A Self-Publisher's Wish List for the New Kickstarter Comics Lead + New Comics on Kickstarter for February 1-2
This is Kevin, back to talk about comics that launched on Kickstarter on the dates of February 1-2. There were 35 launches between Sunday and Monday last week. The first of the month always sees a huge spike in launches for some reason, no matter what day of the week it’s on, and usually Sunday doesn’t have very many launches at all, even during busy weeks, usually less than 10, sometimes zero.
You saw the usual spread of NSFW comics, including a number that weren’t actually comics at all and don’t belong in the Comics category. There are other places for that. There are also several just empty campaigns with only text blocks instead of any actual comic art, any sequential art, any cover art, and any story information. I always call those empty campaigns. There’s just no evidence that they know how to make a comic, have the actual gumption to make a comic, or have the resources to make a comic. Out of 35 campaigns I did find four that are awesome, that I wanna share with you as ‘Comics I Like, and we’ll talk about that here shortly.
Comics by Me
But first, lemme talk about a couple things I’ve got going on. As always, The Comic$ Crowd is brought to you by the only sponsor of this program, which is my comics. So, from Flatline Comics, I have a launch coming up on Tuesday, February 17th, a book called Deep Space Lovecraft. This is a project I’ve been working on for some time now.
I’ve been working it up, formulating it and, and producing it for almost a year and a half, in terms of when the concept actually struck me. The idea is that I’m taking all of the first-person Lovecraft stories and converting them into a retrofuturistic style of comic book using Lovecraft’s words, whether that be narrative or dialogue.
Then, I’m taking my knowledge of how to make a comic and building a really interesting, different way of seeing these, where all of the first-person stories are presented in terms of one character and then serialized into adventures featuring that one character, but without changing any of Lovecraft’s words or content. I think you’ll be surprised at what you see. These books turned out beautifully.
Also, I just so happen to have two projects launching in the next few weeks, because I’m collaborating with Martin Piero of Cosmic Times on another comic called Turbocharged Teenager, which is a lot of fun, been a blast to work on.
This is a parody of a 1980’s cartoon in which a teenager could turn into a car. That’s correct. Not a Transformer where a robot turns into a car or vice versa. This is where an actual high school teenager could turn into an actual car. The idea is so preposterous, but sticks out in our collective memories because we were children in those days around the time this cartoon came out. You could probably find snippets of it on YouTube.
We wanted to take that concept and evolve it, have some fun with it, and kind of twist it into more of a comedy-horror type of vein. We’re just a few pages and one cover from finishing the first issue. and our tentative launch date is March 3rd.
Please check those out. I do The Comic$ Crowd because I love comics, because I love Kickstarter comics, because I love being able to support other people who make comics through Kickstarter. So I would ask that you give some consideration to supporting me and my comics on Kickstarter, so that I can keep doing this and making comics as well. We support each other.
A Wish List for the Incoming Kickstarter Comics Lead
So one quick topic I want to discuss, something of importance to anybody who funds on Kickstarter. There’s a change happening in the lead Kickstarter staffer for the Comics category. If you’re aware of who Sam Kusek is, he was the Comics lead for about the past, probably a couple of years, if I remember correctly. I think he started in March of 24, somewhere around there, but he’s moved back into the publishing arena and good luck to him. hope it goes well. I think that’s the been the passion of a number of the Comics leads, and the past couple actually jumped back into that arena when they had an opportunity. More power to ‘em.
I understand. I have that bug, too. I can’t get rid of it. I love making comics, and I’m sure they do as well, but that leaves a void for the rest of us that are still here funding on Kickstarter. I gave some thought to this. and there are a lot of conclusions I came to that I’ve shared with all of you over the past year and a half, ways to improve what’s going on with the Comics category.
Some things have remained very stagnant for the past few years, if not longer, despite the vast number of improvements Kickstarter has made in their product. But there are still other ways that I believe we can improve the experience for backers as well as for publishers, and I wanna go over some of those, in terms of a wishlist for the incoming Comics lead. I’d like to just put these ideas out there in the interest of productivity and making things better for everybody involved.
