kevin jay stanton

This weekend in Seattle is Emerald City Comicon, and Boom Studios will be there with a bunch of cool stuff you won't be able to get anywhere else. My personal favorite is an exclusive variant cover for Coady and the Creepies #1 by the book's writer, Liz Prince, which features the eponymous band climbing on Seattle's famous Fremont Troll statue. The best con-exclusive variants always have a sense of place, but Boom's bringing more than just that.

There are a lot of things manga does a lot better than the western comics scene. Whether it's stories about cooking, race cars or tennis, manga's genre diversity is through the roof. One area where manga really excels is in its portrayal of beefy dudes, but now the west is finally catching up thanks the recently launched Kickstarter for a zine dedicated to hot hairy men, Burl & Fur.

Crowdfunding has become an important part of how comics get made, allowing creators to pitch their work directly to readers, and providing opportunities for comics that traditional publishers may not consider. With Back Pages, ComicsAlliance hopes to provide a spotlight for some of the best comics crowdfunding projects we can find. With 1001 Knights, editors Annie Stoll and Kevin Jay Stanton are bringing a staggeringly colossal, magnificently giant work of titanically stonking proportions to Kickstarter. Made of three volumes each representing a noble trait of knighthood, the project sees a stunning array of artists, writers, poets, and artistic types gathered together to tell stories about a diverse range of knights. Starting life as a zine --- before rapidly racing off into a far grander project --- 1001 Knights has already flown past its funding target. ComicsAlliance spoke to Stoll and Stanton about the anthologies.