Crowdfunding – SMASH PAGES

Take a look at one of the stories from the ‘Death of Comics Bookcase’ anthology

Zack Quaintance and a host of great artists are crowdfunding an anthology of stories as told by a talking bookcase.

Comics blogger Zack Quaintance left his former blog, Comics Bookcase, behind a few years ago, but now he’s circling back to finish it off in Death of Comics Bookcase, Vol. 1, which is now up on Kickstarter.

“I shut down my comics site a couple years ago to focus on creating comics,” Quaintance said. “Now, I’m dusting it off to tell the tale of the titular Bookcase’s demise. There will be blood…and bookcases…and comics. It’ll be great!”

The 48-page anthology features six stories, all written by Quaintance and featuring artwork by Anna Readman, Nick Cagnetti, Luke Horsman, PJ Holden, Pat Skott, Ryan Lee and more.

Courtesy of Quaintance, we’re pleased to share a preview of one of the stories from the anthology titled Next Door #2, a “subtle neighborhood crime short” that follows up the 2021 comic Next Door, which features art by Skott, colors by Ellie Wright and letters by Rob Jones. You can check out the preview and more information about the book below.

Oni’s ‘Cult of the Lamb’ comic crowfunds more than $200K on its first day

The campaign will run on Kickstarter through April 11.

Earlier today Oni Press launched a Kickstarter for a new Cult of the Lamb comic, based on the video game of the same name. Within six minutes, the campaign hits its measly $10,000 goal, and a few hours later was well over $200,000 in pledges.

If you’re not familiar with Cult of the Lamb, it’s a roguelike crossed with a social simulation game — kind of like if Hades and Animal Crossing had a baby, and that baby let you run your own cult. Your character is Lamb, who begins the game being resurrected by an ancient deity and then begins gathering his followers and exploring dungeons. It’s a clever, addictive game that is both super cute and disturbing at the same time. The game’s deveklopers, Devolver Digital and Massive Monster, recently released new DLC for the game, Sins of the Flesh.

Smash Pages Q&A | Sarah Byam on ‘Billi 99’

The writer of one of Tim Sale’s first comics projects talks about the new hardcover being crowdfunded by Clover Press.

Before Long Halloween, Superman for All Seasons or the various shades of Marvel miniseries like Hulk: Gray and Daredevil: Yellow came Billi 99, the first major comics work of Tim Sale.

The legendary artist teamed with writer Sarah Byam on the project, which was first published in black and white by Dark Horse back in 1991. The four-issue miniseries told the story of a teen vigilante, Billi Chadam, who took up her father’s sword to battle corporate greed and a corrupt government.

And now, more than 30 years later, Billi 99 is back. Clover Press is currently crowdfunding a hardcover collecting the almost 200-page story, with added color by José Villarrubia. The project has surpassed its goal by a landslide, and offers several editions and add ons in addition to the hardcover.

I spoke with Byam about the project, the addition of color, and what it means to see her and Sale’s vision for Billi 99 realized.

Mat Groom + Kelly McMahon crowdfund a 1920s speakeasy-themed ‘Bad Blood’ card game

The campaign, which includes a comic by Groom and artist Nicoletta Baldari, launches on Kickstarter today.

When I spoke with Mat Groom a few weeks ago about the Kickstarter campaign for the second volume of Inferno Girl Red, he mentioned he was working with designer Kelly McMahon on a 1920s-themed murder mystery card game called Bad Blood. The crowdfunding campaign for the game is now live, and not only did Groom write the game, but he also wrote a tie-in comic for it.

The comic features artwork by Nicoletta Baldari and is available via one of the many tiers being offered to backers of the campaign. The comic provides some of the back story for the game, showing what life was like for Dee Dumas, the murder victim, and Joseph Field, the journalist who would wind up investigating her death (and who you play as in the card game), before the murder.

“For as long as I can remember, I’ve been enthralled by the mystery genre, be it film, television, literature or a good old fashion internet stalk, I love to be the detective!” said McMahon, a graphic designer and illustrator based in Los Angeles by way of Melbourne, Australia. “The romanticized glamor of the 1920s masquerades for the realities of the era. A ritzy elegant design, lavish lifestyles and devious underground happenings. There is a similar romance in moving your life to the otherside of the world, the dream sparkles but the reality is much less polished. All of this led to Bad Blood, my idea for a card game and murder mystery experience that harkens back to my love of the 1920s and my love for a good whodunnit.”

Smash Pages Q&A | Mat Groom returns to discuss the second ‘Inferno Girl Red’

The writer returns to the Massive-Verse for the second volume of the graphic novel series, which is currently up on Kickstarter.

Following a very successful campaign on Kickstarter for the first book back in 2021, Mat Groom, Erica D’Urso and the rest of the team have returned to crowdfund Inferno Girl Red Book Two. The new campaign is currently live.

If you aren’t familiar with Inferno Girl Red, it’s one of the many titles that make up the Massive-Verse, the collection of titles overseen by Kyle Higgins that include Radiant Black, The Dead Lucky and Rogue Sun, among others. It combines Groom’s love of tokusatsu superheroes and boarding school dramas, and it looks great thanks to D’Urso, colorist Igor Monti, letterer Becca Carey and design group For The People.

At press time, the campaign has brought in just over $45,000, which is more than halfway to its $85,000 goal. I spoke with groom about the new campaign, what he learned from the first one, how Inferno Girl Red fits into the Massive-Verse and more. He also shares a few details on his involvement with the upcoming Bad Blood playing cards/murder mystery game.

Check out Chrissie Zullo’s variant cover for ‘Armored’ #2 [Exclusive]

The Kickstarter for the five-issue miniseries from Clover Press is now live.

