Some Kickstarter campaigns of note

I feel weird about Kickstarter, the crowd-funding site that some comics folks use to bring their projects to life, instead of going the traditional route of securing a publisher. 

I've backed a couple projects there before (some Jim Lawson comics, Mystery Science Theater 3000*) and been pleased with the results, so I'm not, like, opposed to it or anything, I just think it's weird when certain creators or certain projects show up there, given the fact that they seem like they should be the exact sorts of comics that publishers should be fighting one another to publish, rather than something that the creators have to turn to crowd-funding to produce. (That said, I suppose it just might be a weird prejudice of mine against crowd-funding as a publication model; perhaps there are reasons Kickstarter is more appealing to a creator than working with a publisher, I don't know. I didn't ask any of these creators.)

Case in point? Jeff Smith, the Eisner and Harvey-winning cartoonist extraordinaire whose resume includes Bone, RASL, Tuki: Save the Humans, Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil and Little Mouse Gets Ready, an artist who was on the pointy end of the spear of getting comic books in libraries and re-popularizing comics for kids again, is seeking to publish his early, pre-Bone (proto-Bone, in his words) college comic strip, Thorn, which used to run in the Ohio State University school paper The Lantern when Smith was a student there. (I've seen some of these in the 2008 book Before Bone, published in conjunction with his Wexner Center for the Arts show Jeff Smith: Bone and Beyond, and they're pretty fascinating to read in the context of the Bone that later saw print). 

One would think an artist of Smith's stature would have his pick of publishers, but Thorn: The Complete Proto-Bone Comic Strips 1982-1986 and Other Early Drawings is on Kickstarter. Again, maybe this is Smith's first choice, and he didn't even consider going with a publisher, but it strikes me as...wrong that a major publisher wouldn't want involved with the project, as relatively niche as it might be. 

As of this writing, there are 16 days left to go on the campaign. For $30, you can get a trade paperback version of the book, for $75 you can get a hardcover. 

If you've been a regular reader of EDILW for a long time now, you probably know my love of Kelley Jones' art knows no bounds, and little has excited me more than getting a new Kelley Jones comic, especially a new Kelley Jones Batman comic. In fact, I'm so fond of Kelley Jones that if Kelley Jones walked up to me on the street and asked me for, say, $50, I'd gladly give it to him. So obviously I was onboard with a Jones-related Kickstarter.

And this one looks like a doozy, as it also involves Dracula and cartoonist Matt Wagner (best known his Mage and Grendel, but, like Jones, he has plenty of great Batman comics to his name as well). Dracula Vol. 1—The Impaler is written by Wagner, drawn by Jones and will be the first in a series of graphic novels telling the life story of one of fiction's most famous characters. 

It seems like a perfect project for Dark Horse Comics or DC Comics, both of which have worked extensively with the creators in the past, or even Dynamite, where Wagner has been writing the adventures of other famous pop culture icons, like Zorro, The Shadow, The Spirit and the Green Hornet. Whatever though. Like I said, I would be happy to hand Jones money if he asked for it; if I got a Dracula comic by Jones and Wagner in exchange, well, who could ask for more?

As of this writing, there are 16 days left on the campaign. For $45 you get a hardcover version of the book, with either a Jones or a Wagner cover (I chose the Wagner cover, since I'd be getting all that Jones are on the inside).  

Finally, there's something that's only kinda sorta comics that is nevertheless near and dear to my heart, and was a big part in my falling in love with comic books in the first place: The old Palladium role-playing game based on Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's original, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness. 

I and a friend of mine had played a little Dungeons & Dragons around the time we discovered these books, which featured black-and-white illustrations by Mirage Studios artists Eastman and Jim Lawson (in addition to being based on the early, Mirage issues of TMNT, they also included some short comics from Eastman and Laird, all of which I believe have since been collected repeatedly, including by IDW). 

Palladium quickly overtook D&D in our affections, and between us we had all five of the TMNT sourcebooks, plus a few of the related After The Bomb books, which also involved mutant animal characters. We were playing these as I was buying my first TMNT comics, which brought me into a comic shop and well, here we are thirty-some years later. 

