Kickstarter is without a doubt one of the best things to happen to the independent comics industry. There are some publishers out there who will distribute independent comics to comic shops, but they don’t put any money into them—that has to come from elsewhere. It’s easy enough to write the script for a comic for free, hoping there will be some money later on if it becomes popular. But it takes all day to draw a comic, so the artist must have some form of income to be able to do it. And of course, to print out the comic books requires money. Promotion costs money. Thanks to Kickstarter, comic creators can now get that money from the very fans who would be purchasing it from the stores.
The first comic I supported is to get a new ongoing series started by one of my all time favorite artists, Amy Reeder. I fell in love with her art in Batwoman and Madame Xanadu. I supported her previous Kickstarter with writer/editor Brandon Montclare for Halloween Eve, and that turned out to be a wonderfully evocative book. And this series, Rocket Girl, has a very fun and interesting premise:
A teenage cop from a high-tech future is sent back to 1986. She’s investigating the Quintum Mechanics megacorporation for crimes against time. As she pieces together the clues, she discovers that the “future”—an alternate reality version of 2013 and the place she calls home—shouldn’t exist at all.
There’s a lot of attention to detail–with parts of the story being a veritable period piece on New York City in the mid-80s. There are also glimpses into a fantastic alternate future of teen police officers, laser guns, and jet packs. Action is everywhere and the cast is diverse.
Sounds like a winner, I’m in!
The second is the first graphic novel of a Steampunk webcomic called Lady Sabre & The Pirates of the Ineffable Aether by one of my very favorite novelists and comic writers, Greg Rucka. I’ve followed this since the beginning, although I’ve only read the webcomic sporadically. It creates a wonderfully immersive steampunk environment with heroes and villains and all the good stuff of legend. I bought the cloth covered graphic novel and I’m looking forward to it!
