New to Kickstarter?:

Not sure what this site is? Think of it like this; We have a comic book idea we want to create, but we need a little help. You read over the page, see if you like what we are pitching, and if you do, pledge any amount to our fund. Kickstarter uses Amazon.com's payment system so we never get personal info and your information is secure. We reward you for your support, anything from a copy of the finished comic up to being drawn in as a your own character in our world! Read on and see what you think! We only receive your pledge if we fully reach our funding, if not, you will not be charged. Your pledge now is a promise to support our comic if we are successful.

Introduction:

Thanks for checking out our Kickstarter project! This fund is for the comic 'El Toxico and the Mosca de Muerte' by myself, Darren Hupke, and artist Johnny Flores. We are creating an original 80+ page graphic novel that tells the origin story and an original adventure for our character, El Toxico. We've come to Kickstarter for help with the costs in creating and bringing our story to life. With your help, we can do that! If successful, your support will cover the costs for producing the pencils and inks by Johnny himself, allowing us to pay the professional page rate to a colorist to finish the pages, as well as production costs, printing, packaging and finally, shipping the comic. 

The Story:

El Toxico is a post apocalyptic story set in a world where the bugs and insects across the planet have grown to a massive size and have nearly wiped out humanity. Think of it as a Saturday morning cartoon meets Mad Max. The hero, El Toxico, went through a traumatic event early in his life and vowed to exterminate the worlds pest problem. He studied his fathers techniques and uses his intelligence to create an arsenal to take down the bugs. Every bug is different, so while he travels the world, El Toxico gets mixed up in a variety of strange situations that only he will know how to get out of. The graphic novel will tell the origin story of the hero as well as one of his earliest adventures against the Mosca de Muerte, or "Fly of Death”. We set the stage for a series of adventures and stories we want to continue to tell with this character. 

The Plan:

Before we tell the continuing story of El Toxico, we need to introduce him to the world, and that's where you can help. You can see the reward levels that range from getting a personal copy of the book, having your name printed in it, even having your own likeness drawn into the book and dying a horrible, violent death! All your pledges go toward the production costs related to realizing our story. If we are overfunded, 100% of that will go to increasing the size of the print run, adding more to the book and enhancing your rewards across the board. We want to deliver the best story we can, and your support can help us achieve that. 

If things work out here and this is received well, our plan is to hopefully do 1-2 original graphic novels a year that are fully complete, contained stories of El Toxico and his continuing adventures in the year 20XX.

Who are we?

I am a student and work at a comic shop in Anaheim, CA and have self-published a previous comic with the help of Kickstarter. I have always wanted to create and making comic books is a rewarding experience. Thinking up characters, creating the plot and stringing it all together to tell a story, then seeing an artist bring it to life is amazing. One story was never enough, so I am back with more!

Johnny is a regular customer at the comic shop that I work at and is a life long comic fan. He has been drawing for YEARS and has always wanted to illustrate his own comic. His sketch books are full of his favorite characters and pages of original ideas he's never ad to chance to produce. He has even done sketches at events we've had at our shop. Johnny has some real talent that he needs to share! 

Johnny and I created El Toxico as a 4-page short for a local 'zine here in Southern, CA called Santanero. I had previously self-published a comic (thanks to the help of people like you right here on Kickstarter!) and Johnny was looking for his 'in' in the comic world as an artist. We developed El Toxico in a single conversation and within 48 hours, Johnny penciled and colored four 5.5 x 8.5 pages of story for the 'zine. From there we started cooking up wild ideas of what we could do next, half joking, and then things just clicked. We said to ourselves, "why not?". You can check out our original 4-page short here for free:

http://graphicly.com/negative

Release Date:

We are looking to follow our gameplan and get this comic ready in time for WonderCon next year. It is in March and we feel we can really hit that target BUT in case we need a bit more time or things come up we have June listed as the release date. With your help and no hiccups, we'd love to have it out ASAP and be able to show it to the world officially at WonderCon Anaheim. That being said, we want to deliver a beautiful, finished book to you all, so we are prepared to take more time if we need it. In no way are we interested in rushing it and sacrificing quality if we can't reach the March target. 

Thanks!

Thanks for checking it out! If you can't support us with a pledge, please help us spread the word by sharing the link and posting it to facebook or twitter. Hashtag #ElToxico.

-Darren Hupke
Writer/Co-Creator
@darrenhupke

http://kickingitforward.org