Kickstarter: The Adventures of Jack Scratch by Craig Phillips

Above: Artwork from The Adventures of Jack Scratch by Craig Phillips. Copyright 2018 Craig Phillips.

Last year I reviewed the folk-tale comics collection, Giants, Trolls, Witches, Beasts by Taupo based cartoonist, Craig Phillips. That book featured fun retellings of famous international folk tales and myths, all presented in Phillips' robust artwork, with plenty of style and humourous flourishes. Craig is back this year with the first in a new children's graphic novel series, The Adventures of Jack Scratch!

Above: Artwork from The Adventures of Jack Scratch by Craig Phillips. Copyright 2018 Craig Phillips.

Several years ago Craig’s daughter asked him to make a book just for her. When he asked her what she’d like it to be about she said “cats!”, then “pirates!” and then, “pirate-cats!” and so Jack Scratch was born. The Adventures of Jack Scratch was developed over many meal times, and deep discussions, about all the types of things pirate cats might get up to. The resulting book follows the adventures of Jack Scratch -  pint size hero, swashbuckler, adventurer and singer of pirate ditties! Together with Cap’n Catnip - the world’s greatest mariner - and his Uncle Silver, Jack is about to embark on a quest to find the fabled treasure of the HISS- PANIOLA! 

The book is set to be published in March by ME Publishing, but to make that happen they have launched a Kickstarter campaign so you can be one of the first to receive a copy! There's lots of great rewards and goodies available for pledges, including pre-ordering a copy for only $25! The Adventures of Jack Scratch: The Quest for the Hiss-paniola is 52 full-colour pages in A4 (210x297mm), bound in hardcover with a cloth covered spine.

Visit The Adventures of Jack Scratch Kickstarter page HERE for more details and to pre-order your copy, and the Facebook page HERE for further updates!

- AK!

Kickstarter: Echoes From the Drift 2!

Above: Jenni and Zayf, the stars of the comic series, Echoes From the Drift by Craig Petersen. Copyright Craig Petersen 2017.

Echoes From the Drift, the sci-fi comic series by Craig Petersen, continues with a brand new Kickstarter campaign for issue #2! After the successful funding of Echoes From the Drift #1, the story continues as dimension-jumpers Jenni and Zayf find themselves stranded in a post-apocalyptic city under attack. Some of the city inhabitants look familiar, but will they help of hinder our heroes' chances of survival? The only way to find out is to support this Kickstarter by pre-ordering Echoes From the Drift #2!

If you like sci-fi fantasy movies with an 80's vibe - think The Terminator mixed with Guardians of the Galaxy, then you're love Echoes From the Drift.

Above: Artwork from Echoes From the Drift #1 by Craig Petersen. Copyright Craig Petersen 2017.

With the success of the first Kickstarter for Echoes From the Drift, Craig Petersen has proven he can deliver a top-notch comic book and deliver some great rewards for his backers. If you'd like to pre-order issue #2 and missed issue #1, don't worry - there's a combo pack available in the rewards. You can also upgrade for some awesome rewards like an art print, or an original sketch, or even a page of original artwork from the book!

Check out the full Kickstarter campaign for Echoes From the Drift 2 HERE, and all the great reward options available. I also did a review of Echoes From the Drift #1, that you can read HERE. The printing goal for #2 of $5062 is over the half way point now, with 15 days to go, so make sure you show your support and pre-order Echoes From the Drift 2 today!

- AK!

Kickstarting Echoes From the Drift

Above: Echoes From the Drift by Craig Petersen.

Echoes From the Drift is a new comic book series that expat NZ comics creator Craig Petersen is hoping to launch via a currently underway Kickstarter campaign. Petersen was a prominent local comics creator in the 1990s, producing the fondly remembered superhero series, Southern Tribe (1995-98), and more recently the horror/comedy strip, Close To Midnight (2008-09), for Rip It Up magazine.

Above: Jenni and Zayf, from Echoes From the Drift by Craig Petersen.

