Kickstarter

With Morgan's Organs, the team of Daniel Brodie and Rob Jennex are taking a familiar concept and sending it off in a completely new direction. Set inside their lead character, the comic brings a group of organs to life and pits them off against one another, their squabbles and ambitions leading their human into new and confusing situations. But this isn't an all-ages comic --- rather, this is the "inside the body" comic that finally gives voice to a penis, and pits it as the main opponent to the brain. It's very silly, but it also makes some surprising and delightfully funny points about how humans function. To find out more, ComicsAlliance spoke to Brodie about the project.

What a week! I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to sit back and read some comics. The weekend is finally here, and the world can relax and rest once more --- but the comics industry has been busy too, you know, and the last seven days have seen a flurry of comics-based news and announcements fly past at high speed. ComicsAlliance have got your back, though: when it comes to comics, we never slow down, and so here’s a look back and just what’s been going on. New comics, new stories, new hirings, new podcasts, new art being made --- it’s all part of the ComicsAlliance Weekender!

C. Spike Trotman's Iron Circus Comics has already successfully funded a newly launched third Smut Peddler Kickstarter, but it's not too late to get in on the rewards. The earlier Kickstarters, in 2012 and 2014, enabled the publication of two Smut Peddler anthologies, adding up to more than 600 pages of porn and erotica comics. The current Kickstarter project is somewhat different, however. The funding will enable Trotman to publish two new books under the Smut Peddler banner: My Monster Boyfriend and Yes, Roya.

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. Alex Heberling has been working full time on webcomics since 2013 with her series The Hues. Mixing sci-fi with high fantasy, The Hues follows a group of young women as they attempt to fend off an alien invasion --- with magic powers they've only just realized they have, and haven't quite got the full hang of yet. Alex has taken to Kickstarter this year for her second campaign, seeking to fund a second print volume of the comic. ComicsAlliance spoke to her to find out more.

Back in 2012, Robert Valley launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the printing of a second volume of Pear Cider and Cigarettes, an autobiographical graphic novel about trying to save a friend in desperate need of a new liver. It's about a lot more than that too, as Chris Sebela put it in his interview with the animator/artist himself, "Instead of meditations on relationships and jobs, Pear Cider is a whirlwind journey full of drugs, blood, sex, disease and international travel." Both volumes of the book were a success, but now Valley is returning to Kickstarter with Pear Cider and Cigarettes once more, only this time he's hoping to turn the story into a 30-minute animated short. Even back when the crowdfunding for the second volume began, Robert Valley had an animated version of the story in mind. As he does most of his solo animating through Photoshop already, the book would serve as storyboards for the short film. It's taken four more years, but Valley's completely animated the story from start to finish. This latest Kickstarter venture is merely to help secure funding for post-production.

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. North Bend, by Ryan Ellsworth, Robert Carey, and Dee Cunniffe and Thomas Mauer, is a crime drama with elements of political thriller, focusing on a DEA agent invited to contribute to a CIA program to experiment on small-time criminals against their knowledge with mind-control drugs. The agent has to decide where he stands. Should he keep quiet, out of loyalty to his government, or speak out and put himself at risk? It's a story that surprisingly has its roots in real life events. We spoke to Ellsworth to learn more.

The launch and rise of Peow, a Swedish publisher that was nominated for three Ignatz Awards this year, is one of the most encouraging success stories of 2015. Founded by Patrick Crotty, Olle Forsslöf and Elliot Alfredius, the studio started with three artists and a risograph machine, but has now established a reputation for bright, vibrant, and funny works that are unlike anything else in the industry. Peow has now turned to Kickstarter to fund its Spring/Summer 2016 line-up, featuring new work from creators including Guillaume Singelin, Wai Wai Pang, Mathilde Kitteh, Luca Oliveri, Mackenzie Schubert,and Patrick Crotty himself. It looks as though next year will see Peow grow even further, so we sat down with Crotty to take a closer look at the publisher's history and its hopes for the future.

The Kill Screen is a comic that shows a world where computers have run rampant --- not on society, as you might expect, but rather within society. As a virus. Created by Mike Garley, Josh Sherwell and letterer Mike Stock, the series sees computers literally infecting people and places into digitised oblivion, glitched and broken. It's sci-fi horror as social commentary, but it puts characters before anything else --- which is what has made it such a success on the UK comics scene over the last few years. When the world goes to hell in the weirdest way imaginable, how would society try and move on? Having put out the entire story as single issues, the creative team has now come to Kickstarter to seek funding for the oversized hardcover collection of the story. As part of our ongoing spotlight series on Kickstarter projects worth your attention, ComicsAlliance spoke to writer Mike Garley about how the series came together, and what backers can expect from the completed comic.

Tech-witches living in the future. That's what comics are bringing us now. Hex11 is a series created by the HexComix team of writer Kelly Sue Milano, artist Lisa K. Weber, and editor Lynly Forrest. Set in a world where magic not only exists but has been commodified by giant corporations, the series focuses on Elanor Kent, an apprentice witch who accidentally gets herself wrapped up in a larger conspiracy that hurtles her into the dangerous world of black market magic. The series has already wrapped volume #1, and the team has headed to Kickstarter to fund a print collection. They're also looking to set up funding to help produce the second volume of their story as they seek to build up HexComix as a new studio publisher. Nominated for the inaugural Dwayne McDuffie Award for Divisity this year, Hex11 seems like a project well-worth taking a closer look at, so we spoke to the entire Hex11 team.

Sometimes you see a style of storytelling that is so distinct and different from anything else out there that you have to stop and just admire what's going on. In the case of Martin Simpson's Misc anthology, currently running on Kickstarter to fund a print edition, you'll need every moment possible to try and cram in every little detail of the work. Simpson's artistic style is inspired by everything from Bruce Timm to The Triplets of Belleville, and it offers a strikingly bold, sideways glance at a world that pulses with off-kilter energy. His colors stamp an electric atmosphere across the faces of his characters, while the worlds and lives they live feel unique, uneasy, and imposing. It all looks hugely impressive, and feels like a firm footstep into another dimension. To find out more about Misc, and the uneasy shimmer of neon nightmares that glimmer beneath each page, we spoke to Simpson about the project.