404 Ink and BHP Comics have teamed up to bring you WE SHALL FIGHT UNTIL WE WIN, a graphic novel celebrating a century since the first wave of women gained the right to vote in the UK, and the many pioneering women who are part of the ongoing fight since 1918.
We'll be taking a few women from each decade in the last 100 years and telling their stories in colourful, illustrated snapshots – some stories are well known, some less so – all worthy of note.
We wanted to create a reminder of how far women's rights have come over a century and, conversely, where we have left to go. We're looking back to the women who shaped our current climate or trailblazed.
From suffragettes like Emmeline Pankhurst and Sophia Duleep Singh, through the defining ‘firsts’ in politics like Nancy Astor, the first female member of Parliament, and Diane Abbott, the first black woman to hold a seat in the House of Commons, to many of the women campaigning and heading up politics today, this graphic novel brings together a mix of creators across the UK to illustrate the numerous stories from the last century.
Creators involved include Sabeena Akhtar, Hannah Berry, Jenny Bloomfield, Kathryn Briggs, Wei Ming Kam, Shazleen Khan, Charlot Kristensen, Denise Mina, Durre Shahwar and Grace Wilson. We'll be announcing more during the Kickstarter! Bios and further information to come.
What will We Shall Fight... look like? In the event of the Kickstarter going well the look and size might change a bit but the plan right now is:
Dimensions: 240 x 170mm
Pages: 64 pages
Where does the money go?
Paying creators is core to the work that both 404 Ink and BHP do and a huge proportion of our costs will go towards paying artists, illustrators and comicas for their part in this project. This will also cover the usual (and most costly) components in publishing: production and printing. The breakdown is illustrated below. We will be all be throwing our (wo)man-power behind the graphic novel, and your pre-orders will allow us to pay everyone and do so a timely fashion, and allow us to put full focus into making We Shall Fight Until We Win fitting of the women whose stories fill the pages.
Hello. We're two independent publishers based in Edinburgh and Glasgow respectively.
404 Ink is an award-winning, alternative independent publisher run by two publishing freelancers – we publish literary magazines and books, the most notable of which for this Kickstarter campaign was our debut Nasty Women.
BHP Comics handle books from established creators like John Wagner and Alan Grant, alongside cutting edge new talent, like Clare Forrest, Gary Chudleigh and Tanya Robert’s. We also run the critically acclaimed and popular comic book festival Glasgow Comic Con.
What about these other books in the bundle?
Nasty Women is an essay collection of essays and accounts on what it is to be a woman in the 21st century, described by Margaret Atwood as 'an essential window into many of the hazard-strewn worlds younger women are living in right now' and by Ali Smith as meaning 'protest against the worst odds for a century, it means the world not going backwards. It means vital spirit'. We Kickstarted the project on January 1st 2017, subsequently ending over 369% funded. The book has gone on to high acclaim, awards, events alongside Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and acclaimed Turkish novelist Elif Shafak, and was the Bestselling book at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Clare Forrest’s Mighty Women of Science is a playful and enlightening look at some well known – and some not so well known – women who have and continue to change the world of science. From A for Astronaut (Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space) to Z for Zoologist (the award winning Biruté Gladikas), Mighty Women of Science is an all ages book in full colour.
As we have more time with this project than our previous Kickstarter, we've decided to include some stretch goals, just in case! Here's where We Shall Fight Until We Win will go if we exceed our funding goal.
£10,000 - We'll launch a dedicated site to accompany the book: weshallfightuntilwewin.com. There are countless women and stories who we would like to spotlight, feature, and interview but only so many pages. This would allow us time to reach out to people and commission more work and interviews to showcase the breadth of pioneering political women across the decades.
£15,000 - We'll up the pages in the book, giving us more space to include more stories from the past 100 years while continuing to pay commissioned creators for their time and work.
Do you have any more questions? Drop us a message or get in touch with 404 and BHP! You can find us at @404ink and @BHP_comics on Twitter, or 404ink.com and bhpcomics.co.uk.
We're excited to be joining forces to publish this graphic novel celebrating a century of pioneering women, and to be working with so many excellent creators to do so. Thank you for your support.
Until next time...
Risks and challenges
We've signed up our creators and their work is primed to get started on the project the moment we can guarantee payment for them.
Both 404 Ink and BHP are publishers with numerous titles in their back catalogue and we're comfortable with the process of creating publications and shipping worldwide between our two teams, and anticipate no problems.
Our schedule is in place for a June 2018 publication, reliant on funding.
Learn about accountability on KickstarterQuestions about this project? Check out the FAQ
Support
Funding period
- (28 days)