kickstarter

So I’ve been a little Kickstarter-crazy over the last several months, despite the fact that I have a to-read and to-watch pile already teetering over my head and the last thing I needed was…well, more things. But people keep putting out (or not putting out, as I’ll get to) good things I want to enjoy, and thus here we are.

I talked about several of these items back in April, but I thought I’d at least update you on what’s going on with them.

Starting with the items that I either already have in my hand or have experienced:

The Megaton Man Microbus:

This is a very nicely made softcover book reprinting the Megaton Man webcomic that ran in the mid-1990s through the early 2000s, featuring the wild superhero universe Don Simpson built around his Man of Molecules as seen in Bizarre Heroes and other publications.

The book is in black and white, with new scans of all the art. Simpson also provided a PDF to backers that features the strips (at their original web-ready resolution) in color. Also in the book are reproductions of all the sketches he included in folks’ books who paid for that level in the campaign. (I didn’t since I already got a character sketch from him in a previous campaign, though now I kinda wish I’d splurged for one this time.) Anyway, good book, glad to have it.

Here’s something that’s not comics:

…Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Rifftrax Experiments, picking up where the original TV show left off when it was cancelled by the Sci-Fi Channel. Rifftrax is of course the movie riffing/commentary track endeavor created by the main cast of MST3K when it went off the air, so those folks returning to play those parts is a real “full circle” kind of thing. Now, I supported the campaign at the “gimmie that Blu-ray set” level, which won’t ship ’til December, but I did go see the premiere of the first of the new episodes (Sting of Death) in a theater, so I’m pretty sure I’ll see fulfillment of this particular campaign.

Here’s a campaign that’s still active as I write this:

…Nexus: Triplets, a graphic novel written by Nexus’s co-creator Mike Baron. I’ve written about my love of Nexus many times before, and while I’m sad the other co-creator, Steve Rude, won’t be doing any more stories with the character, I have enjoyed Baron’s recent work on it (with some caveats). Splurged for the signed hardcover with the digital download, in case my eyes aren’t up to the print edition.

One I just supported and is ending the same day I’m posting this:

…well, it’s technically Steve Lafler’s campaign for his 1956 graphic novel, but one of the add-ons, which can also be purchased separately, is Benb #1. I don’t know quite how to explain the enigmatic Benb, who often appeared in Lafler’s Dog Boy comics, but he’s endlessly endearing and boy, just look at the Kirby-riffic cover.

By the way, I’m still looking for a copy of Benb and Gerald from 1980, if any of you happen to see it.

And here are a couple I mentioned last time that are still pending:

…Steve Bissette’s Complete Tyrant, collecting his sadly-curtailed indie book along with plenty of extra material. I went for the trade with the signed bookplate. Not shipped yet, but getting plenty of updates as to its progress. Estimated delivery this month, so we’ll see if they make it!

Roy from Space is a remastered Blu-ray edition of a lost Mexican animated sci-fi film, that I admit I mostly supported on a whim. It sounded interesting, and I like having oddball movies in my collection. Plus, the Gilbert Hernandez-covered edition that was available didn’t hurt. Supposed to ship in July, but I’ve been getting plenty of progress updates so I’m not terribly worried.

E. Nelson Bridwell: First Fan is a graphic novel retelling of the life of this prolific if still somewhat mysterious writer and editor for DC Comics. I always enjoyed Bridwell’s contributions to comics, so this was a no-brainer for me to support. I just went for the physical hardcover and the digital download, though I probably could have pitched in the extra 10 bucks for a signed and numbered copy. Ah well. And speaking of the digital content, I forgot it’s available now, and I just spent a few minutes reading the book instead of writing this post. Book’s good, hope it makes it to store shelves. The actual hardcover was supposed to ship in August, but again, still getting regular updates, and the digital material is here, so no worries.

And now, the campaign I pledged for and have been receiving no updates:

…the Dreadstar Vs. Dreadstar book, the campaign for which ended in April, and was supposed to ship in June, but the updates from the campaign creator ended in mid-May. A look at the comments reveals a lot of unhappy people, including me, with ain’t no response from nobody. I even reached out to a couple of folks who are listed as being associated with the campaign, and they were all like “yeah, I don’t know.” They both revealed that there were…personal reasons why things were delayed, which I don’t feel like I can share here. If this is indeed the case, the reasons are legitimate, but the extreme lack of communication is not. Even a simple “sorry, there’s been a delay” message would be nice, but nuthin’ doin’. All it looks like now is that the folks running the campaign took everyone’s (in my case) eighty bucks and split town.

I’m obviously not saying that is what happened, particularly with what I’ve been told is the actual reason for the hold-up, but boy it seems like every crowdfunding thing Jim Starlin’s had ends up with some kind of problem. Big Jim needs to rethink future efforts along these lines, I think.

Anyway, those folks I contacted said they’d try to let the person in charge here know that the comment section on their campaign page has gone feral, and hopefully that’ll goose things along? I don’t know. And I was really looking forward to this one, too.

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.