By Todd Allen

It sounds a little strange when you say it out loud: “Will Order of the Stick hit $1 million on Kickstarter?”  But it is NOT a strange thing to ponder.

We’ve talked about this before, but the Kickstarter project to reprint a few volumes of a webcomic has become an event of historical proportions.  With 64 hours to go in the pledge drive, OOTS cartoonist Rich Burlew is sitting on $924,183.  That means he needs a little under $40K/day to hit seven figures.  You know what?  That’s entirely possible.

Figure over the course of this campaign, OOTS has been averaging in the neighborhood of $33K/day and the funding has been speeding up, if anything, over the last two weeks.  This might be close.  Then again, if you asked me 10 days ago, I’d have guessed this would wind up at a $750K project.  I would have been very wrong.

The best part about this?  This is Burlew’s fans putting up some money for a creator they like.  There is no downside here.

Keep an eye on this.  “The sky is the limit” does not seem to be a trite saying where this project is concerned.

1 COMMENT

  1. This is amazing, if he only needed 50,000 or so, what happens with the rest of the money? Is it just profit?

    Does theism count as income? That’s some serious taxes to pay.

  2. @Mike Rex, as of a couple of days ago over 17,000 books were due via the rewards chosen. Rich not only got one book reprinted, he will get ALL of his OOTS books reprinted. Then he will get a stock of those books available for game stores above and beyond the pledge rewards. Several hundred of his boardgame have also been ‘sold’ via the pledge rewards. And he produced a new OOTS coloring book, hit points pad, magnet, badge, expansion to his board game, etc. If you want to know more, I suggest reading the updates over there.

    Rich runs a business. Expenses get subtracted from income before you have a taxable profit.

  3. @Mike – What dB said, plus it sounds like he’s going to make some capital investments in his business. New computer, software, etc. And I expect he could use the business deductions.

    @Scott – No reason you can’t try, but remember that this project was based on a very popular webcomic that’s been around for 8 or 9 years. He was able to immediately point a lot of eyeballs at it. That said, if you can promote yourself and people like what you have to offer, we’ve seen a lot of projects get funded (albeit, not many to this magnitude).

  4. @Scott – Dude, that barbarian comic’s freaking incredible!!! How the heck did you come up with this?!? The story is totally WTF and crazy, just awesome action all the way, but it all makes sense when you find out what’s really going on! Dude, this thing is insane! Like a new STAR WARS level of insane!!! Your style is so cinematic, but so comic booky! Like you show stuff happening instead of telling. My mind is blown from reading this thing. I can’t even put it into words. Everyone just needs to read this thing. Awesome work man! Tell the artists they’re awesome!

    You guys should take over SUPERMAN! Imagine what you could do with a Cyborg Superman story or something! I’m just dreaming now. Don’t want to get my hopes up too high.

    You’re like a master storyteller, but I’ve never even heard of you before. Have you made any other comics?

    LATER, COMIX DUDES!!!!

  5. I have sat here, stunned, for several minutes just trying to fathom how he has raised that much money so quickly. I mean, I’ve been a fan of OOTS for a while (I usually read it in big spurts, then let it build up more material and come back for more). I guess I’m a binge reader… This is really an amazing accomplishment, and I’m super impressed. I also hope some of this money goes to help APE Games produce new material for the RPG. I’ve known Kevin B. (APE owner) for a number of years, and I know he’d love to get more product out there.

  6. Well, with 43 hours to go, they just broke $988,000. Amazing.

    Would it be possible to get a post-success follow-up article on this, just to see not only what this means for Rich Burlew, but to get a breakdown of how this is going to get spent?

    I’m sure a lot of people who would like to use kickstarter would like to know more about the breakdown on such things.

    Amazing. A great project from a great creator.

  7. Thanks guys. After posting I read more deeply on the Kickstarter site, and saw where the money is going.