His proposed new series, Echoes From the Drift, follows two young adventurers - Jenni and Zayf, as they explore parallel worlds. Jenni is an impulsive, adventure-seeker from the 1980s. She totally loves using '80s slang and uses way too much hairspray. But when the chips are down, Jenni has one of the best hearts around and will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you in a fight. Zayf is from a far-flung future. He's driven and determined but has a habit of flying by the seat of his pants. However, Zayf has a strong sense of what's right and what's not and will act upon those feelings. In Echoes #1 you’ll discover how they first met and follow them on their adventures through the dimensions. 

Inspired by his love of TV shows from the late 1970s and 80s, Petersen hopes to infuse this comic series with the same spirit of fun and adventure, with a health dash of drama and tragedy on the side!

With this Kickstarter, Petersen is planning to create the first 22-page issue of a five issue story arc. As an added bonus, he'll be including the 10-page In Ruins prequel to the first issue.

The main goal of this Kickstarter campaign is to create a digital copy of the first issue, with exclusive artwork and prints as Rewards. If the first Stretch Goal is hit, then additional behind-the-scenes content will be added to the digital comics. If the second Stretch Goal is hit, then print copies of the comic will be created for 'Visionary Backers' (€20) and above.

To get an idea of what to expect, you can check out the 10-page prequel comic, In Ruins HERE.

Above: He's a breakdown of how the Kickstarter funding will be used.

There are some great rewards for this Kickstarter - including original pages of artwork from the completed comic! You can visit and support this Kickstarter HERE. It's almost halfway to its goal after one week, so support this project and grab an awesome page of artwork while you can!

- AK!

Kickstarting The Dharma Punks graphic novel!

Above: The Dharma Punks #1 by Ant Sang. Copyright Ant Sang 2014.

Last night at an event in Auckland, I announced the launch a Kickstarter campaign to publish the long out of print NZ comics classic, The Dharma Punks by Ant Sang!

Originally published as an 8-issue comic series from 2001-2003, The Dharma Punks follows Chopstick, a punk who is a part of an anarchist plot to blow up ‘Bobo’s’ a multinational fast-food restaurant. Unable to move on after the death of his close friend, and struggling to reconcile his spiritual path with his political actions, Chopstick’s journey is a meditation on life, love, friendship and blowing things up!

When it was released the series gained a cult following, and early issues regularly outsold bestselling comics like Amazing Spider-Man and Uncanny X-Men at local comic stores. Since The Dharma Punks, Ant has gone on to produce the well received graphic novel Shaolin Burning (2011), and was the designer of the hit animated TV series, Bro'Town.

I recently took to Facebook and Twitter to ask readers what New Zealand comic they would like to see back in print, and The Dharma Punks was the clear favourite. Over a decade after it’s release, the original issues have become increasingly scarce and hard to find. So to remedy this situation I've joined forces with Damon Keen - the editor of Faction Comics, and writer Kelly Sheehan to form Earth's End Publishing: with the intent to publish The Dharma Punks complete collection!

Now to make this a reality, we've turned to popular crowd-funding platform Kickstarter to raise the $8500NZ needed to get this 400 page graphic novel back into print! The Dharma Punks Kickstarter campaign HERE will be running through the month of May. For more details check out our video below:

As you heard in the video, there are some great rewards, from signed copies of the graphic novel, to exclusive artwork and prints only available through this campaign.

We'll be updating the project throughout the month, with new support videos from some notable fans of the original comic series and a first look at some the rewards artwork, so keep an eye on the campaign and help us make this very worthy project a reality!

If you would like a preview taste of The Dharma Punks, there will be a special Free Comic Book Day issue available this weekend exclusively through Heroes For Sale on K'rd in Auckland, and Arkham City Comics at Three Kings Mall in Auckland, and MK1 Hamilton!

- AK!

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!

Digital Comics Watch: Nothing Fits Kickstarter and ComiXology updates!

Above: Nothing Fits, a webcomic by Mary Tamblyn & Alex McCrone. Copyright Mary Tamblyn & Alex McCrone 2014.

Crowd-funding platform Kickstarter has recently extended its global reach to include New Zealand, an exciting prospect for New Zealanders seeking assistance for their creative projects, especially the comics community. In 2012, Auckland based cartoonists Li Chen raised over $66,000US to print two collected volumes of her webcomic, Extra Ordinary Comics. More than doubling her target goal, Chen's project was the forth most successful comics project in Kickstarter history. Made possible with the assistance of a US based host (to comply with Kickstarter's eligibility requirements at the time), it teased the possibility for NZ based cartoonists to tap into the vast global comics audience to support and publish their work.

