Crowdfunding

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!

In a post-apocalyptic world where only animals remain, Mac Smith's Scurry follows two mice as they attempt to keep together and stay alive through the most dangerous landscape imaginable. It's a terrific series that has been running as a webcomic since January, with each page fully painted by Smith. Scurry is a blockbuster success; with the launch of a Kickstarter to bring the series to print, Smith has seen his modest target of $8,000 blown out the water. At the time of writing, the Kickstarter has received almost $70,000 in pledges! The series has hit a chord with readers, so Back Pages spoke with Smith about how the project came together, why he brought it to Kickstarter, and just what readers can expect if they back the comic.

Kickstarter is still proving to be an extremely useful way for comics creators to get their work printed and into the hands of fans, and one of the biggest comics crowdfunding success stories of 2016 is Ngozi Ukazu's Check, Please: Year Two, which is not only fully-funded, but has raised over six times it's starting goal of $32,500 within the first few days of the campaign.

Following the huge success of Moonshot, the indigenous comics anthology, editor Hope Nicholson and publisher AH Comics announced a few weeks ago that they'd be bringing a sequel book to Kickstarter. Featuring stories by and about indigenous comics creators, the anthology collects comics from both new and established writers and artists, spreading their voice and stories around the world. With the campaign for the second Moonshot anthology now running on Kickstarter, Back Pages got in touch with Nicholson and contributors David Robertson, Elizabeth LaPensée and Richard Van Camp to find out what makes Moonshot such an important project, and what kind of stories they bring to the second volume.

Power & Magic: The Queer Witch Comics Anthology is a collection of stories about witches and witchcraft by queer women of color, including Devaki Neogi, Jemma Salume, and Aatmaja Pandya, curated by editor Joamette Gil. Currently running on Kickstarter, the anthology will be published by Gil's Power & Magic Press. To find out more about this magical project, Back Pages spoke to Gil about how it came about, what readers can expect from the stories, and her future plans for Power & Magic Press.

Joamette Gil is a queer Afro-Cuban cartoonist who, earlier this year, put out the call to other women of color to see if anyone was interested in making comics about queer witches. It turns out that quite a few were, and that was the origin of Power & Magic: The Queer Witch Comics Anthology. The black and white book features 15 original stories about witchcraft and the queer women of color who practice it, stretching across genres and featuring a wide variety of art styles. Now Gil has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund publication and pay the artists.

Mental illness is an issue that affects one in four people, yet there is still a stigma around talking about it or seeking help from friends, family and employers. In an effort to get more people talking, and to shine a light on the effects of mental illness, Tee Franklin, aka MizCaramelVixen, has assembled an all-star team of creators for #EndTheStigma: A Mental Health Anthology, which launches an open call for submissions at the end of September.

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!

With Deer Editor: Hack running on Kickstarter for the next few weeks, Back Pages tracked down the wild, roaming, Ryan K. Lindsay to find out how this weird comic first came together, to investigate the unique approach to crowdfunding that the project takes, and to learn just why the new face of hard-hitting journalism... is a talking deer.

Happily Ever Aftr is a new comic from Ricky Lima and Nicolas Londeix that launched on Kickstarter this week and blew through its initial goal of $3,095 within days, probably because of how interesting its story sounds: A kidnapped princess uses a dating app on her phone to summon knights to rescue her from the villainess who's in love with her.