After an impromptu vacation borne of a combo work-home move and needing to finalize ordering for my own Kickstarter fulfillment, we’re back! Look no further for the chance to fund exciting issue #1s, snag some fancy webcomic collections, and keep comics institutions in print and publishing.
Junior Scientist Power Hour Volume 2
Abby Howard
Ends July 24
Abby Howard, a reigning internet funny person, is collecting the second and final volume of her journal comics! This volume of Junior Scientist Power Hour will include the Junior Paleontologist Power Hour, a whole boatload of hourlies, miscellaneous journal comics and minis, and… guest comics? All this, wrapped up in a fancy 300 page hardcover full of goofs and general good times. If you’re like me and think Abby Howard is hilarious but haven’t yet actually taken the time to dig into her work, this is… very good.
PiNKHEARTS #1
Levi Buchanan, Melissa Capriglione, Jess Crayons
Ends July 25
PiNKHEARTS is a story about family, growth, and singing very loudly on a bar stage in front of a bunch of strangers. Or, to be more direct: it’s about Kai, a woman working through her recent divorce and feelings of homesickness, forging her own found family at a Karaoke bar in Portland, OR. The first issue is 22 color pages but if the campaign hits $5,500 (and it’s well on its way!), the team will be able to dive straight into the second issue! And honestly, if you’re not sold by “found family karaoke bar,” just look at the incredibly cool storytelling Melissa Capriglione is doing with Kai’s documents in the page above.
The Touring Test
Elizabeth Jancewicz
Ends July 26
Elizabeth Jancewicz is a live painter in a touring band, which is a sequence of six words I didn’t know could go together in that order, and I would like to read about it immediately please and thank you. And luckily, I can! The Touring Test campaign is meant to print 150+ strips (currently readable on Instagram) about Jancewicz’s wild life, as well as a small print, a laser-cut wood pin, and some great stickers. Jancewicz is also doing fulfilment through Amazon, which means that international shipping might actually be affordable!
The Book of Ghosts: Jerome Grand Hotel
Meredith McClaren
Ends July 31
Do you want to pay a dollar (or more) to help a cartoonist sleep in a weird haunted hotel and then make a comic about it? Because I absolutely do.
So, okay, this campaign isn’t for a physical book, even a little. The comic doesn’t exist yet. Instead, McClaren is raising money to travel to the haunted Jerome Grand Hotel and go on a ghost tour, so she can later make a comic about it! I am extremely charmed by this (and by McClaren’s admittedly unrelated Pokémon series) and would like to see it happen. If this sounds familiar, you might be remembering when Crowded scripter Christopher Sebela did a similar thing for the infamous Clown Motel, to great success!
The American Comic Book Chronicles: 1980s & 1950s Reprints
John Morrow, Keith Dallas (1980s), Bill Schelly (1950s)
TwoMorrows Publishing
Ends August 9
Cards on the table: I had to think about including this campaign in this roundup. A lot of mainstream comic book history is written for, about, and by white dudes, and John Morrow is fully entrenched in the masculine-focused, primarily straight, white, mainstream comics culture (though not like, vitriolically so). But that history is part of comics history, and consistent chronicles produced outside of specific companies are valuable and important to keep in print and accessible. And John Morrow’s American Comic Book Chronicles are doing that! Also, the campaign tier names are… a lot.
Missed Connection
Tess Smith-Roberts
Rope Press
Ends August 11
If you’ve read this column before, you know I love aesthetically impactful comics about moving to big cities, and that is… exactly what Missed Connection is. With a focus on the quiet moments of consideration that happen between the capital-E Events in a 20-something’s life, Tess Smith-Roberts has created an incredibly striking, multi-award-nominated, 84-page graphic novel. There’s also a whole pile of fancy extra goodies, including a yelling tiger enamel pin and extremely funky stickers.
Women Do Not Creep By Daylight
Vera Greentea & Kyla Vanderklugt
Greentea Publishing
Ends August 23
Gothic Horror, skeptical lady protagonists, and weird ghosts abound in Women Do Not Creep By Daylight, which might be my favorite title in a long time. When Kate’s father is killed on the job, she and her mother have to search for work in order to survive… and they find it in a lonely, remote castle with too much space, not enough people, and a whole lot of rumors. The environment is spooky, the art is lovely, and I’m very excited. Fair warning, though: the tiers are kind of confusingly laid out. Each one includes the object listed in its title, plus all the stuff in the “Includes” section (for example, I grabbed the $10 tier, which includes a PDF of the book and a big digital collection of process work).
Midnight Widows #1–3
Wendy Browne, Jio Butler, Marcela Hauptvogelova, Delia Mihai, Doris V. Sutherland, Rosie Wigg
Ends July 27
What do the brides of Dracula do after he dies? Well, they leave, keep living, and start having a lot more fun. The story is full of ancient-but-modern lesbian vampires, reanimated serial killers, and, uh, raunchy good humor (…which is to say, mature readers recommended). Midnight Widows springs from the mind of WWAC’s own horror correspondent, Doris V. Sutherland, so we can guarantee that she knows her stuff.
Bun & Tea #1
Claire Napier, Megan Purdy, Christina “Steenz” Stewart
Ends August 15
Claire Napier glided gracefully out of editor-in-chief-ship at WWAC and, because we as a generation have no idea what to do with free time, immediately launched herself into developing a new, serialized comic magazine. And now, you can get that magazine! Bun & Tea is a celebration of serialized storytelling, which means that each of the 12 first chapters in this issue will be designed to be read in discreet, monthly chunks. Claire’s worked with each of the teams from concept to finals, and the stories run from sci-fi to folktale to romance. This campaign is meant to kick off the whole series!
The Nib
Ongoing funding
As we reported a couple weeks ago, the Nib—home to incredible autobio work, political satire, and the occasional weird publishing choice—is being sent off to sea by its parent organization, First Look Media, and will be going independent at the end of the month. This means that their main source of funding will shift from First Look to its membership base… which means, in turn, that it needs financial support from its members to survive. The Nib is a font strong, contemplative comics for readers and a consistent, reliable source of fair-paying jobs for the cartoonists who work with them. Despite occasional skepticism, I’m excited to be part of a comics industry where the Nib exists, and kicking them a couple bucks every month will help that continue.
