So a message from my old pal Ben reminded me that I haven’t been keeping up on the Kickstartered projects that have grabbed my eyeballs and/or dollars of late. And that includes two that are ending within a day or so of my writing this, so I apologize for the late reminders if you’ve not known about any of these yet.
First up is a new Dreadstar graphic novel from creator Jim Starlin:
If you’re a longtime Dreadstar reader, you’ll see this features the return of Dreadstar’s daughter Kalla from the Peter David/Ernie Colon 1994 mini-series from Malibu. Speaking of which, a collection of said mini is also available in the same Kickstarter, either as an add-on to the new book, or you can just buy it on its own. This Kickstarter is already funded, and one of the stretch goals, a digital copy of the production notes for a since-cancelled proposed Dreadstar TV series, which I am really interested in.
This is the third of the Kickstartered Dreadstar books, and I enjoyed the first two so I’m looking forward to this one. It’s not the same as having a regular series on the stands, but I’ll take what I can get after having no Dreadstar for so long.
Next up, also funded and also ending soon, is a hardcover edition of Steve Bissette’s Tyrant self-published series from 1994:
Physical and PDF editions available, and all sorts of other goodies are being offered as add-ons, like puzzles and blacklight posters! Includes material from two unpublished issues. Several stretch goals already reached, primarily a whole lotta nice-looking prints of Bissette-drawn dinosaurs.
Now for an item that still has a few days to go on its Kickstarter, a remastered edition of the long-lost Mexican animated film Roy del Espacio:
Look, I can’t explain it, I saw it mentioned on another site and I love strange lost media. I didn’t even know that Love and Rockets‘ Gilbert Hernandez was providing an exclusive slipcover for the Blu-ray release. Anyway, seems plenty weird, which is up my alley.
Lastly, just added to the Kickstarter site, is Don Simpson’s Megaton Man Microbus:
This is a book reprinting the Megaton Man webcomic that ran in the late ’90s-early ’00s that I remember following and enjoying way back when. At one point, through that site Mr. Simpson offered a free Megaton Man magnet to anyone sending in a Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope, and I still have mine (the magnet, not the SASE). Here’s the magnet, fresh from my fridge and slightly faded after decades of kitchen display:
You can get just PDFs (two available…one with black and white scans of the original art, and one reprinting the lower-resolution web-ready color strips), or either hardcover or softcover autographed books with the scanned b&w art (which also include the PDFs). Several of these strips have made it into print before, but this is the first comprehensive collection. I’m a longtime Megaton Man fan, and I’ve been wanting a physical edition of these strips for a while, so this was a nice surprise.
Hasn’t quite met its Kickstarter goal yet, but it’s close so I suspect this will be fully funded in short order. It’s nice to get archival editions of things like this and Tyrant, material that’s on the obscure side but the creators at least have this method of getting their work into people’s hands. Like I say in the title to this post, I don’t know how I’ll find the time to read (and watch!) all of this, but it’s good that it exists.