ŷ������

In honor of Kickstarter's 15th Anniversary this month, we're reading comics self-published via crowdfunding campaign or published independently outside of traditional publishing houses for this month's Book of the Month!

Any recommendations to share? What did you choose?

Tell us all about it in the thread below!

White Ash was the first thing I thought of. It was originally a Kickstarter campaign and then Scout picked it up. It's excellent.

Here's my review. It's spoiler free.
/review/show...

One issue of a season 2 came out in 2021 and still haven't seen another one. Not sure what happened but any exposure I can give these guys I will. It's so damn good.

Speaking of Kickstarter, two of the guys that work at my LCS had a kickstarter campaign kick off today by coincidence. I have the first 2 issues they did (They are thick anthologies where they did one of the 5 stories in each.) and they are pretty good. Very much influenced by Power Rangers and manga. This new kickstarter has both of their stories from the first 2 anthologies along with 2 excerpts from new stories they are working on.

Chad wrote: "White Ash was the first thing I thought of. It was originally a Kickstarter campaign and then Scout picked it up. It's excellent.

Here's my review. It's spoiler free.
/rev..."

I read White Ash based on your review awhile back! I agree that it is excellent.

I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess the project that just took my $ today, When We Were Young, won’t be arriving this month, so I took a look through my itch.io wishlist. Will most likely read A Frog in the Fall since it’s been talked up so well on ircb��

I have a question because I feel that would kind of be cheating, but does a comic that has a kickstarter campaign for the english edition (but has already been published in another language) count?

(Asking because I have specifically this in mind :

A few ideas. Are any of these valid?

Bone: The Complete Edition
Grog the Frog: The Book of Taurus
Stray Toasters
Stray Bullets was originally self-published before being reprinted by Image.

I think that would be fine Evilblacksheep except it doesn't come out until September.

Bone, Stray Bullets and Stray Toasters are great ideas. They were all kind of Kickstarters way before there was Kickstarter. I'd throw Cerebus (even though Dave Sim turned into a misogynistic a-hole), Elfquest, Strangers in Paradise (really almost anything by Terry Moore) and A Distant Soil in there too. Even the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles run from the 80's were self-published.

Well, one of the great things about comics is that they require little infrastructure.
Stray Bullets was basically created & published by David Lapham & his wife Maria.

Maybe next year we could do something where we pick a kickstarter or zoop campaign that's due to come out later in the year and then do it as the book of the month when it comes out. We just need to pick creators that can meet their deadlines. There are a lot of campaigns that don't seem to come out until several years later.

Chad wrote: "I think that would be fine Evilblacksheep except it doesn't come out until September."

That's where I'd be cheating, cuz I'd pick up the french version at my local library :p

Ooh @Chad, I didn't even think about Elfquest for this category, but of course! Those old issues were pretty much zines.

Chad wrote: "Bone, Stray Bullets and Stray Toasters are great ideas. They were all kind of Kickstarters way before there was Kickstarter. I'd throw Cerebus (even though Dave Sim turned into a misogynistic a-hol..."

I love Cerebus, and the Dave Sim I met in '92 hadn't yet turned. When I think of Sim, I try to call to mind that version and not the one that slowly emerged towards the end of the Cerebus run. While we may not like who Sim became, we do have to credit him for kickstarting the whole self-published trend in comics. Kevin Eastman and Todd McFarlane have both acknowledged this, and there are crossover issues in both Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Spawn.

You can read Cerebus without Sim's views really bleeding in up to, and including Rick's Story. If you want to read only one Cerebus telephone book, go for High Society, and if you can read two, go for Church and State I and Church and State II.

I've ordered Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Collection, Vol. 1 as I've always wanted to read the original run. I was tempted to re-read High Society but I'm trying to keep the challenge focused on new reads as best I can.

I was a huge Cerebus fan as well although I never got to meet Sim. I've got all of the phone books up to Women when I switched over to reading it monthly as it came out. I finally stopped years later when most of each issue turned into diatribes railing on people in the back and there were only a few pages of boring story that would go nowhere. Those early phone books are terrific even though I haven't reread them in years. I also have a statue kit somewhere in the basement of Cerebus that I never have finished that Sim designed with Barry Windsor-Smith.

