Crowdfunding

For the last few years, artist Nika, aka Deandra Tan, has been working on a long-form romance comic called Love Debut! Inspired by shoujo manga, the series follows aspiring musician Nick as he rises through the pop world, which brings him into the orbit of Sara, a former singer who is far more wary of the music world. Their romance is the center of the story, but from there Nika spirals out and creates a whole world for them to live in. With the webcomic recently wrapping up after a three year run, Nika has taken to Kickstarter to fund a print edition of the comic. To find out more about how she created Sara and Nick's world, Back Pages spoke to her about the origin of the series, how things have developed over the years, and what people can expect from her Kickstarter.

The thing about a "high concept" book is that once you've read the title, actually describing it is almost completely unnecessary. Such is the case for Time Cheetah: The Secret of Stalin Island, a bold new story from Carlos Guzman, Alejandro Verdugo, Matt Cossin, Mikey Cossin, and Tom B. Long that --- by this point in the sentence --- you can probably already guess is about a time-traveling cheetah-man secret agent who goes on a mission to take down the evil forces hiding on an island shaped like Josef Stalin's head.

Jimmy Palmiotti knows the comics industry. I don't just mean that he knows how it operates, although his thirty-year career has proved that to be the case; Jimmy Palmiotti literally knows everybody in the comics industry, having started out as a freelance inker working with people like Gene Colan before turning his hand to writing and publishing. Palmiotti has been at the heart of the industry throughout his career as part of the New York comics scene, and his work has pushed publishers to be more bold and creative. We spoke to him about five of his career milestones.

After the year most of us just had, I think we can all sympathize with the idea of just starting over again somewhere far away beyond the stars, and a new Kickstarter project seeks to do something very similar. Writer Shannon W. Lentz has put together a killer roster of some of the best sci-fi and fantasy artists for a new project called Cayrels Ring, which features eight distinct chapters that set the scene and establish a whole new galaxy.

Check out the best cartoonists of 2016, including our critics’ picks and the cartoonists you voted the runners up and winner in this category!

If three years of mandatory French classes in high school taught me anything, it's that learning a new language is not only incredibly hard; if you're not motivated, it's pretty much impossible. Thankfully, there might be a new way around that thanks to LingoZing, a new app that teaches readers new languages via comic books, which has launched a Kickstarter campaign today.

The weekend is here! Take a look back at what’s happened in the past seven days. New comics, new stories, new podcasts, new art being made — it’s all part of the ComicsAlliance Weekender!

Sisters Kelly Matthews and Nichole Matthews, known online by their collective pen name Kickingshoes, have created a series of erotic stories over the past two years for the subscription-based webcomic publisher Slipshine. Their webcomics focus on, as they put it, "monsters... and the people who love them" --- and they've certainly found an audience of people who love them! The pair have now set up a Kickstarter campaign to bring the stories to print under the title Creature Feature. They've already met their target of $7,000, and are now setting their sights on a series of stretch goals. Back Pages caught up with the artists to learn how they first came up with Creature Feature, how the webcomics format has aided them with their stories, and what readers can expect from the print edition.

Noel Arthur Heimpel's queer urban fantasy webcomic Ignition Zero began way back in 2011, and after five years of drama, romance and supernatural mystery, the epic story finally came to a conclusion this year. Now, to send the series off in a big way, Heimpel is collecting the third and final volume in a softcover edition, and has launched a Kickstarter to help fund the printing.

Paradox Girl is legitimately one of the best comics I've read all year. Focused on a woman (well, a lot of women who are actually the same woman coexisting at the same time at different points in her life) who has the ability to effortlessly teleport herself through time, space, and the comics page, the series takes a premise that's built on the most complicated aspects of time travel stories and delivers on it with a lighthearted fun that seems almost effortless. After a successful Kickstarter campaign that funded the first three issues, creators Cayti Bourquin and Yishan Li have returned for a crowdfunding campaign to bring readers Paradox Girl #4, 5, and 6. To find out more, ComicsAlliance spoke to Bourquin and editor Peter Bensley about the complexities of telling a story with a nonlinear heroine, and why a superhero story about Stompzillas and time travel is actually about learning to forgive yourself.