Screenwriter Michael Schwartz is making his comic book writing debut with a five-issue miniseries called Armored, which is about a boy and his new best friend, a haunted suit of armor. Schwartz has teamed up with artist Ismael Hernandez and letterer Ferran Delgado on the project, which publisher Clover Press is currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter.

“A few years ago, my entire comic book collection was stolen,” said Schwartz, who penned the screenplay for Gnome Alone. “After that I started to re-collect and revisit the thousands of books I loved — from Silver Age classics to modern era epics — and realized the potential comic books offered me for telling this ambitious and personal tale. Working with Clover has been a real pleasure as they truly understood the scope of the story and how Ismael Hernandez and I wanted this narrative to unfold for the reader.”

Each issue will feature covers and variants by different artists, and we’re pleased to debut Chrissie Zullo‘s variant cover for Armored #2, which you can see below. Her trademark whimsical style has been featured on covers for Archie Comics, the various Fables titles, Star Wars and many more, and it’s great to see it here:

Jeff Smith will collect his college paper comic strip ‘Thorn’

A Kickstarter campaign for the strips that serve as the precursor to ‘Bone’ will launch in October.

Prior to the release of Bone as a comic book — and it eventually becoming a worldwide phenomenon — Jeff Smith had a college comic strip called Thorn. It introduced several of the characters who would eventually evolve into the ones we know and love in the Bone series, including Thorn and Phone Bone. In fact, Smith would reference many of those early strips directly in the early issues of Bone.

Thorn has never been collected in its entirety, but that will change when Cartoon Books launches a Kickstarter later this year for Thorn: The Complete College Strips.

“Talking Jeff into this book wasn’t easy, but fans have been asking us for years,” said Cartoon Books Publisher Vijaya Iyer, Smith’s partner.

Kickstarter’s comics projects have increased by 14% this year

The crowdfunding platform shares some of their data for the first half of 2023, as comics projects continue to flourish on the site.

Crowdfunding continues to serve as a viable method for creators to fund their creative endeavors, as comic-related projects flourish on sites like Kickstarter. Even with the rough economic environment we’ve seen over the last six months, with rate hikes, inflation and layoffs, comics-related projects on Kickstarter have remained resilient — and have even grown compared to last year.

With Comic-Con on the horizon and the first half of the year complete, Kickstarter shared some of their recent data with us.

In the first half of the year:

Comic projects on the platform grew by 14% when compared to the first half of 2022. Comic projects in the first half of 2022 numbered 1,457 and increased to 1,666 in the first half of 2023.
Dollars pledged to comics campaigns also increased, from $14.4 million in 2022 to $17.6 million in 2023.
While the number of overall projects increased, so did the number of successful projects. 1,171 comics projects, or 78.1%, successfully met their funding goal this year. This is a 13.5% increase compared to the same time last year.

Oni Press teases a new ‘The Sixth Gun’ project from Bunn + Hurtt

“Sometimes what’s dead doesn’t stay gone.”

Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt’s The Sixth Gun may have ended in 2016, but “Sometimes what’s dead doesn’t stay gone.”

A new teaser released by Oni Press today hints that a new The Sixth Gun project is on the way via Kickstarter. While the supernatural western had a definitive end, Bunn and Hurtt always hinted that they had more stories to tell, and even launched a second series, Shadow Roads, that was set in the same world.

Gaiman + Pratchett’s ‘Good Omens’ is coming to comics, courtesy of Colleen Doran

The graphic novel will be funded through Kickstarter.

Colleen Doran has adapted several of Neil Gaiman’s prose stories into comics in recent years, including the Eisner-nominated Chivalry and the Eisner-winning Snow, Glass, Apples. But now she’s turning her attention to a Gaiman work of Biblical proportions.

Teased by both Doran and Gaiman on social media, Doran will next adapt Good Omens, the 1990 novel Gaiman co-wrote with Terry Pratchett about a young antichrist and the end of the world.

The Terry Pratchett will crowdfund the project via Kickstarter; you can check out the campaign page and sign up to be notified when it goes live.

Jason Copland’s ‘Full Tilt’ blasts through its crowdfunding goal

The campaign on Zoop tops $20,000 on its first day.

Kill All Monsters artist Jason Copland’s been working on his latest project, Full Tilt, for the past five years. Fueled by passion and Slurpees, Copland has created an “action-filled future noir epic,” loaded with love, grit and numerous two-page spreads.

The 300+ page black-and-white hardcover went live on Zoop yesterday, asking for a modest goal of $10,000. Full Tilt was well over $20,000 by the end of the day, and is approaching $30,000 as I type this.

“Full Tilt is a gritty, violent tale about a 23rd century crime family consigliere who must face the consequences of a choice he made between love and loyalty,” Copland said in his newsletter. “It’s an action filled future noir epic that touches on many eternal themes such as love and hate, family and power.”

Iron Circus launches a crowdfunding campaign for Sage Coffey’s ‘Wine Ghost Goes to Hell’

The campaign runs on BackerKit through June 1.

Glamor, the supernatural and disaster will all collide in Wine Ghost Goes to Hell, the new project by Bugsnax story editor Sage Coffey.

Iron Circus Comics has launched a crowdfunding campaign for the graphic novel through BackerKit, their 38th crowdfunded project.

“Imagine if the magazine Hollywood Insider was a person,” said Coffey. “Now imagine that person is a dead alcoholic. That’s Wine Ghost! She is drama. She is fashion. She insists that wine counts as a fruit. And she may be her newly dead friend’s only hope of having a life after death.”

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