Not entirely broke after Christmas? How about a couple of comic anthologies at five dollars each?

Every now and then I trawl through the comic category on Kickstarter looking for cool looking comic projects with cheap digital tiers as a way of checking out new stuff I'd otherwise never have heard of. 

Of course anthologies are even better for this kind of thing because, well, you're getting up to a couple of dozen new things for the price of a cup of tea and a sandwich and how great is that?

There are three that caught my attention this time round.

First up, because it's finishing soonest, is Webcomic Underdogs: The Anthology, an anthology run by the people behind Webcomic Underdogs.



Five dollars will get you a 36 page digital collection from the creators of nine different webcomics, including Princess Chroma, which contains a talking bunny, because talking bunnies are awesome. Upgrade to eight dollars and if you're in the US you can get a print copy, thirteen if you're outside the US, because postage firms like to charge extra for shipping stuff internationally. Greedy gits.

Anyway, it's a neat looking project and five dollars isn't much, so go have a look at that one, check out some of the comics involved and maybe chuck them a bit of money.

Second is sci-fi anthology Imaginary Drugs, which features even more talking bunnies, though with a bit of a darker twist this time.



One single dollar will get you the PDF of one single story and five dollars will get you the full thing. With the stretch goals included (It's currently at just under double its original funding goal) that's over 60 pages of comics, which isn't bad at all.

Lastly there's Cautionary Fables and Fairy Tales: Africa Edition, a 200 page black and white collection of 16 African folktales, illustrated by 16 different artists.



As with the other two five dollars will get you the entire thing in digital format and looking at who's on board that is an absolute bargain even if there's no mention of any talking bunnies.

Twenty dollars will get you the print version and forty will get you the print versions of both this and the original Cautionary Fables and Fairy Tales, which is all about the European folktales.

All of these anthologies have between three and ten days left on them, so go and check them out whilst you've still got the chance to get them at this stupidly low price.

Ryan Estrada's new Kickstarter looks kind of awesome.

Ryan Estrada, that guy who I'm still not convinced is real, has started another Kickstarter campaign and it looks kind of awesome.



The idea? Broken Telephone, a set of eighteen comics, illustrated by eighteen different artists released at a rate of one every two weeks and all that it'll cost you to get them? One measly little dollar.

The eighteen stories are all connected with each character playing the role of protagonist in one comic and villain in another. Eighteen dollars will get you a nineteenth comic in the series and pay an extra six dollars on top and you get another five fortnightly comics drawn by Mr Estrada himself on top of that! Isn't that a bargain?

It really is.

There are even five $200 rewards where you can get the original art for one of those last five comics, two of which are already taken. That is amazingly cool.

So go throw a load of money at him, he'll give you a bunch of cool comics and everybody wins! It'll be brilliant. Trust me.

Reminder: Jonathan Dalton has an awesome Kickstarter that needs your support.

You might have seen a blog post I made last month about a couple of cool Canadian comic Kickstarters that I was backing. Well, the first one Nelvana of the Northern Lights finished a while back with over double of its original goal and, which is awesome.

The other one  for Jonathan Dalton's A Mad Tea Party has still got a little way to go to meet it's goal and it's only got nine days left on it and I really, really want that book, so check out that link, check out the video below, check out his website and them maybe throw some money at him. 

A Couple of Cool Canadian Comic Kickstarters

Y'know what's great about Kickstarter and the like?

Really cheap PDF copies of comics you never would have read otherwise.

Y'know what's also great about Kickstarter and the like?

Being able to help awesome things get made. 

There are a couple of projects I'd particularly like to bring your attention to.

First up, because it's finishing soonest, is Nelvana of the Northern Lights, a project to collect together and reprint every issue of Canada's first female superhero comic.

Created in 1941, Nelvana ran for 31 issues and until now it has never been reprinted. There aren't that many known copies still out  there, because y'know it was the 1940s and you didn't have comic collectors sticking them in little polythene bags with bits of card then storing them in air tight climate controlled, laser equipped, titanium lined stasis units to stop people from breathing on them. 

I might be exaggerating slightly there. 

Anyway, Canadian comic obsessives (I mean that in the nicest way of course) Hope Nicholson and Rachel Richey have acquired the rights to put this comic back in print, every single issue of it and they've tracked down copies of each one, copies whose owners are willing to let them take them out of the climate controlled, laser equipped titanium lined stasis units and scan them.

Ten Canadian dollars will get you a reprint of the only colour issue of the comic, fifteen will get you a digital copy of the complete Nelvana collection and thirty will get you a nifty processed wood version of it (also known as a book).

There are also a bunch of artists who you may well have heard of drawing new art specially for backers, so go check that one out. It looks cool.

The second cool Canadian comic Kickstarter is for Jonathan Dalton's A Mad Tea Party, which has absolutely nothing to do with current day US politics before you ask.

As well as sporting a nifty collection of hats (please watch the video above for nifty collection of hats) Mr. Dalton is the creator of several comics including this really neat sci-fi comic called A Mad Tea Party, which is still not about US politics but is available to read online here.

I'll steal the description for the comic from the Kickstarter page, because his description is way better than mine.

"A Mad Tea-Party is the story of Connie and Matilda Sakura- two perfectly ordinary girls who just happen to be genetically engineered. Their parents fought a war against giant alien robots and saved the Earth from being invaded. But now it's the girls' turn to deal with the post-war political fallout. Connie has been kidnapped by teenage revolutionaries and Matilda has to rescue her, even though she's the one who doesn't have any useful genetic enhancements.

A Mad Tea-Party is a young adult book, so it is suitable for most readers, especially if you like complex stories with unconventional protagonists."

The bit he forgot to include there is that it's also really very good.

For a piddly little seven Canadian dollars you can get all 288 pages of A Mad Tea Party in digital form, plus Chop Suey #1 and #2 and the brilliant Lords of Death and Life. I have a print copy of that one sitting on my desk and it's looking lonely. I think it needs a friend. I'm thinking A Mad Tea-Party will be a good friend for it, so I've picked the slightly more expensive, but still a bargain $22 dead tree option (including free shipping to any inhabited place in the known universe). Have a look at the Kickstarter page and consider throwing some money at it so my lonely little comic can have a buddy to sit next to.

Ryan Estrada is looking for suggestions for the next Whole Story

So yeah, what the title says.

The Whole Story is a really neat idea, a really, really neat idea. Bundles of DRM free digital comics starting at a single, solitary dollar for the basic bundle (though I'm pretty sure nobody would mind if you felt like paying a whole lot more). For readers it's a good way to discover new creators and for creators it's a good way to get a whole bunch of new readers, and also some money. Everybody wins!


To quote from the last Whole Story Kickstarter:

"The Whole Story is all about digital done right. We put our time and money into offering the best first-run comics, new translations, and high quality, complete versions of old favorites. We don’t force you to read them on certain devices or in certain apps, we let you download and keep your comics forever. We don’t force you to pay more than cover price, we let you name your own price.

Our books are bundled together in pay-what-you-want collections, and every book we bring you is a complete, stand-alone story. No cliffhangers that force you to pay more to find out what happens next! You can choose between Retina-resolution PDFs (for the highest quality), Web-resolution PDFs (for easy storage), or CBZs (in both resolutions, for use in comic-reading apps), all of which are DRM-free so you can download and keep them forever."

Check out the official twitter account here for more information or if you want to submit or suggest something email Ryan Estrada at ryan@ryanestrada.com