Improve the Shopability of the Comics Category
First and foremost, it’s imperative that Kickstarter, that they make the category more shopability for backers. Right now, as I record this at 10:30 PM Central on Sunday night, February 8th, there are 236 projects in the Kickstarter Comics category. That’s a lot. That’s a lot for anyone to wade through. Anybody that comes to the platform who is a comics fan, a comics reader, a comics collector, whatever the case may be, is faced with the daunting task of wading through 200 plus campaigns at any given moment, then making a decision about which ones are interesting to them, affordable to them, attractive enough to consider making a pledge, and then safe enough in terms of ensuring that the creator is actually going to deliver the rewards that the backer is paying for.
That’s a lot of decision making points when you have to touch hundreds of campaigns for products and creators that you’ve never heard of before, learn about them and then make value judgements as to whether you want to. and feel secure enough to. support them with your dollars, something we all have to be very careful about these days. It’s a lot to ask. It’s really difficult. It’s a time investment, and it’s frustrating. I can tell you it’s frustrating because I go through these every day, and it gets frustrating to me to just see all the empty projects, all the projects that aren’t comics, that are just nude pin-up books, all the projects that are there from creators who have several campaigns running at once and several that haven’t been fulfilled yet.
It’s a lot to consider, and it’s intimidating to new backers. and it’s intimidating even to regular backers to go in and shop around like you would at a comic shop. where you’re just checking a book out. Does it look good? Is it something I wanna pay for? Is it in a price range I can afford? Doing that on Kickstarter is nearly impossible the way things are configured right now.
Allow me to make a suggestion based on my work over the past 18 months and based on interactions with many of you. The first item on the wishlist for the new Comics lead is to consider changing the subcategories in the comics category from book format, where we’ve got web comics, graphic novels, comic books, which just seems redundant with the overarching category name; and consider switching over to subcategories that are in the form of genres (science fiction, fantasy, NSFW, crime, horror, etc.). People look for comics in genres that they prefer, much more than they’re looking for a graphic novel versus a web comic. I’d much rather know that there’s a comic in science fiction, if that’s what I’m looking for, than if it’s a single issue comic or a graphic novel or a web comic.
If it’s a good sci-fi comic, if it’s a good horror comic, depending on what I’m looking for, that’s gonna make it easier for me to zero in on the stories that I want to read. You know, there should be a superhero genre. There are a lot of superhero comics launched on Kickstarter, but as of now, there’s no way to filter those out to just see the superhero comics, to just see the horror comics. And that’s something that will make the category more shopable. And I hope the new Comics lead and the people at Kickstarter will consider that it will improve pledges because people are better capable of finding the ones they want to read.
Overall, we have to do something to improve the project bloat, in which there are 200-300+ campaigns in the category at any given time, but so many of those campaigns aren’t credible. They’re either from empty campaigns; they’re from bots; they’re from super creators who are months, if not years behind on fulfillment for their campaigns. So, I have a few suggestions, very specific, very simple suggestions, for improving this shopability situation and decreasing the project bloat without affecting anyone who’s a legitimate comic creator, who legitimately fulfills their campaigns from the platform or from opportunities to crowdfund.
The first step in that process is to not allow launch for campaigns that do not include sequential art, cover art, or story synopsis…evidence that a comic is being made. These campaigns typically do not fund. Kickstarter backers are savvy group. They’ve been doing this for a long time, but even novice Kickstarter backers can see that.
Then, I have a couple that’ll probably be a little more controversial, but we have to reign in super creators who are running 4, 5, 6 campaigns at one time on different accounts, sometimes on the same account. To me, a good sound, high-end number for the number of campaigns you can be running at once, even with different account names is 3. If there are more than 3, they should be paused. They should not be approved until the ones that are currently running resolve successfully.