Chad wrote: "I was a huge Cerebus fan as well although I never got to meet Sim. I've got all of the phone books up to Women when I switched over to reading it monthly as it came out. I finally stopped years lat..."

Awesome, Cerebus as he first appeared! It was some point during Rick's Story that I stopped reading the letters and during Going Home I stopped buying the monthlies. I've been meaning to sell the individuals for sometime and have bought all the phone books though I'm unlikely to re-read past Rick's Story.

I was lucky to have grown up in Kitchener where my LCS was Dave Sim's former employer and his studio was somewhere nearby. I have an autographed Spawn #10 and a card with Cerebus dressed as Spawn also autographed by Gerhard. Sim signed first and drew Cerebus' head in the top right corner, then Gerhard drew a brickwork background. Sadly their drawing has long since faded. I also have an autographed The Third Quarter poster.

I actually liked the Cerebus volume "Going Home", which is after the last one you guys liked. I enjoyed the character of F. Stop, and enjoyed many of the extra-textual references. But, I can understand it wouldn't appeal to all. (Many would have stopped even earlier.)

I'm currently forcing myself to finish "Later Days", but I am not enjoying it. (The stuff at the beginning was OK. But then it goes off into a koo-koo version of the book of genesis and I'm hating it.)

True story: I was sitting and reading Sim's (or Cerebus') idea that there is both a male and female god in the bible when I get a knock on the door. It is two young women asking whether I'd be interested in learning about the parts of the bible that support the idea that there is a female god as well as a male one. I said no. (But I kept reading Cerebus.)

Ed, you made me wonder if I drew the line too soon so I thumbed through Going Home and my comics collection, and I have. It was during Form & Void that I stopped buying the singles and it was Cerebus' treatment of Jaka that did it. That's the moment really where the turned Dave Sim had bled into the comics, and in many ways the stain remains for the rest of the run.

As you're finding, Latter Days is really hard work with not much enjoyment as a reward. It was just a nightmare mix of both narration and the rewriting of Genesis to Sim's strange world view. I didn't read it word for word and only skimmed and was definitely glad I bought the telephone book second hand.

Rick's Story first introduced the scripture-like passages, and, back then, I found them amusing. It was like Rick, with his head injury, saw himself as some sort of prophet to Cerebus and we got to read his mad scribbles. The large blocks had long been a staple by this point, I think it was as early as Flight we started to see them.

The Last Day starts in a similar vein, but around page 40 it finally returns to something of a comic. I actually liked the end and felt there was a bit of a redemption for Sim with a closing that almost reads like "shoot, maybe I'm not right and I've gone wrong."

I remembered Rick's Story ending with Jaka & Cerebus heading into the sunset, but I see that, in a way, so does Going Home. So perhaps a future read through will go right through Going Home and skip to page 40 of The Last Day and I'll just forget that Form & Void and Latter Days were ever printed.

I went back & forth 500 times about my final choice for this month. I recently started an Elfquest read/reread so it was a good excuse to go through a few more chapters of the Original Quest. At the same time, in the spirit of the theme, I really wanted to financially support someone's work, and at the same same time, I didn't have much room in my comic budget this month. I finally settled on the $4+ Bowser & Luigi are in love, called The Bowuigi Zine in searches (I picked it up on itch.io). I think it first came out in shortbox, so I feel late to the party, but omg it was so charming, I definitely recommend it if you can't spend much in time and/or money on your April pick.

I love all the attention ElfQuest is getting last month and this month! While this example isn't a comic, ElfQuest put out an "audio movie" aka podcast and had a Kickstarter fund that I donated to. Listen to Fire and Flight here:

Had a hard time deciding this month. I have backed so many Kickstarter books, but my favorites would be a re-read which I try to avoid. And the newer books have mostly been “meh�� and/or only first issue of something that may or may not continue.

I have decided on ��Widdershins Volume One: Sleight of Hand�� through volume 10. It’s been a web comic that has had KS campaigns for the print editions, and I bought 1��10 in the latest. I had read 1��6 from Comixology before, so this will be a partial re-read to catch up.

Dave Sim's Cerebus is up on Humble Bundle (). It's all 16 of the "telephone" books, plus a booklet he wrote on self publishing. Cerebus #0 doesn't appear to be here, which means issues 51, 112 & 113 are missing, unless they've appended them. They aren't crucial to the story, but they are enjoyable.