Let’s Get It Arted… In Heeeere!

COMIXTALK: Making bad puns in the blog post titles since 1886

Welcome to another edition of Let's Get It Arted eh actually let's stick with:

Ooh, yeah 
Kickstart my art
Give it a start
Ooh, yeah, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-baby 

First off let's congratulate recently funded projects including Tiny Kitten TeethDear Dinosaur, Jet Pack Jenny, Circus Saudade, Spike's Smut Peddler which so far has doubled its funding goal, and Shannon Garrity's Skin Horse 3 Book which has nearly tripled the goal she set for it.  Some of these are still live so more money pledged might mean more stuff made.

THIS KICKSTARTER DRIVE IS SO BABIES! Dave "Whatchoo Talkin' 'Bout" Willis is in the midst of a drive to raise the cash to print the first book collection of his newest webcomic Dumbing of Age.  He's also said in the project that if this Kickstarter fundraiser reaches $20,000 he will reprint the out-of-print Shortpacked! Book One again.  

FUND A WEBCOMIC? This Kickstarter drive, titled "Fund Our Webcomic: Montgomery X. Chesterfield" is actually what it says — give the project money and Salvatore Pane, Mark Kleman and Kat Larkin will make a free webcomic. "The more money we generate, the more frequently we can update MontyX.com with more free material." Honestly, while I'm not going to begrudge anyone trying anything to help themselves make comics, this surprises me that Kickstarter approved it.  Granted they are only asking for 100 bucks but there's no real there there to what the project is funding.  It's not even a commitment to a particular update schedule or a number of comics or finishing a story or…

EXPENDABLE: I like the title on this one —  the funds will go to printing a Henchmen for Hire graphic novel which will collect the first story of the webcomic in a large, full-color 140+ page paperback format.

PUSH IT OVER THE LINE: This one is super close to hitting its goal. The elevator pitch for it: "It’s basically Beowulf, starring a bunch of nerds. Also, Sasquatch."

TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS: This one looks like a lot of fun – 

Tomorrow Jones is about a 14 year-old girl named Tomorrow who comes from a family of superheroes. While she may be strong enough to fold an armored truck into origami, Tomorrow has to pretend to be a normal girl at school. Her father won't take her seriously, and her traditional heroine mother expects Tomorrow to follow in her footsteps. But Tomorrow doesn't want to dress in skimpy spandex though, and starts fighting crime unmasked and simply wearing jeans and a T-shirt with her real initials on it. All the while her parents keep trying to get her to do things "the traditional way" and Tomorrow finds she might be getting in over her head in the superhero community.

Continue Reading

A Little Bit of Comix In Your Talk

Another day another Kickstarter – this one a bit more modest than comic efforts of late. Grant Thomas is looking for a mere $500 bucks to fund another print edition of his webcomic My Life In Records:

While we're here let's open up the ComixTALK mailbag:

Chance Argabright-Wees writes that Fat Cat Gameworks is going to collaborate with Christopher Hastings, of the webcomic, Dr. McNinjato create a game based on the comic. It is planned to be "a free-to-play, retro-style platformer for iOS, Android, and the web" which I suspect means something! A third Penny Arcade videogame and a Dr. McNinja videogame?  That's… four webcomic-based videogames!  There's a kickstarter for this project too!

Other recent radical emails to ComixTALK?

Terry LaBan writes in about a new iPad version of the comic Muktuk Wolfsbreath – a mysterious tale of love, murder and demons set among tribal reindeer herders. The comic appeared as an online graphic novel last year, has been published as both a downloadable pdf and an on-demand trade paperback. The pdf version of Muktuk Wolfsbreath, Hard Boiled Shaman: The Spirit of Boo can be downloaded here

Ray Hayden writes in about his webcomic Agatha Crup — "Three issues in and we've got over 50,000 unique visits on the site."  He plans to put out another issue around the end of April along with an animated 3 minute video with characters from the comic.

Continue Reading

Comix Talks the Talk; Walks the Walk

Hello hello hello.  Let's call today's post a rally round the flag, consider splashing some cash kind of all KICKSTART MY ART post.  It's amazing how many webcomic projects have been funded now through Kickstarter.

MULTIPLEX BOOK 2:  Gordon McAlpin was one of the first webcomic creators to use Kickstarter and now he's back to raise funds to put out Book 2 of his webcomic Multiplex.  He's still got a ways to go but 20 days should be enough time to make it.  If you're a fan of this webcomic pledge pledge pledge!

ALL NEW ISSUES: This webcomic is running a drive to print its first book.  You can check out the webcomic here before deciding whether to pledge or not.

GOATS IV: BACK IN THE SADDLE: It's finally over and I managed to get my pledge in before it finished.  Looking forward to my autographed book. Pledges passed $50,000 easily.  People love goats I guess.  

