Welcome to The Beat’s crowdfunding round-up: a collection of some of our favorite campaigns from the week including one-shots, on-goings, anthologies and everything in-between! This week, we’re looking at three separate projects featuring Latinx creators, Black Noir, and creators from the Middle East and North Africa, as well as Iron Circus’ next campaign, The Crossroads at Midnight, and more.
Let’s get started!
Mañana: Latinx Comics From the 25th Century
Creators: Joamette Gil (Power and Magic Press)
Goal: $49,000
End date: August 22, 2020
Goodies: Get a PDF for $15, a physical book for $30, or pledge more for bookplates, enamel pins – and even the entire P&M Press library.
An anthology of Latine sci-fi comics set 1,000 years after the birth of Latin America!
The first-ever sci-fi comics anthology from P&M Press, Mañana features 27 black and white stories for young adults across over 270 pages. Genres focus on radical futures including post-apocalypse, liberationist utopia, and slice-of-life magical realism, with over 50 Latine and Latin American creators contributing. Based on the selected preview pages scattered over the campaign page, this collection is not to be missed.
The Crossroads at Midnight
Creators: Abby Howard (author)
Goal: $13,666 (dubbed by our own Avery Kaplan as Faustian fundraising)
End date: August 5, 2020
Goodies: An e-book of The Crossroads at Midnight is $9, a physical copy is $18, and higher tiers include Howard’s The Last Halloween, and even black and white commissions.
Abby Howard’s ALL-NEW collection of horror comics, ready and waiting to make your Halloween terrifying!
Iron Circus is back on its home court with Abby Howard’s solo slice-of-life horror anthology: two genres I never considered together, but sound totally awesome. This comic is set to be 380 pages, and collects five different stories, each exploring the consequences of looking for solace in the unnatural. Howard is the acclaimed cartoonist behind The Last Halloween, as well as the educational series, The Earth Before Us – and The Crossroads at Midnight has already received a starred Kirkus review.
Rusumat – New Stories from Rising Artists
Creators: Abdullah Hadi (author), Mohammed Al-Nass (writer), Aymen Swissy (artist)
Goal: $50,940
End date: August 24, 2020
Goodies: So as long as this campaign is met, all of its content will be available for free – although pledge levels do provide even more free comics to read on the app.
Discover new heroes and stories – A psychological thriller “Selling Dreams” and Jarhead mother “Where’s My Son.”
Rusumat is a digital comic and graphic novel app, and with this campaign, it hopes to commission two original titles featuring independent creators from the Middle East and North Africa. As mentioned above, these two webcomics will be totally free once funded, and published every two months for a year, totaling six chapters each. Where’s My Son follows a mother on the hunt for her child in a world overrun by ancient monsters, and Selling Dreams is the story of a struggling author who conveniently meets a seller of dreams.
NOIR IS THE NEW BLACK
Creators: TC Harris (curator/editor), Fabrice Sapolsky (curator/editor)
Goal: $36,700
End date: August 21, 2020
Goodies: Get in on the ground level at $10 for a PDF, bump up to physical for $39, or pledge more for prints, an additional 20-page book, and more.
A collection of Noir stories by Black creators.
Since the title of this anthology is so cut and dry, we’ll get right to the exciting stuff: Noir is the New Black features comics from Brandon Thomas (Excellence), Sanford Greene (Bitter Root), Ray-Anthony Height (Miles Morales, Midnight Tiger), Melody Cooper (OMNI), and many more. It boats a lineup of 100% creator-owned Black Noir comic stories, published by Fair Square Comics, and edited by TC Harris and Fabrice Sapolsky.
Good Girls Don’t Make History
Creators: Elizabeth Kiehner (writer), Micaela Dawn (illustrator)
Goal: $8,600
End date: August 22, 2020
Goodies: A digital copy is $10, a physical copy is $20, and higher tiers include first-looks, posters, and more.
Take a roller coaster ride with three generations of unstoppable women who fought relentlessly for the simple right to vote.
Good Girls Don’t Make History is an examination of women’s suffrage through the past, and its extension into the present. Aimed at young adult audiences, it highlights activists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, Ida B. Wells, and Susan B. Anthony, and helps to explain modern issues and systems of voter suppression. If all goes well, the team is hopeful to eventual turn the comic into a series eventually highlighting African American, Native American, and Asian American women fighting for their freedom.
Holy West
Creators: Seth Jacob (writer), Daniel Irizarri (illustrator)
Goal: $5,000
End date: August 25, 2020
Goodies: For $5, you get the PDF, and $10 gets you the actual floppy, while higher pledges include variants, t-shirts, and a handful of extra comics.
An Old West adaptation of the Quest for the Holy Grail.
I’m not usually the biggest fan of wild west settings for no reason in particular, but the preview for Holy West totally sold me. The magical-realism Irizzari portrays in his art is stunning, first of all, and second of all the series’ villain is an ex-Union general who self-describes as a “neutral angel,” and that language strikes me as extremely relevant to modern, real-world villains. He’s up against protagonist, Percy, as he tries to find the Holy Grail and save the West from its wintry wasteland.
Plus, be sure to check out these three campaigns:
- LYTTON – a comic mini-series by Doctor Who’s Eric Saward
- BULLISH: A Graphic Novel
- A. Guardian Volume I
Don’t forget to check out last week’s ongoing campaigns if you haven’t already:
- Dean Ormston – Working-class Superhero
- My Great Grandfather, the Alien
- 7 Inch Kara Volume 2: An All Ages Watercolor Comic
- Starside #3
- Fairy Quest #3 – Over, Under and Through
