Tag: Kickstarter

John Layman + Rob Guillory re-team for ‘Ghostbrawler’

The ‘Chew’ creators will launch the new series with a Kickstarter next month.

John Layman and Rob Guillory, the team behind the long-running and super-awesome series Chew from Image Comics, are reuniting on a new title called Ghostbrawler.

As revealed on Guillory’s Patreon, Ghostbrawler is the story of Joey Frezzini, a boxer who died in the ring and spends his afterlife evicting ghosts — with his fists.

“My old buddy Layman and I have been developing this since December, and it is a BLAST,” Guillory wrote. “Something truly original and unique that fans of Chew will absolutely love.”

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Exclusive | AHOY reveals Russ Braun’s variant cover for ‘The Forgotten Divine’

The debut Kickstarter campaign from the publisher of ‘Second Coming’ and ‘The Wrong Earth’ launches next month.

Today we have an exclusive first look at Russ Braun’s variant cover for The Forgotten Divine, the upcoming title from Braun and writer Mark Russell, ahead of AHOY Comics’ debut Kickstarter campaign launching next month.

The 64-page book follows Rodney Coleman, an unhoused veteran whose dreams of a faraway planet draw him toward others who’ve had the same visions, leading him to a cult that forms around their shared experience. I chatted with Russell about the project, who talked more about the main character, who we see on this variant cover.

“Rodney is somebody who used to defuse bombs for a living and now, having returned to civilian life, doesn’t find a lot of demand for that. As a result of that, and the PTSD the war left him with, his life has fallen apart. I chose him as the center of this story because I wanted it to be told from the perspective of someone to whom a cult would not seem any crazier than the world they had come from,” Russell said.

Take a look at the cover:

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Smash Pages Q&A | Mark Russell on ‘The Forgotten Divine’

The award-winning writer of ‘The Snagglepuss Chronicles’ and ‘Not All Robots’ talks to us about his latest project for Ahoy Comics.

Mark Russell’s new book with artist Russ Braun is about how ordinary people fall into cults. The Forgotten Divine follows Rodney Coleman, an unhoused veteran and former bomb disposal expert whose dreams of a faraway planet draw him toward others who’ve had the same visions, and the group that forms around their shared experience.

The book arrives via AHOY Comics’ first-ever Kickstarter, which gave the team the freedom to tell the story they wanted to in the format they thought fit it best. I spoke with Russell about the project, the Kickstarter campaign, why he takes his “kiss of death” ideas to AHOY and more.

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Exclusive | Check out the merch for Stephan Franck’s ‘Palomino’ Kickstarter

The campaign for the final graphic novel in the series will launch next week.

Cartoonist Stephan Franck will launch a Kickstarter next week for the sixth volume of Palomino, his neo-noir graphic novel series, and we’ve got an exclusive look at some of the rewards he’ll offer as part of the campaign.

Available exclusively through the Kickstarter will be a Palomino T-shirt, mug and art print. The campaign will also offer all six volumes of the series, which wraps up in this final volume. Take a look at the merch after the jump.

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Smash Pages Q&A | Jay Eaton on ‘Runaway to the Stars’

With a Kickstarter launching this week, we talk to Eaton about biology degrees, base-8 numeral systems and why a wall clock can take hours to draw.

Jay Eaton describes their path to comics less as a choice than as an inescapable gravitational pull, one they spent years trying to resist before giving in entirely.

After pursuing biology in college and working in horticulture, Eaton eventually committed full-time to the project they’d been building on the side all along: Runaway to the Stars, a hard sci-fi slice-of-life graphic novel about a centaur aerospace engineer, a shipwrecked AI pirate and the unlikely friendship that upends both their lives.

Eaton has been building this story on the web for years, and now it’s coming to print via Kickstarter through Iron Circus Comics. We talked about world-building as narrative, designing for bodies that aren’t human and what a biology degree is actually good for when you’re a cartoonist.

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Exclusive | Magnetic Press reveals deluxe box set for Mathieu Bablet’s ‘Silent Jenny’

The campaign will bring the first U.S. edition of Bablet’s climate crisis graphic novel to readers, completing the trilogy that includes ‘Shangri-La’ and ‘Carbon & Silicon.’

We have an exclusive first look at the deluxe box set being offered as part of the upcoming Kickstarter campaign for Silent Jenny, the latest graphic novel from internationally acclaimed French cartoonist Mathieu Bablet. The box set will collect all three of Bablet’s science fiction graphic novels — Shangri-La, Carbon & Silicon and Silent Jenny — in a single premium edition.

The campaign launches in the coming weeks, and fans can sign up now to be notified at the Kickstarter pre-launch page.

Silent Jenny marks the conclusion of Bablet’s science fiction trilogy and its first U.S. publication. Set in a not-too-distant future ravaged by climate change, the story follows Jenny, a solitary researcher attempting to restore pollinating insects by recovering bee DNA. Mobile cities called “monads” have formed across the barren landscape, with communities developing their own customs and ways of life in the absence of stable land.

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Fanbase Press is crowdfunding ‘Shrub,’ a middle-grade graphic medicine series about a sentient plant

The eight-issue Kickstarter-funded series from Emmy nominee Shane Portman and artist Andy Alves explores loss through the eyes of an unlikely traveling companion. Check out our exclusive preview.

Fanbase Press has announced Shrub, an eight-issue series that they’re crowdfunding through Kickstarter, and we’re excited to share an exclusive four-page preview ahead of the publisher’s appearance at WonderCon in Anaheim this weekend.

The series follows Shrub, an aptly named sentient shrub, who joins a grieving brother and sister on a cross-country road trip to Hollywood, with pit stops, wacky plant enthusiasts and unexpected detours along the way.