Sure, we can keep a revolving number of maximum 3 campaigns at a time, so when one ends, you can launch another one. I still think that’s excessive. I still think it’s fairly abusive of the platform from just a principles standpoint, but I understand that there’s disagreement about this fact, but there have to be some limits to make it reasonable.
Also, we should not allow launch for creators who have 3 or more outstanding fulfillments to complete. Look, that’s just common sense. I talked in the last video about someone who had 17+ campaigns that were either incompletely fulfilled or not fulfilled at all. It’s just absurd. It doesn’t take much pre-planning or work or patience to simply wait until your last campaign was fulfilled to launch the next campaign, but we can leave some leeway there by saying that anybody with 3+ unfulfilled campaigns is paused on launching until they get back within that range of unfilled campaigns to two or less. It’s not much to ask, and it will increase backer confidence in the fact that they’re going to get what they pay for, and they’re going to get it in a timely fashion, which is another huge factor with regard to confidence of backers in the platform.
And, finally, in this vein of shopability, it’s long past due that there’s a filter that allows people to opt in or opt out of seeing NSFW content on Kickstarter. As it stands now, anybody of any age can just jump onto the platform regardless of their predilections or sensibilities or their age and see what is some pretty objectionable art to a lot of backers. It’s pushed people who are looking for mainstream types of comics away from Kickstarter, because they see it as just a smut factory, which it is not.
And, of course, I’m not suggesting that all NSFW comics are smut, but that’s people’s first impression when they come to the platform, and there’s more NSFW content than there is of any other genre. It’s more highly funded, and it’s super expensive relative to the other genres in terms of individual issues. There there just needs to be a way to block that for people that don’t wanna see it or to enable that for people who do. It’s just that simple.
That’s not censorship, that’s just allowing for customer choice. But I think it’s important for us to communicate these things up the chain in hopes that the shopability will improve, that will, so that people who are looking for comics that they’re interested in can find them without wading through campaigns that are never gonna be successful, that are never gonna be realized as actual comics. Let’s separate those campaigns that are NSFW from those that are, so that people can make informed choices about whether they want to shop there or not.
Those suggestions from my wishlist are there for consideration by Kickstarter. We’ll see if any of them get taken up,
Comics I Like
Right now, lemme tell you about the four comics I like from February 1-2.
Hex Euphoric #1 - Ongoing Comic Book Series
First up in Comics I Like for February 1-2 is Hex Euphoric, an ongoing comic book series by Jason Bean. It’s his first Kickstarter Comics campaign. We’ve seen a lot of that in the last week or so, with first time Kickstarter creators actually putting out some really gorgeous work, very interesting work.
“In another dimension, a witch prodigy named Valera seeks the fabled Demon Iron to unravel a 1,000 year old secret no one dares expose.”
Looking for just $399 in funding initially, almost 10 times that much raised already. So great job guys, with $3,339 at this point. It ends on Tuesday, March 3rd,
Really awesome. Very expressive black and whites here, Lettering looks good. Lots of perspective and scale changes on the sequentials. The Kickstarter page is nicely put together for a first time creator. It’s 36 pages, which is nice and beefy. A digital PDF of this 36 pages for Hex four will cost you $6 with delivery in April, right around the corner.
And then a print copy of Hex Fork #1 includes shipping for $14 US, which is not something I see very often these days. Also delivered in April. So coming up soon, you see a lot of art samples here. The sequential aspect to the art is awesome, flows well, very dynamic, really pleasing to the eye, a lot to look at here. So go check it out.
The Narrows 2
And then we have the Narrows 2 from Rob Hanson.
“Simon's back story is revealed but danger still exists in this dark fantasy comic set in Nova Scotia.”
That’s in Canada, so keep that in mind as you consider whether to pledge digital or physical. We’ll talk about the rewards in a moment.
