Kickstarter

We're pleased to announce that we've added two new rewards to our Kickstarter campaign! 

First, we've separated out the vinyl sticker into its own $5.00 reward, for those out there on a tight budget. 

Second, we're adding in a $15.00 reward that includes the sticker, the ACEO card and a brand new "Yin Yang Signet." This signet is made of the same material as the hardcovers: 1/4" thick davey board. We'll cut them into perfect 4" diameter circles with our yin yang monster kid logo laser engraved into the board. Here's an example:

Show your love for THINK OF THE CHILDREN by bearing this badge with pride. You could sew it onto your jacket or bag. Or glue it onto the hood of your car. Maybe you want to make a belt buckle out of it? Go crazy. You could even use it as a coaster.

The good news is that every backer who donates over $15 will get this signet as part of their rewards. That includes all of you who have already donated! We're sweetening the pot because we want to make sure our backers get even more value for their donations. 

Thanks for your support so far. We're almost to 20% of our goal!

Last night, when I made my Mother’s Day calls to my mother and grandmother, I let them know about the other holiday this weekend: FREE COMIC BOOK DAY. If anyone out there doubts FCBD deserves to be called a holiday, let me share this anecdote with you from Saturday’s celebration at Criminal Records in Atlanta: 

At the peak of activity, we witnessed a little boy and his father near our table. The boy was frantic, running back and forth between the rack of free comics, the costumed attendee superheroes and all of the creators in-store, sketching heroes for the little guy. He was clearly nervous that this magical place was going to dissipate at any second. His father kneeled down and pulled the boy close. “It’s okay buddy. There’s no need to rush. Let’s just take it slow and you’ll get to see everything.” I’ve never seen a kid so happy. Think of the children indeed.

EC Steiner and I were there at Criminal, hitting the pavement to do everything we could to promote THINK OF THE CHILDREN. I’ve been going to FCBD for years now, and let me tell you that Criminal Records puts on the best event I’ve ever seen. There were creators, trivia giveaways, intellectual panels and even a hip-hop concert by Adam WarRock and Tribe One. And we weren’t the only ones out there promoting TOTC. Our street team was in full effect up in Connecticut, thanks to two of our avid supporters.

EC and I arrived at Criminal at 10:30 a.m. where there was already a line of twenty plus people waiting to get in. Zano and Lillian (our Criminal hosts) let us in and helped us set up behind the statue case at the back of the store. 

(EC Steiner cannot be photographed, as the evil within manifests on all replications of his physical form).

Being near the statues created a nice synergy with EC’s sculpted artwork and helped us to promote TOTC even more. We had our prototype book on display and shared the development process with everyone interested. The biggest difference between doing FCBD and a comic book convention is that you encounter many customers that are walk-ins, who are completely unaware of comics, much less something like our project. We talked about The Wire with a defense attorney from Baltimore and met a regal gentleman from San Francisco who brought his grandson in while on vacation. It was great to introduce our work to people who were so fresh to the medium.

Of course comic book fans were in full attendance as well. There was a Cobra Commander sauntering around, as well as cos-players doing Klarion the Witch-Boy, Black Widow and Harley Quinn (above, photo by Criminal Records). I did my first ever fan sketches too, drawing a profile of Adam Warlock (as Donald Trump) for one man and a Gorilla Grodd for Criminal Records volunteer Jennie Law. Grodd’s nipples were a subject of much debate.

Zano, the head of Criminal’s comic book department, periodically did some trivia with the audience, giving away some awesome prizes. His philosophy is that FCBD shouldn’t just be about the free comics the publishers send out to retailers, but that there should be other incentives as well. He gave out posters, full sets of series and boxes of old comics. I’m embarrassed to admit that I answered several of Zano’s questions, but I didn’t feel comfortable taking prizes from the attendees until EC asked me to score him a copy of Paul Pope’s issue of SOLO. So poor Zano had to keep coming up with more questions to compensate for the ones I answered.

Zano also hosted two panels in the late afternoon. The first was about diversity and the local comic scene and featured Thom Trainor from Dragon*Con, Annie Erskine and Joseph R. Wheeler III (photo by Criminal Records). Each presented the events and groups they run locally. Annie has started a group for female comics creators and Joseph runs Onyxcon. The second panel had Thom speaking again, this time with local art collector Joe Peacock. The two are putting together an art show featuring local comic book creators that sounds fantastic.

The day ended with bang, not a whimper. Adam WarRock and Tribe One took the stage at 6:00, bringing their brand of comics oriented hip-hop to the audience. I had heard of Adam before, because our friend Robert Wilson IV designed this awesome poster for him, but I’d never had the opportunity to hear his music. He brought a fresh mix of tight beats, Sage Francis style rapping and the occasional Fresh Prince vibe. It would be a mistake to pigeon hole him as solely a nerd core rapper, because he moves from the personal to the political, using comics as a thematic palette to work his rhymes into. I’m looking forward to where he takes it next.

