Sam Orchard's Family Portraits Kickstarter!

Above: Family Portraits promo image. Copyright Sam Orchard 2014.

Sam Orchard has been a stand-out talent in the local comics scene for some years, producing the much loved webcomic Rooster Tails - an autobiographical series about his life and relationship as a queer transgender guy. He has regularly appeared at Zinefest events and contributed to various local and international anthologies, as well as a number of human rights education and advocacy campaigns.

Produced as a part of his Master of Creative Writing degree in 2011, his auto-bio comic series Family Portraits interweaves Sam's own story as a queer-identified transgender man with vignettes of other queer individuals living in New Zealand. It explores and celebrates how age, history, gender, and ethnicity shape our experiences of ourselves, and how we live in the world. How the stories of others can reflect and affirm our own stories, either through connections or differences.

 

Above: the covers of Family Portraits #1-2 by Sam Orchard. Copyright Sam Orchard 2014.

As the series was produced in full-colour, high printing and shipping costs have prevented Sam from making his comic available in print, so he has turned to crowd sourcing platform Kickstarter to make this happen!

Sam is looking looking to raise $6300 which will pay for the printing of the first two issues of the series (60 pages of full-colour comics in each issue!) and fund a limited tour of the US - where he can connect with his dedicated US reader-base and attend some small press/comic conventions.

So without further ado, he's Sam to talk about the campaign in his own words:

You can pledge and support the Kickstarter project HERE. There are some great rewards available, so please throw your support behind this very worthy cause!

- AK!