crowdfunding – SMASH PAGES

Crowdpuncher | ‘The Pride’ returns, ‘Who Killed Nessie?’ + Cecil Castellucci becomes the comic

Check out crowdfunding campaigns by Joe Glass, Cecil Castellucci, Paul Cornell and Rachael Smith, Pan-Universal Galactic Worldwide and more.

Welcome to Crowdpuncher, our new feature on cool comics crowdfunding campaigns. If you’re looking to support a creator directly, you’ve come to the right place. And that’s a good thing to do, now more than ever.

Joe Glass has been working on his LGBTQ+ superhero comic The Pride for a number of years now, going back to at least 2016. Now he’s back with a new series, The Pride: Agenda Dysphoria, which is up now on Kickstarter.

In his latest newsletter, he discussed why he still makes The Pride and comics featuring LGBTQ+ characters.

“You might wonder why I still make a comic all about LGBTQ+ superheroes. Certainly, since I started, queer characters are much more present and active than they were when I began,” he said, noting Marvel and DC both have Pride specials they do every year. But while things might have changed for the better in the world of mainstream comics, progress in the real world has come under threat in recent years.

“We’ve seen the effects and activity of the agenda of a multi-millionaire author, as she attacks and sends her legions of supporters and fans to pile on trans people,” Glass wrote. “Her agenda is both plainly clear and yet somewhat unclear – clear because we can see that harming the trans community is the agenda, but what’s unclear is why? That’s not the case of many politicians that jump on this issue and throw terms like ‘woke culture’ or ‘social justice warriors’ around – they’re clearly hopping onto the ‘culture war’ bandwagon to try and solidify a power base, no matter it harms to get there.”

Smash Pages Q&A | S.E. Case on ‘Rigsby WI’

The creator of the slice-of-life webcomic discusses its first print collection, her approach to creating the small-town setting and drawing on her teenage experiences to bring her characters to life.

S.E. Case is four chapters in on Rigsby, WI, a webcomic she’s been posting since 2019. The comic is about four average Wisconsin teenagers and the trials and tribulations they encounter with their friends, their families and their futures. While the teenagers may be average, the strip is anything but, as Case has brought to life four characters who will make you laugh, cry, yell and ultimately remember what life was like when you knew everything and nothing at the same time.

Case has teamed up with Iron Circus Comics to publish the first print collection of the webcomic, which is up now on the crowdfunding site BackerKit.

Here’s the description from the publisher: Sometimes as a teen in a small town, you can feel trapped — trapped enough to want to gnaw off your own leg to escape. Bethany has gotten some much needed stability in Rigsby, WI — she’s away from her oppressively disapproving mother, and the other local teens Jeordie, Erik and Anna have welcomed her in — and together the four of them know how to escape from the world that is closing in on them. While Case’s vibrant art and naturalistic writing doesn’t shy away from the rougher experiences and feelings of teens, it also covers the truly important topics like, “is Phish a good band?”, “is the neck the dong of the torso?” and “Ernest Hemingway: Was he a piece of shit?” Nostalgic, sweet, bitter and funny all at once, Rigsby WI feels like a teenage afternoon spent with friends, with all the pathos, boredom and absurdity inherent therein.

I spoke with Case about the campaign, as well as the webcomics’ small-town setting, why now was the right time for a print collection and, yes, is Phish a good band?

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.

Smash Pages Q&A | Joshua Viola on ‘True Believers’

The writer and owner of the publishing house Hex Publishers discusses his new comic with co-writer Stephen Graham Jones and artist Ben Matsuya about cosplay gone very wrong.

This weekend the Colorado Festival of Horror returns to Denver, giving fans the chance to interact with creators, actors and more, and even dress up like their favorite slashers, from Jason to Freddie to … Killr™?

If you aren’t familiar with Killr™, don’t fret — this serial killer is a new creation debuting in the pages of True Believers by Joshua Viola, Stephen Graham Jones and Ben Matsuya. The trio has teamed up to tell the fictional story of cosplay gone wrong at the very real festival.

Viola, who in addition to being a writer is also the publisher and owner of Denver-based Hex Publishers, was kind enough to answer some questions about True Believers, which is currently on Kickstarter.

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.

Smash Pages Q&A | Cullen Bunn + Brian Hurtt on the return of ‘The Sixth Gun’

The creators of the horror/Western ‘yarn’ talk about returning to their signature creation with a new Kickstarter project.

The 50-issue The Sixth Gun series — along with its several spin-off series — was a hallmark of independent comics publishing from 2010 to 2016. Co-creators Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt not only created a compelling “yarn” of a story that combined horror with the Western genre, but they also did a phenomenal job of creating a world that always seemed ripe for more exploration.

They wrapped up the initial story of Becky Montcrief, Arnold Drake and the battle for control of six mystical guns, and now Oni Press has announced The Sixth Gun Deluxe Omnibus Library, which is currently up on Kickstarter. Not only are they releasing all the issues of The Sixth Gun, plus all the spinoff miniseries, plus the spinoff series Shadow Roads, in this deluxe format, but Bunn and Hurtt are also creating new material for it — three new prelude stories will unlock as the campaign reaches new milestones over the course of its 30-day run. It’s also a precursor to a new The Sixth Gun project coming in 2025 for the comic’s 15th anniversary.

I spoke with both creators about what it’s like to return to The Sixth Gun after all this time, their collaborative process and what to expect from the new material they’re creating.

Exclusive Preview | ‘Dead Jack and Oswald Meet Frankenstein’

Check out some preview pages from Monstrous Magazine, which is currently up on Kickstarter.

Kevin J. Anderson, David Avallone, Nancy A. Collins, John Jennings, Joe and Kasey Lansdale, Rena Mason, Steve Niles and more have united for Dead Detectives Society, a prose anthology that lives at the intersection of crime and horror. Accompanying it is the launch of Monstrous Magazine, a digest-sized magazine featuring prose, comics and articles.

Currently up on Kickstarter, the project has blown past its goal, raising almost $20,000 to date. It brings together several fictional detectives with supernatural origins, including Dan Shamble, Cal McDonald, Sonja Blue, Matt Richter, Dead Jack, Johnny Fade and more.

“Dead Detectives Society is my pulpy passion project,” said editor James Aquilone. “With this annual anthology series I hope to expand the weird detective subgenre and have a blast while doing it.”

Courtesy of Monstrous Books, we’re pleased to present some preview pages from “Dead Jack and Oswald Meet Frankenstein,” written by Aquilone and illustrated by J.K. Woodward (Star Trek, Fallen Angel). Check them out below, along with the anthology’s cover by John Jennings and the cover for Monstrous Magazine by Colton Worley.

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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