Kickstarter continues to grow as a venue where independent artists can raise money to fund projects and artists as well as publishers are taking full advantage. This week we take a look at Kickstarter projects from Sean Michael Wilson, Zenescope, Keith Knight and Batton Lash.
Comics writer and editor Sean Michael Wilson, editor of the award-winning anthology AX:Alternative Manga from Top Shelf, and artist Carl Thompson are trying to raise $8000 to support the publication of their new comic, Parecomic, a documentary graphic novel on the history of political and social protest and popular resistance in the U.S. as seen through the life of left wing activist Michael Albert. Created in the wake of the rise of the Occupy movements and international protest, the book uses comics to illuminate American political struggle from the 1960s radical movements right up until today’s alternative political media and Albert’s political development in response to it. The money will be used to support the creative team while it completes the project, which will also be published in a print volume by Seven Stories Press. The project (which also includes a foreword by Noam Chomsky) has raised about $4,300 out of its goal of $8000 with about two weeks before its funding deadline is up.
Philadelphia-based fairy tale/horror comics publisher Zenescope has launched a massive Kickstarter fundraising project to create an animated series based on its Grimm Fairy Tales series, a very popular mashup of classic-but-twisted fairy tales, gory horror with plenty of beautiful babes throughout. Zenescope cofounders Joe Brusha and Ralph Tedesco are out to raise $175,000 on Kickstarter to produce Grimm Fairy Tales: The Animated Series, and the project has raised over $53,000 with just under a month to go before it reaches its funding deadline on May 1. Zenescope has secured director Jon Schnepp, who has directed such animated series as the Venture Bros, and the project is slated to be animated by Titmous Animation Studios which has done a variety of animation projects for the Adult Swim animation block on Cartoon Network. The money will be used to support the crew and voice actors over a three month period to create the pilot episode along with a behind the scenes look at the production.
The fabulous Keith Knight, best know for his hilariously snarky comics strip The K Chronicles, is out to raise $40,000 on Kickstarter to create, I was A Teenage Michael Jackson Impersonator, a graphic memoir documenting an earlier part of his life when he was a paid and rather successful Micheal Jackson impersonator. It seems he even toured around New England with a troupe of celebrity impersonators and we can only imagine the hilarity in store when the book is completed. The Kickstarter community has responded: the project has already raised reached its goal raising over $41,000 with a day or so left until its funding deadline. That doesn’t mean Keith can’t use a few more bucks so head over to Kickstarter today.
Finally, cartoonist Batton Lash has hit his funding goal for The Monsters Meet on Court Street, a new trade paperback collection of Supernatural Law: Wolf and Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre, his long running comics strip about the antics of a law firm that represents monsters, ghouls and story book demons of all kinds (“Beware the Creatures of the Night,” says Lash, “they have lawyers!). The funds will be used to finish the production of the latest book collection of the ongoing periodical and web comic series which is self-published through Lash’s own, Exhibit A Press. The new book will include lots of supplementary material on the two lawyers, Wolf and Byrd, as well as an all new story about Mavis, their intrepid secretary. Lash has reached and passed his funding goals of $7,200 and has raised over $10,000 by his funding deadline.
