Birdcage Bottom Books 2021 Kickstarter list launched on the crowd-funding platform Saturday. Included in this year’s releases will be an anthology, a graphic novel, and four mini-comics. The headline title will be punk anthology Too Tough To Die.
Too Tough To Die, co-edited by Haleigh Buck and Birdcage Bottom Books owner/publisher J.T. Yost explores the issues and lives of the punk scene and movement decades later.
Describing the tone of the anthology, Yost writes, “From “tired of being pushed around” to “just plain tired”, the Too Tough To Die anthology explores the spectrum of what it means to be an aging punk through personal stories by some of the best cartoonists around. Shifting perspectives on angsty rebellion, the importance of community, persistent racism within the scene, appearance and identity and more are covered within this nearly 300 page tome.”
Birdcage Bottom Books has been using the Kickstarter platform to fund its annual range of titles since 2018. All campaigns have successfully met their funding goal, if occasionally by a narrow margin.
The graphic novel Everything is Super features mature mishaps in a “dead-end, backwater superhero town” collects the first four issues of the original small press release by Captain Rottsteak.
The four minicomic releases are Robert H. Stevenson’s Comfort Creatures, “an all-ages collection of illustrated rhymes with corresponding creatures that play like cautionary tales about some of our delicious escapisms.”; the second, third and fourth mini-comics are collected autobiographical installments in Best American Comics featured cartoonist Lance Ward’s Flop Sweat self-published series (#2 to #4).
Birdcage Bottom Books “was an early adopter of using Kickstarter to fund the printing of our comics,” Yost posts, “and we’ve got quite a few campaigns under our belt. As such, we can be realistic with the risks & challenges. At this point, most of the comics for the Too Tough To Die anthology have been finished, but there are a few stragglers. As such, the contributor list may fluctuate a bit, but we will keep you posted. The other publications are either complete or near completion.”
Stately Beat Manor published a profile of the publisher last year.
In a previous post on Kickstarter founder and owner J.T. Yost describes the publisher as, “passionate about promoting compelling handmade comics. We don’t have one unifying theme, tone or drawing style we champion but rather search for comics that are personal and varied.”
Birdcage Bottom Books started life in 2008 with the assistance of a Xeric Grant. They publish and distribute, claiming on their website to represent “over 100” self-published artists, cartoonists and small presses. They are regular attendees of comics festivals in the US (remember those) and their previous works can be found on their website