Written by Emmy Award nominee Shane Portman of Tumble Leaf and Shape Island fame, and illustrated by Andy Alves (Top Shelf’s Cosmic Cadets), with colors by Sophia Du and Celia FitzGerald and lettering by Oceano Ransford.

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Exclusive | Two new ‘Weird Tales’ comics join Monstrous’ Kickstarter campaign for the franchise’s first graphic novel

The hardcover will include comic adaptations of classic stories by Ray Bradbury, Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft and more.

Monstrous and Weird Tales Magazine are collaborating on the first-ever official Weird Tales graphic novel, currently funding on Kickstarter with more than 1,200 backers in its first two weeks. And we have an exclusive first look at two limited-edition saddle-stitch comics being offered as part of the campaign.

Weird Tales #1 is a 28-page floppy featuring “Doctor Satan vs. Jules de Grandin” by writer James Aquilone and artist Dave Swartz. It also includes an adaptation of “Ooze,” the very first story published in Weird Tales in 1923, by Weird Tales president John Harlacher and artist Zac Atkinson, who also provides the cover. Weird Tales #2, also 28 pages, features “The Cthulhu Project” by Richard Krepit and artist EV Cantada, and “The Abominable Professor Gaius” by Aquilone and Atkinson, again with a cover by Atkinson.

Here’s a look at the covers:

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Smash Pages Q&A | Bruno Redondo on ‘The DC Art of Bruno Redondo’

From a 12-year-old reading ‘Incredible Hulk’ to three Eisner Awards, Redondo reflects on the career that led to his first major art book.

Bruno Redondo has spent the last decade building an impressive body of work in comics. From his early DC work on Human Target and Batman: Arkham Unhinged to his career-defining runs on Injustice and Nightwing, he’s developed a visual language that’s entirely his own — fluid, expressive, and packed with personality. Along the way, he’s picked up three Eisner Awards and won over countless fans.

Now, Clover Press is giving his work a retrospective with The DC Art of Bruno Redondo, a 200+ page, 9″x12″ hardcover collecting his best DC work to date, with an introduction by his longtime collaborator Tom Taylor. The campaign is live now on Kickstarter, with edition options ranging from hardcover to signed slipcase, plus extras like a fold-out edition of the iconic Nightwing #87, rarely-seen sketches and commissions, a sticker pack and more.

I recently had the chance to talk with Bruno about how he fell in love with comics, what makes his creative partnership with Tom Taylor tick, what it means to look back at a career still very much in progress. and more. Here’s what he had to say.

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Exclusive | Get your first look at the slipcase for The DC Art of Bruno Redondo

The three-time Eisner Award winner gets the art book treatment from Clover Press.

Here’s a treat — courtesy of Clover Press, we’re pleased to share an exclusive first look at the slipcase for The DC Art of Bruno Redondo, the upcoming art book from Clover Press that collects some of the most gorgeous DC artwork of the past decade. Just writing that sentence makes me happy, because if there’s one artist working in superhero comics right now who deserves this kind of book, it’s Bruno Redondo.

Also, the slipcase features Nightwing and Batgirl — and Bitewing! — which is a huge plus.

Redondo got his footing on titles like Human Target and Batman: Arkham Unhinged, but things really started to click when he teamed up with writer Tom Taylor on Injustice: Gods Among Us. What could have been a straightforward video game tie-in became something special, in no small part because of what Redondo brought to the page , with his fluid, expressive linework, a real sense of weight and motion, and layouts that actually served the story rather than just showing off.

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Slugfest | ComicsPro news from BOOM!, Dark Horse, IDW and more

From a new ‘Something is Killing the Children’ miniseries to a Terry Moore/Dark Horse partnership, this week’s ComicsPro announcements brought a steady stream of news.

You may have noticed it’s a big week for comics industry news. ComicsPRO, the comics retailer organization, is holding its annual industry conference in Glendale, Calif. this week, and it’s being attended by comic retailers, publishers, distributors and creators. Skybound’s chief Robert Kirkman is delivering the keynote address later this week.

Publishers traditionally flood the zone with announcements timed to the meeting, and this year is no exception. Here’s a roundup of more announcements that caught our eye so far:

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Exclusive | Lord Dunsany’s ‘The Gods of Pegana’ returns as a fully illustrated art book

Dustin Holland illustrates a new edition of the classic fantasy literature, which arrives on Kickstarter soon.

Before the Cthulhu mythos reshaped cosmic horror, Lord Dunsany was already mapping the unknown.

First published in 1905, The Gods of Pegana is an influential but often overlooked work of early fantasy literature, laying the groundwork for writers like H.P. Lovecraft, J.R.R. Tolkien and Ursula K. Le Guin. Now, Denver’s Wig Shop is bringing Dunsany’s cosmology back into the spotlight with a new illustrated edition, and we’re excited to share an exclusive first look at preview pages from the book.

This upcoming Kickstarter project pairs Dunsany’s dreamlike text with full-color paintings by artist Dustin Holland. This edition presents the complete original text, surrounded by richly painted borders and punctuated by full-page illustrations that mirror a medieval illuminated manuscript.

Holland draws inspiration from sources as varied as Leonora Carrington, Max Ernst, Fleischer Studios animation and underground cartoonists like Gary Panter and Julie Doucet. The result is a hallucinatory, almost primeval, visual language that feels perfectly suited to Dunsany’s pantheon of gods, monsters and prophets.

“It’s rare to find a book with so many ideas per page,” Holland said. “I hope these paintings invite readers to revel in Dunsany’s imagination and really celebrate the dreamy world he’s built.”

The 7×10, 139-page deluxe paperback is set to launch on Kickstarter next month, with additional rewards including original artwork and campaign-exclusive extras. Check out the exclusive preview pages below:

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