I'm delighted to see that Palladium is bringing the books back in a pair of collections, even though I have some reservations about the way they're doing it; mainly, there will be new covers and everything will be color-ized, which, in addition to never looking quite right to my eyes (I didn't care for the colorized versions of some Mirage comics that IDW has published over the  years), means the Turtles will be wearing their cartoon colors, rather than all wearing red, as in the original color covers of the original black and white covers.

Luckily, they seem to have thought of the exact sort of snob that I am, as in addition to the new, colorized versions, they're also publishing black, white and red editions: "For those who want to enjoy a blast to the past version of the books more akin to the originals, this is for you." Neat! I backed at the level that would get me those versions of the two collections, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness and TMNT Transdimensional Adventures. 

As of this writing, there are 28 days left in this campaign, and there's a huge swathe of options of what you can get, from $50 for the Other Strangeness Collection all the way up to special dice and miniature figures. 

This is the end of this blog post, so you can now leave EDILW and head over to Kickstarter where you can support any or all of these worthwhile projects. I hope you will; I'd like to see them all reach all their stretch goals. 

*They're currently trying to raise funds for a fourteenth season, by the way, and they're doing it here, rather than through Kickstarter this time. 

(Kinda sorta) review: Green Hornet: Year One #1

Batman: Year One had a very specific conceit, built right into the title—it was not only set during the first year of Batman’s career, but encompassed the entirety of that first year.

While not writer Frank Miller’s most popular or influential Batman comic, it was certainly a pretty influential one, putting the term “Year One” into the comic book lexicon. Of course, repeated usage of the term and the various variations of it over the years have devalued it: There was Batman: Year Two, Batgirl: Year One, JLA: Year One and Robin: Year One…the same “year” covered in “Batman Year Three.” There was that one summer where every DC character with a title got a “Year One” annual. Paul Pope had his Batman: Year One Hundred riff, and, more recently, Nightwing, Green Arrow, The Teen Titans, Black Lightning and even Metamorpho got stories branded thusly.

In fact, the term has lost its meaning enough that DC seems to have abandoned it completely, with Geoff Johns-penned origin stories going instead with Secret Origin.

Dynamite Entertainment using the “Year One” branding for their second Green Hornet miniseries, Green Hornet: Year One struck me as a little odd, since its thus far been such a DC Comics term, but maybe that Jack Black and Michael Cera Bible movie reclaimed it from DC.

In any case, all “Year One” stories that don’t, in fact, focus on the first year of a character’s fictional career tend to bug me a little. If it’s not actually about the first year, why not call it something else? (An insect-themed would be cool, I think, like Green Hornet: Chrysalis or something would be rad, wouldn’t it? No? Just me?)

So this is Green Hornet: Year One, which jumps around through time: 1921, 1931, 1934, 1938, 1926. It’s the origin story of both Britt Reid and Kato, told as separate, parallel threads, which eventually unite in Chicago in 1938, when we see the pair with their masks and start fighting crime with kung fu and gadgets. The exact point where the two threads intersect isn’t revealed in this first issue.

I’m happy to report that the only thing that bugged me about the book was wondering about the sub-title. (Well, that and the need for so many Green Hornet comics in the market in so short a period of time. And the $3.99 price tag.)

Matt Wagner writes (and earns an “art direction” credit…as well as providing one of the four covers), and Aaron Campbell provides the pencil and ink art.

The story is fairly straightforward and has few surprises, but then, it doesn’t really need much in the way of surprises or even a terribly unique approach: The Green Hornet is a fairly generic mask, fedora and long coat hero, one engaged in fairly generic mask, fedora and long coat hero type of crime-fighting activities.

Wagner does hone in one aspect particular to the character, his masked chauffeur sidekick, and transforms the relationship from hero and sidekick to a pair of heroes…at least judging by the way panel-space and attention is equally divided in this issue.

While I would probably have been more into this book if Wagner drew it as well (simply because I’m a big fan of his art), Campbell’s stuff is pretty solid. It’s highly representational and quite detailed. I’ve read two Dynamite Green Hornet comics in about as many weeks, and this one is definitely the better-looking in terms of art and colors. It’s also the better-written of the two.