While we were sketching and rocking in Atlanta, our street team was in action almost a thousand miles north of us in Connecticut. Backers @HayBudden and @almostaghost_13 hit their local comic stores ( Alternate Universe in Milford and Clockwork Comics in Orange), hanging up TOTC posters at both locations. We’re so lucky to have them as supporters! Thanks to you both.

FCBD was a great experience for us, both due to the hospitality of our hosts at Criminal Records and the support we received from our backers! FCBD is a great way to support your local comics retailers and creators. To make sure that Criminal got something back for all their investment in the event I made sure to purchase a few things. I got a Gorilla Grodd lead figurine and a trade paperback of O’Donnell and Holdaway’s classic MODESTY BLAISE strips. Ultimately, Free Comic Book Day is about supporting the medium in whatever way you can. We were proud to be a part of it and receive attention and support as well.

As of today May 6, our Kickstarter campaign has raised 17% of its goal. However, for this project to succeed (and for our backers to receive the rewards we’re offering), we’re going to need to pick up the pace to reach $3500 in the next 31 days.

We understand that some people might be reluctant to donate to a single comic story like this. What we hope is obvious though is that every part of this book’s process is handcrafted. 

• EC used a table saw to cut down the book covers to size with his father.
  
• He’s also hand sculpted the cover seal and spent hours pouring resin to make copies. 
  
• The two of us are manually placing a color overlay on page 12 of every book, using transfer paper. 
  
• We’re hand-binding the covers together on cloth bound hinges, drilling holes and sewing everything together. The softcover rewards are also hand bound.
  
• Even the library cards in the inside back cover are handwritten and meticulously placed.
  

Last night we spent 7 hours in a secret lab, deep under the city of Atlanta, etching line art into the covers. This involved designing the line art, saving it as a rasterized PNG file and then setting an 8” x 8” vector cut to make sure the boards trimmed neatly. Each cover takes between 7 and 8 minutes to cut. 

THINK OF THE CHILDREN isn’t just a fun, satirical horror comic about the medium’s history. It’s an artifact with a lot of care put into its construction. This isn’t a mass-produced book we just sent to a printer in China. Webcomics blog Fleen wrote a blurb about the book yesterday that used the term "handcrafted." We want you to know that our hands have touched every component. Hours will go into each copy's production. Below are some media capturing the process from last night's work.

• The video shows the lab we've been working in, thanks to the help of our good friend and backer, Jay.
• The picture shows the line art for the front cover, on-screen before being transferred to the laser machine.
  

Do you feel like you don't have enough money to donate to THINK OF THE CHILDREN, but still want to help? Or have you already donated but want to do more? Let's do this old school and hit the streets with this campaign D.I.Y. style!

We've designed an easy-to-print PDF poster to go in comic book stores, conventions, book shops, record stores, coffee shops or wherever you think this project will be appreciated in your area. According to Jason Brubaker's advice on Grassroots Funding With Kickstarter, placing posters through Chicago really helped Cursed Pirate Girl's Kickstarter campaign, and they raised over $36,000! We'd like to at least hit our goal and hope this kind of action can help.

Here's how you do it:

• Locate some local shops that will let you put fliers up. To find comic books stores near you, go to comicshoplocator.com. Remember, Saturday, May 7 is Free Comic Book Day and comic shops will see increased traffic. So try to get the posters up before then!
• Print this PDF poster on letter sized paper.
• Bring the posters to your local stores and ask their permission to hang them up.
• Take a photo of the poster in its new home. Send it to us at christian.sager [at] gmail [dot] com. Include your name and the location you placed the poster at. 
• We'll include your name and the poster's location on a library card placed on the inside back cover of THINK OF THE CHILDREN.

Here's what the poster looks like:

• For the print edition of THINK OF THE CHILDREN, we have a lot of special production planned. Specifically, we want to combine my background in book design, with EC's talent as a sculptor. As digital comics become more ubiquitous, it is important to us to make the print version something special, an artifact for you to take home.
• One thing we have planned is laser cut, hard bound covers. We're working with 30" x 41" sheets of thick Davey Board and cutting them down to size. This stuff is seriously dense. It is so thick you could probably bludgeon someone with it, or maybe use it as a shield in melee combat. 
• Here is a short video I shot of our initial test run with the board and laser, using our "ying yang" logo for line art.The final result will look like the attached photo. The back covers of each hardbound copy of THINK OF THE CHILDREN will have this design etched into them. We had to play around with the speed, power and frequency settings with the laser to get the right result. Some settings produce a clean cut, others leave an eerie residue from the smoke generated by the board burning (see the version on the left for this effect).