Now that the international Kickstarter boarders have extended to include New Zealand, one of the first local projects to seize this opportunity is Nothing Fits, a webcomic by Christchurch-based art students, Mary Tamblyn & Alex McCrone.

Nothing Fits features "a group of unlikely heroes: a girl, a clone and an undead mummy attempt(ing) to make sense of the strange world they've been thrown into". All captured in McCrone's very appealing ink, watercolour & gouache illustrations - with a hint of illustrators like Quentin Blake and Tove Jansson in its style. They are seeking to raise $5000NZ to cover the printing costs for the complete graphic novel (over 100 pages). As of this writing they have raised $1416NZ, with 24 days to go.

Above: Nothing Fits, Page 101, by Mary Tamblyn & Alex McCrone. Copyright Mary Tamblyn & Alex McCrone 2014.

For more details on Nothing Fits, I talked to writer/creator Mary Tamblyn:

AK: How did the comic originally come about? I understand you and Alex met at school?

Mary Tamblyn: We did meet at school, we met in Year 12 Painting, but we really got to know each other in Year 13, especially at the end, when we both knew we'd be doing the same thing at University. I already had the characters and the setting, I'd been thinking about it for about 8-10 years before I asked Alex if she wanted to make it into a comic. Then it kinda just went from there.

AK: Can you give me a brief overview of the story and characters?

MT: The story is told through six point-of-views, with three main groups. The group that can loosely be called the 'protagonists', which consists of Charlie: a woman who has been transported to a strange world, Algae: a gangly clone, who isn't really sure about anything and has a mysterious life coach that only he can see, and Mummy: the undead mummy of a young boy, who isn't entirely sure why he's been brought back, but he's happy that he's back. The group of 'antagonists', and that's antagonists in the loosest of terms, is made up of Solemn: whose unclear motives are even a bit unclear for himself, and Mez: a clone who wants to define herself as an individual. There are also the perspectives from the royalty of this land, and the issues surrounding those, but those story-lines interlock with the protagonists and the antagonists a lot. The third group... well, that'd be spoilers~ The story itself though, follows the interaction between this odd set of characters, who are trying to work out what is really happening, along with the reader.

AK: If your Kickstarter is successful, what are your publishing plans for Nothing Fits going forward?

MT: Well, once we are funded we can afford to print 200 copies. Those will be taken up mainly by backers, probably, but hopefully they'll be some left to sell at conventions? If not we will eventually do another print run if there is demand for it. We were always going to do sequels, but this initial story took so long, and it's not really fair on Alex to keep on working on my story, when she has her own projects she wants to work on. Eventually I'm going to have novel-like sequels to continue the story, because I really like the characters and setting. Alex said she would stay on as a plot consultant, because she is a good friend and I'm very good at getting carried away with things. We balance each other out creatively like that. SO YEAH. HOPEFULLY, all goes to plan.

I'm starting another comic project with a different friend soon too - can't stop doing comics. But Nothing Fits in its comic form, is complete.

Above: Nothing Fits, Page 108, by Mary Tamblyn & Alex McCrone. Copyright Mary Tamblyn & Alex McCrone 2014.

To help fund Nothing Fits, visit the Kickstarter page HERE and offer your support! You can also read the webcomic for free HERE.

Above: Moth City Preludes #1: The Reservoir by Tim Gibson. Copyright Tim Gibson 2014.

Over at digital comics platform ComiXology, two NZ creators are releasing comics today. Tim Gibson's Moth City prequel, The Reservoir, a western which explores the back-story of Governor McCaw. It's designed specifically to be read on digital devices, and is only $2.99US, available HERE.

Above: Blastosaurus #2, cover by Richard Fairgray. Copyright Richard Fairgray & Terry Jones 2014.

The second issue of Richard Fairgray's Blastosaurus is also now available on ComiXology, featuring Blasto's first showdown with the deadly Raptors, and a visit to the museum! 30 pages of downloadable content for only $1.99US, available HERE.

More news on local webcomics soon, as I get to part 2 of the Mighty NZ Digital Comics Update!

- AK!