There’s a lot of news about comics out there, so this is going to be a lot of column.

• Faith #1 continues to be a huge hit for Valiant and is now in its FOURTH printing! The new printing hits on March 30th along with Faith #3. Here’s a cover gallery and some interiors.

 

ethanyoung_lee.jpg

• Ethan Young, creator of the highly acclaimed GN Nanjing: The Burning City, is launching a new YA graphic novel at Dark Horse this fall, The Battles of Bridget Lee. Young is a MAJOR talent and this should be a strong book for Dark Horse’s Fall line.

The Battles of Bridget Lee will take readers on a multivolume journey through space as it follows the world’s next heroine to great heights.

There is no longer a generation that remembers a time before the Marauders invaded Earth. The remaining human outposts have been quiet since they fought back the alien aggressors, but there are stirrings of another attack. Bridget Lee, an ex–combat medic now residing at the outpost Farfall, may be the world’s last hope. But Bridget will need to overcome her own fears before she can save her people. Her legend begins here.

The Battles of Bridget Lee Volume 1: Invasion of Farfall (978-1-50670-012-0) is in stores September 21, 2016.

 

Cyanide & Happiness, which started as a webcomic now claims to be the “#1 animated comedy show on YouTube” and they’ve launched a Kickstarter  for Joking Hazard, a new comedy card game (ala Cards Against Humanity and Exploding Kittens). The initial gaol was $10k but it’s now up to $1,692,832, and is the most popular project on Kickstarter.

 

Explosm Entertainment, the creators of Cyanide & Happiness, the #1 animated comedy show on YouTube, and Studio71 have launched a Kickstarter campaign for Joking Hazard, a new card game that will surely hit the public in the gut with laughter and discomfort.

“Joking Hazard is a card game adapted from our popular Random Comic Generator, where everyone competes to finish a three-panel comic, drawing from hundreds and hundreds of random panels. Every comic is unique and you’re creating these weird little situations starring two horrible characters. It’s never the same comic twice,” said Explosm Entertainment’s Rob DenBleyker, Creator of Cyanide & Happiness.

After millions of comics were generated from the Random Comic Generator and fans started to screen grab and share their own comic strips with friends, Explosm and Studio71 saw the opportunity to create a card game and bring people together in person.

Explosm Entertainment has cultivated a passionate online following with more than 5.4 million YouTube subscribers and 1 billion views, including a record 117 million monthly views this past August, not to mention more than 877k Instagram followers, 11 million Facebook likes and 167k Twitter followers.

Joking Hazard follows the highly successful The Cyanide & Happiness Show, as well as the popular web comic.

Last year more than 978,000 backers pledged over $144.4 million to Games projects — that’s nearly twice as many people and nearly twice as much pledged money as in 2014. Exploding Kittens, from Elan Lee, Shane Small, and Matthew Inman, became the most backed project in Kickstarter history — and the most funded games project ever — raising nearly $8.8 million from a record-shattering 219,000 backers. For the past several months, the team behind Joking Hazard has received great advice from the creators of both Cards Against Humanity and Exploding Kittens.

 

132a39b3d351d16f847d2beccbf7105e_original.jpg

• At the other end of the comics spectrum, the adventurous and daring small press 2dcloud is Kickstarting its Winter Collection.  IT’s about $5k into a $13K goal.

2dcloud is proud to announce the Winter Collection, a labor of love years in the making, presenting major new works by emerging and established artists. Gulag Casual presents the last 6 years of Austin English’s comics in an expansive, full color, large format book. ITDN collects all 5 years of Andy Burkholder’s wildly diverse, anonymous, project of the same name. Mirror Mirror #1 features 10 emerging artists in an exhibition—in—print edited by Blaise Larmee. Sec is the latest of Sarah Ferrick’s series of love poems. Altcomics Magazine continues its journey into a second issue.

books
— ITDN by Andrew Burkholder
— Gulag Casual by Austin English
— Mirror Mirror #1 by Nou  Tracy Auch  Andrea Bjürstrom  Leslie Weibeler  Caroline Hennessy  Nicholas Verstraeten  Katherine Poe  Sarah Ferrick  Connor Willumsen  Leon Sadler [ed. Blaise Larmee]

zines
— Sec by Sarah Ferrick
— Altcomics Magazine #2

extras
— posters
— proofs
— original art  

bcaff4cdd555fbd214b33fc54bbe8722_original.png

• This is not publishing, but a new documentary called Ghostheads is in the works, exploring the making of the original Ghostbusters movie and its dedicated fandom, with interviews with Ivan Reitman, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, 2016 Ghostbusters director Paul Feig, Sigourney Weaver, and many more.  The movie comes out in the summer, but the post production is being Kickstarted, as  you’ll see in the above link. Seems legit.