Kickstarter

Orb: The Shine

In The Shine, the first chapter of Orb, Eli and Mira send Tory, a young gay New Yorker juggling a challenging career and a difficult relationship, to retrieve his troubled brother Aren from London. There, Tory meets Saj, and the three of them discover that they have superhuman abilities and that they are vital to a clandestine intergalactic conflict with the fate of the human race at stake. Only Eli and Mira are aware of the purpose for which their special abilities are intended, and it is up to them to unite and train the others with powers for the impending challenge.  https://sites.google.com/site/orbseries

A scene from The Shine is depicted in the image above, which was illustrated by up and coming comic book illustrator James Turner Mohan.                        www.mohan-art.com

I co-created Orb and co-wrote The Shine with Jane Shepard, who is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. Her screenplay Freak City was nominated for a Writer’s Guild Award when it was produced as a Showtime Original Movie featuring Marlee Matlin, Samantha Mathis, Peter Saarsgard, Natalie Cole, Jonathan Silverman, and Estelle Parsons. She is the writer/director of seven short films, including the 40-minute featurette Nine, which screened at festivals nationally and received an Honorable Mention Award from the Rochester Film Festival.  Two collections of her stage work appear in print, Kickass Plays For Women and Meaty Monologues. www.JaneShepardArt.com
 
 
The Impact
 
I was raised in an extremely conservative, fundamentalist Christian home in the Midwest. I knew from a very young age that I was gay and that no one around me was a role model for the type of person I would be when I grew up. I turned to comic books and television to escape from this insular world and to seek alternative examples of how to live. I was craving someone to inspire me, someone to look up to: a hero.
 
I read about and watched Batman and Spider-man, whose secretive duality I could identify with. There were empowered heroines, Wonder Woman and Batgirl, and heroes of color, Cyborg and Black Lightning; they were encouraging to me since being different didn’t stop them from being heroic. But an actual LGBT hero? Or even a positive LGBT role model? Nowhere to be found.

This was the seventies. LGBT characters were always villains, wacky neighbors or insane relatives.
 
Today, of course, LGBT characters are much more visible and diverse in all media, including comic books. However, I still feel there aren’t enough contemporary LGBT heroes, and there are even fewer LGBT teams. I hope that Orb, a series about a team of LGBT superheroes, will help fill this void.

What I Need and What You Get
 
A friend of mine recently used a printer here in Denver for a book he co-wrote. He has lived in the Denver area his entire life and has been involved in the publishing of several books. He said that this printer is the most reasonable in the area. The printer charges a $90 setup fee, $.03 per page and $.16 per cover. The setup fee includes both an ePublication and a print on demand version posted to all the major online retailers.  If one thousand issues are pre-ordered or printed on demand, it would cost approximately $1,150 to print them using that printer.
 
I am using Kickstarter to raise funds only for the printing fees for The Shine, which is why the campaign goal is $1,150. I am using IndieGoGo to raise funds for the illustrator's fees.  http://www.indiegogo.com/Orb  (You may have click the link to the right or copy and paste the above link in your address bar.)

Please see the Rewards section above to view great perks you can receive for contributing certain amounts.  If you can't afford these amounts, any contribution will be extremely appreciated and will help me pursue this goal.

Other Ways You Can Help

You can get the word out by becoming a fan of Orb on Facebook or Twitter by clicking on one of the links below and then clicking Join or Follow.  You can also recommend that other people become fans and contribute here. contribute here.   https://twitter.com/#!/imtomj 
http://www.facebook.com/groups/248801181851477/

Orb created by Tom S. Johnson and Jane Shepard © 2008, 2011