding campaigns. If you’re looking to buy from or support a creator directly, you’ve come to the right place.
Cartoonist Chris Schweizer has been serializing Outlaw’s Apprentice weekly on Webtoon and Patreon, and now he’s bringing the first collected arc to print. The 208-page Appalachian-inspired swashbuckling fantasy follows Otis, a teenage artist-in-training, and Erska, the former mercenary who took him on as an apprentice, as an injustice sends them both on the run.
Schweizer, who has earned three Eisner Award nominations for his previous work on books like the Crogan Adventures series, is publishing the book in mass market paperback format.
What’s the deal?
A digital copy will cost you $10, while a physical book, woth a signature and sktech, is available for $20. The $40 Apprentice tier adds a 64-page sketchbook, three exclusive art prints, and a signed copy. Higher tiers include an oversized Drawing Desk Edition — think “Artist’s Edition” format — with 75 pages of art at its original size with annotations ($75), a page of original art ($125) and a hand-made model sculpture of the Broken Blade artifact from the story ($250). The campaign has already blown past its initial goal and unlocked more than a dozen stretch goals, including an embossed logo, a map poster and a castle cutaway poster. If it reaches $40,000, copies will be donated to every public library in Kentucky.
Creators: Writer/artist Chris Schweizer
Platform: Kickstarter
Deadline + Goal: Campaign ends July 29. The goal of $2,500 has been met and surpassed.
Visit Kickstarter for more information or to make a pledge.
Heartbreak Manor
Steve Niles and Damien Worm, who previously co-created the excellent October Faction and Monster & Madman at IDW, reunite for a Gothic holiday ghost story set in the early 1900s.
The 100-page hardcover follows Sally Madison, a girl rescued from an orphanage whose wealthy new parents seem generous, until she begins noticing the locked doors and strict rules of her new home and realizes she needs to uncover its deadly secret before Christmas. The book is edited and lettered by goth icon Monica Richards of Faith and the Muse, who is also collaborating with darkwave artist Anthony Roumanis on a 30-minute original soundtrack.
What’s the deal?
A digital copy is available for $25, while a hardcover will cost you $45. A hardcover plus the soundtrack is $60. Add-ons include art prints, copies of October Faction and a Zoom call with Niles.
Creators: Steve Niles (writer), Damien Worm (artist/colorist), Monica Richards (editor/letterer)
Platform: Zoop
Deadline + Goal: You have 20 days left to pledge, and their goal is $7,500.
Visit Zoop for more information or to make a pledge.
MEGA: Rise of the Titans
Argentine cartoonist Salvador Sanz’s acclaimed kaiju-meets-cosmic-horror saga is getting its first English-language collected edition through Alien Books, presented across three oversized volumes.
The story begins when a colossal creature called the Salamander emerges from Antarctica and devastates South America. It then inexplicably powers down. Eight centuries later, a second entity awakens from the ocean floor. What follows expands from a monster survival story into a cosmic horror epic spanning continents and dimensions.
What’s the deal?
For $29, you can get digital copies of the three volumes, while softcover copies will cost $72. If you’d like to add a slipcase to hold them, it’ll cost another $2. Other tiers offer art prints, statues, original art and more.
Creators: Writer/artist Salvador Sanz
Platform: Kickstarter
Deadline + Goal: Alien Books has surpassed its $5,000 goal. The campaign ends July 14.
Visit Kickstarter for more information or to make a pledge.
Tales of the Macabre
For the first time in English, SHP Comics is bringing Spanish artist Joan Boix’s horror comics anthology to new readers, newly colored and adapted from the original 1970s pages. The 20-story collection adapts literary horror classics by H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka, Robert Bloch, Arthur Conan Doyle and others in a style reminiscent of EC horror comics. Boix, whose career spans more than five decades in European horror comics, supervised the coloring.
What’s the deal?
$20 gets you a PDF, while a trade paperback goes for $30 and a hardcover goes for $40. Add-ons include other books from the SHP library.
Creators: Joan Boix (art), Shawn Hainsworth (English adaptation), Zeno Decrux (colors)
Platform: Zoop
Deadline + Goal: There’s a week left in the campaign, which has surpassed its goal of $1,500.
Visit Zoop for more information or to make a pledge.
Rapid Fire
- The campaign for John Layman and Rob Guillory’s Ghostbrawler has gone live. It has also surpassed its goal, and has about 20 days left. Check out the campaign page for more information.
- Oni Press’s Kickstarter campaign for Covenant: The Final Chapter, the sixth volume of LySandra Vuong’s supernatural queer romance series, has blown past its goal and raised more than $150,000. It has about 15 days left in its campaign.
- The campaign for the final issue of The O.Z. by David Pepose, Ruben Rojas and team has surpassed $20,000. It only has five days left. Chekc out my interview with Pepose here.