By Todd Allen
Order of the Stick isn’t the only crowdfunding comics project out there. Let’s take a look at what’s out there right now:
The most interesting project right now is probably the Goats revival. Goats was a humorous science fiction strip that spent the last few years in a long, epic dimension hopping saga. The cartoonist, Jon Rosenberg, found that having a multi-year story arc wasn’t conducive to gaining new readers (and let’s be honest, story strips are a little harder to make money off of, in general). He put Goats on the shelve and started Scenes From a Multiverse, where he gets away form long continuities by having each week’s strips take place in a different dimension. That Kickstarter project quickly hit its initial goal of $12K to print the 4th volume of the Goats “Infinite Typewriters” cycle. Following the lead of Order of the Stick, Rosenberg has added some goals and if he gets $40K pledged, he’ll go back and finish the 5th and final book in Goats series. Yes, that’s right. It’s become a Kickstarter to revive a discontinued series. That project is sitting on a little under $26K with 19 days to go.
The big earner right now is Erfworld Year of the Dwagon. They currently have a bit over $56K to turn the first book of the Erfworld webcomic into a motion comic. Yes… this might be more of a movie/animation project than a comics project, but it’s in the comics category on the site.
The Diesel Sweeties eBook-Stravaganza 3000 has over $44K to go with 5 days left, massively over-funding the project to get the long-running webcomic reformated as DRM-free eBooks. Cartoonist R Stevens will also be driving cross country to deliver a Pac-Man arcade game to Wil Wheaton. (I couldn’t have made that up if I tried.)
The Only Living Boy is a new project from David Gallaher and Steve Ellis (whom you might remember from Zuda’s High Moon series and Comixology’s Box 13. This just kicked off a couple days ago and the boys are looking for $11,500 for the project.
Joe Harris, the new co-writer on Fury of Firestorm is in the last 10 days of his quest to fund the first six issues of Great Pacific, a comic he’d like to do as an ongoing. He’s currently at $2,283 with a $9,500 goal.
Also in the not-quite-comics category, it looks like Garth Ennis is going to be a children’s author. The ERF children’s book has been funded to the tune of $15K with 15 days to go. I could see a children’s publisher picking up a copy of The Boys and fainting dead away, so this may be an instance of an established author really needing crowdfunding to help him switch formats.
Also a good looking project from Dark Horse Presents creator Frank Barbiere: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1474610911/five-ghosts
Also, Thom Zahler (of Love and Capes) has a project for an art book. http://kck.st/yCgqeL
I was also going to post Thom’s kickstarter, but Melinda beat me to it. Here’s two more:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1786800131/get-the-queen-victoria-books-back-in-print <– Pab Sungenis' "The New Adventures of Queen Victoria" (http://www.newadventuresofqueenvictoria.com)
and
Seamus Burke's "Oh Goodie" http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spburke/oh-goodie-vol2-working-man-pre-orders?ref=users
you forgot to include Jim Woodrings ‘Fran’ http://www.usaprojects.org/project/fran
Don’t forget Man of God. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/706467365/man-of-god-the-death-of-john-morris
I really want to do a campaign, but I just don’t think I have enough of a following. Any suggestions?
People really ought to donate to Great Pacific. They have a great team and I want to read the comic. I already pledged though.
Scott – I ran a successful campaign last year. Granted, I didn’t raise much in the face of these other campaigns, but I didn’t really know what I was doing – oh yeah, and I had a following of zero. So it can be done.
Just be realistic about what you’re trying to raise. Do a decent video. Update regularly. Show off lots of good art.
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