Fubar Press: These guys have made their goal but they've still got nine days to go. Their project is to print up an anthology to give away on Free Comic Book Day this year. Free comic book day is an annual event, held on the first Saturday in May where just about every major comic book company distributes a few titles for free to comic shops all across the country. The idea is to bring in new fans and get old fans back in on what ends up being one of the busiest days of the year for comic shops.   

CARPE CHAOS:  These guys are down to the wire trying to raise 7,500 and they have less than 24 hours to go (more or less).  The drama of Kickstarter! Jason Bane, Eric Carter, Anthony Cournoyer, Daniel Allen, Joe Slucher, and  others create Carpe Chaos, a free web-based sci-fi graphic novel series.  They want to create a concept art book called The Art of Carpe Chaos that will featureall of the artwork they produced when we were creating the universe. 

We've got a ton of material, we've got graphic designer Christopher Kosek to help us, and we've got a $7,500 quote from a printer. Whether we get 250 books or 1000, the price doesn't change much because most of the printing costs are for getting everything set up to print in the first place. 100% funding means a print run for us! 

YEAR OF THE DWAGON: This one is also over but Rob Balder met his goal for Erfworld and ran a pretty impressive Kickstarter campaign while he was at it.  Did I say "met his goal"? I meant smashed it, raising almost $85,000.

Continue Reading

Kickstart Book 2 of Spacetrawler

Christopher Baldwin has a kickstarter campaign to fund Book 2 of his webcomic Spacetrawler.  Spacetrawler is an epic comedic adventure story about a galactic activist group who recruits six humans to help them liberate a very put-upon species. He already has the printer lined up, the cover designed, and will have the strips for it complete and posted online before the kickstarter campaign is completed. This is a great story and the first book in print (which I have) was really nice — I am sure this one will be great too..

Continue Reading

Comix Talk for Friday, September 7, 2011

Awhile back we reviewed a comic book from the UK collective, Whores of Mensa — well they're back with a new project, The Strumpet, which will include UK and US artists.  This time they're running a Kickstarter campaign to finance the production of the first issue – they are already more than a 1/3 of the way there so check out the project and contributing artists, including Patrice Aggs, Jeremy Day, Lisa Rosalie Eisenberg, Kripa Joshi, Megan Kelso, Ellen Lindner, Mardou, Tanya Meditzky, Lucy Sweet, plus special surprise guests.

REVIEW: Forbidden Planet reviews James Turner's new all ages book, Super Animal Adventures.

MAKE A WISH:  Thanks to Tim Rocks for sending us a copy of his mini-comic, Peter Moss: The Kid Who Has Adventures.  It's about a dude misdiagnosed with a terminal illness… let the comedy hijinks ensue? I'm torn in trying to describe it — it didn't really click for me, but Rocks has some talent. I wish he'd post the thing as a webcomic so he could get a lot more feedback faster.  

HOW MUCH FOR ONE RIB:  Ray Hayden's new graphic novel Agatha Crup and the Legend of The Olin, launches October 31st.  In Hebrew folklore, Adam had a wife before God made Eve from his rib — her name was Lilith.  Supernatural character Agatha Crup secretly works against the destructive force of Lilith and her demon army. Lilith returns on "All Hallows Eve" when the dead walk the earth and unleashes an incurable mutating disease spread by genetically modified foods and animals that infects men. The widespread infection radically changes the world as we know it putting women firmly in control.

Continue Reading

Indigo Kelleigh Kickstarter Drive for Ellie Connelly Graphic Novel

 

Indigo Kelleigh has launched a Kickstarter campaign for 124 page graphic novel version of his Victorian adventure comic Ellie Connelly and the Eye of the VortexEllie Connelly, her friend Henry Button, and her Uncle Everett must race to discover the location of a legendary vortex of mystical energy, before the dark and mysterious Mystic Legion can take control of it for their own malevolent purposes! An adventure in the mold of Indiana Jones and Tintin, the first 32 pages have been published online.

Kelleigh's Kickstarter goal is to raise money to cover his living expenses for an entire year to complete Eye of the Vortex.  He will continue posting the newly completed pages on the website for free (in both English and French), and will also release the ebook issues when they're completed.

Continue Reading

Box Brown Closing in on Funding Goal

Box Brown has a kickstarter campaign going to fund Retrofit Comics launch plans to publish 17 32-page floppy-style comics by 17 of the best comic artists in the business. It's specifically aimed at getting indie comics back into the floppy format and giving artists a chance to do smaller stories and experiment. The list of creators is awesome and includes folks such as Retrofit plans to release books monthly from September 2011 to January 2013. James KochalkaColleen FrakesJoe DecieTom HartLiz BaillieNoah Van SciverJason Turner among others.

Continue Reading