Crowdfunding Roundup - January 2025
NSFW = No Shortage of Fun Works!
What a GREAT start to 2025 for Indiecomics!
🚨🚨 ENDING IN A WEEK OR LESS!!! CHECK THESE OUT ASAP!!! 🚨🚨
The Awakened by Alex Segura, Michael Moreci & Dean Kotz - a dark, noir-ish superhero murder mystery that explores what the true definition of power is, and who should wield it.
Shaolin Nun All-Ages Edition - Mei Yin is a warrior nun from a secret Shaolin order. An order dedicated to training women to fight back against the world of men. Now, she has come to Los Angeles to continue their mission. She is…The Shaolin Nun
Get caught up on the first four issues of Shaolin Nun prior to the release of issue #5 with these special "no-swears" issues!
MAKE 100: OthalaM Cheeky Standee - Debuting two new Cheeky Comics standees, and one of them is limited to 100! Featuring OthalaM & Elias Chatzoudis's artwork.
Well, we’re back with another installment of my personal selection of indiecomics and adjacent projects to back on Kickstarter, Zoop, or Indiegogo (I rarely, if ever, use Crowdfundr or FundMyComic or BackerKit, apologies).
From here I do my best to explain to you, in my own idiotic way, why I like these campaigns and why you should consider backing them. So, here’s my first crowdfunding newsletter of 2025!
It’s Fun To Kill People #1-2 - A Dark Comedy Comic
Follow the hijinks of a poorly adjusted kid who has a pair of serial killers as parents.
When Stokes released the first issue of IFTKP I was immediately grabbed by the cover art:
If this is on the comic shop shelf, I’m picking it up. It was, in fact, on Kickstarter so I still picked it up. And I immediately loved it. This dark comedy is a bizarre 3-way love-child of Calvin & Hobbes, Harley Quinn, and Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. It’s fun, irreverent, murderous, funny, dysfunctional… and it’s one of my favorite titles from creator Anthony Stokes!
Full disclosure: Stokes is a co-creator—along with Chris Moses, Damiano Restivo, John Rauch, and Taylor Esposito—for my AMERICAN YAKUZA series. Act III is currently on Kickstarter and almost fully-funded!
When Ant told me he was releasing a new issue, I tried to be the first in line to get the book at launch. Alas, that jerk Chris Moses beat me to the punch by a few seconds!
Anyway, I’m a Backer and you should be, too, if you enjoy well-executed (see what I did there?), beautifully drawn with a dark twist to them.
🌸 American Yakuza - NSFW Murder Mystery in Japan (Acts 1-3) 🌸
ICE & BONE #1 & 2: A SAMURAI ACTION-HORROR | MAKE 100
5th book in the series! Set in 16th Century Japan. Anarchy reigns. Revenge took Nakaaki beyond BLOOD & FIRE, now there is only ICE & BONE...
I’ve been reading Aaron’s entire samurai series of books since he first launched Blood & Fire #1. It’s been such a fantastic book and one of those indies that I really look forward to seeing more of, so when he launched ICE & BONE #1 I got in on that jam right away (I have all of these books in physical and digital formats, FWIW). Now, here we are with ICE & BONE #2!
With this campaign you can get the entire samurai series and get caught up today!
The Bubble Gumshoes - An All-Ages Comedy Manga
Tabitha and Emily, a pair of hard-boiled middle school detectives, must get to the bottom of a case of missing cookies!
This book just popped up when I was scrolling through recent releases on Kickstarter. I thought it looked really fun, and I love an opportunity to grab a potentially entertaining book that I can also pass along to my book-reading kids.
The book is a fun premise—kinda like a Nancy Drew manga—and the art is charming. I’m looking forward to seeing this book funded and reading it with my lil buddies!
Thunder Guardian
Join father-son team of Reilly Brown (Deadpool, Batman/Fortnite: Zero Point) and Will Brown (grade schooler) as they tell the story of Thunder Guardian and his friends, and their battle against space pirates, monster boogers, and the forces of the evil Unknown!
This campaign is so cool!!
Okay, as a fellow comicbook dad who recently published his 11yo daughter’s comic, seeing Reilly put this book out there with Will is just special. Reilly is a great dude (who owns a copy of my Spider-Squirrel #1 he bought at Baltimore Comic-con three years ago—just sayin’), a great artist, and clearly a great dad. The fact he’s from Jersey should not be held against him… heh.
Anyway, definitely give this campaign a look and grab a copy! It’s zany, fun, and well-drawn!
The Author Ecosystems: Your Unique Path to Writing Success
Discover your unique author archetype and learn strategies to build a thriving, sustainable writing career tailored to your strengths.
I think I own all of Russell’s authorship works. No, really. I probably should post a pick of my publishing/authorship library one day. Maybe that’s a whole post all it’s own…
…anyway, here we are again!
From the campaign:
WHAT IF YOU COULD…
Know exactly what marketing and sales strategies are going to work best for you (and be the most fun for you!) before you even try it.
Understand your audience and why they buy or don't buy on a deeper level than you ever have before.
Make money in a way that aligns with what you love to do instead of chasing trends that work for others.
Grow your readership in an organic way that makes sense for your business.
Whether you’ve been struggling to get traction in your author career, running on the marketing treadmill barely able to break even, or absolutely killing it as an author, finding your perfect Author Ecosystem can help take you to the next level starting today.
You aren't doing marketing wrong. You're doing the wrong marketing.
I’m always looking at ways to improve my marketing and campaigning skills, no matter how much money my books bring in. I want to build a self-sustaining publishing entity that allows me to tell the stories I want to tell, when I want to tell them without worry about who am I going to reach1.
That’s it for this post!
Go check out some great comics & related goodies, and feel free to drop a comment below!
Okay, I’ll always worry about that, but the point is I am not looking to make a living with comics, but I am looking to keep making comics for a long time to come.