Initial funding goal of $2,922 has raised $1,366 so far on 39 backers. Still a few weeks to back this when it ends on Saturday, February 28th. And it’s really clean art, very good framing on this cover, just pleasing to the eye,
“Issue 2 picks up right where issue 1 leaves off in 1904 with young Simon Tarrant and his new mentor. We’ll get a peek into Simon’s childhood as he is trained to become a protector of Canada’s Atlantic Coast, and we’ll meet two other trainees who will figure prominently in Simon’s future. The past has its own very dangerous and terrifying problems that will take all three of them to even hope to solve and survive.”
I really love the Jason Pearson-esque art style: very clean, very simple cell shading on the colors, but it gives it almost a Mazzuchelli quality to the work. Lettering looks compelling.
Digital copy is $4 US. Dirt Cheap, comes around in a month delivery in March. Print version’s $15, so consider that international shipping from Canada. The print version is estimate to be delivered in April, with 60 pages of story and concept art. That’s a lot of content for what you’re pledging there.
Immortal Coil #1-3: Cosmic horror series
Next, from a fellow Substacker, Gerald von Stoddard [https://substack.com/profile/20304987-gerald-von-stoddard], comes Mortal Coil 1-3, a cosmic horror series, a limited series of north mythology through the lens of Eldritch horror, set in a modern world teetering on the brink of cosmic oblivion.
Sounds like my kind of book. Doing really well so far, with an initial funding goal of $2,700 that has already raised over $6,000 on 188 backers, ends in February on the 16th, which is a week from today.
Gerald has a very detailed, very intricate, very cool, very pleasing to the eye art style.
“Immortal Coil explores the hidden truths of Ragnarok, exposing it as a carefully orchestrated hoax to protect Odin’s family while dooming the other realms. Now, with Loki’s return and his alliance with the Eldrit god Nyarlathotep, this saga becomes a battle between divine legacies and unspeakable horrors, where the stakes of nothing less than the survival of existence itself.”
Immortal Coil 3 introduces the third grandchild of Odin. While the faceless Gods in hell continue their quest for ancient artifacts that will awaken the elder gods and bring an end to all of existence as we know it. Humanity’s only hope rests in the hands of the newly awakened Norse Gods. I love the mashup of the cosmic horror monsters with the traditional Norse mythology.
It’s a 24-page comic that you can get the digital edition for $5 with delivery scheduled for March. You can get a print copy for $10 plus shipping with a delivery scheduled for April. Definitely deserves your attention. This is one I’m considering backing myself. It’s so cool.
THE LAUNDRYMEN Books One & Two
The Laundrymen. Wade and Bryant are supernatural monster hunters returning for a second thrilling adventure as The Laundrymen. This one’s going for a initial funding goal of $3,295. It’s already passed that at 3,784 on 51 backers. This is a graphic novel series about two monster hunters who investigate supernatural mysteries out of their laundromat.
Every volume serves as an episodic standalone story. This series is perfect for fans like Ghostbuster, Supernatural, and the X-Files, Interior art looks great. Nice cover, really great design there. Shows off the characters good and bad from a really cool perspective and look at the detail and dynamism in these sequentials. I mean, there’s a lot going on there. Really fun to look at.
Very kinetic, very bright colors, but not oversaturated. It’s a style choice. I like it. Then, you see some shifts in the coloration and changes in the palette as you go from scene to scene.
Don’t see a page count, so let’s look at the rewards. You can get a digital version of Book 2 for $9, with expected delivery in June.
Of course, they have catch-up tiers where you can get issue 1 as well. A print copy of The Laundrymen book two will cost you $19 US plus shipping from Canada, and there are catch up tiers for that as well.
Some exceptional art in the ‘Comics I Like’ designees for this period. Fun stuff, really great ideas, and it’s awesome to see this sort of diversity of thought and creativity in the Kickstarter comic space.
I’ll be back in a day or two with a post about comics launched on February 3-5.
In the meantime, let’s have a great start to the week. Happy Monday. Take care of yourself.
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