How NOT to Launch a Comic on Kickstarter
How NOT to Launch a Comic on Kickstarter
But the NEW Vicious Circus Comic is available for pledges now.
August is a busy time of year at our house. Our daughter heads back to school (5th grade this year…wow). We are working diligently on our Halloween and Christmas Vicious Circus special issues. And we always plan a little travel as a pre-back-to-school adventure for the kids. This year, we visited Blue Ridge, Georgia for a few days and did some hiking and white water rafting in the mountains. Throughout all of this, our plan was to launch the new Vicious Circus comic, Big House Big Top, on Kickstarter on Sunday, August 18. Amanda has been tearing through the script getting the pages beautifully drawn. Colorist Alivon Ortiz has been turning pages around quickly and in expert fashion. I began lettering those pages. We were on track.
In July, we successfully funded The Absentee Omnibus and submitted the print files to our printer before the campaign proper even finished. Unfortunately, upon reviewing the print proof, I discovered a number of lettering errors that needed to be corrected, and this process took a few days to resolve. Our standard is to not launch a new Kickstarter until the previous campaign is completely fulfilled, so the days required to get the proofs for The Absentee right pushed our projected fulfillment back, too. Thus, we made the decision to also push back the launch date for Big House Big Top to Sunday, August 25.
So, I spent much of Saturday, August 24, working on the Kickstarter page, checking for typos and oversights, finalizing reward tiers, and generally freshening up the place. In so doing, I noticed that the end date for the campaign had changed from September 8 too September 25. Now, I haven’t run a Kickstarter for more than 14 days in years. That mid-campaign, two-week dead zone is just a waste of time and fretting, in my experience, so I attempted to reset the end date to 9/8 but found I couldn’t enter or alter data in the campaign duration fields. Amanda and I tried different browsers, different devices, even different wifi/cellular networks. Nothing worked. Launching on August 25 was suddenly out of the question. Ugh.
I penned a quick but thorough report on the bug to Kickstarter support and tried to put the frustration out of my head during an afternoon jaunt to New Orleans for a concert (Love & Rockets with Jane’s Addiction, if you’re curious). A great time was had, but, if I’m being honest, the stalled launch weighed on my mind a bit. Thankfully, as we were leaving NOLA Monday morning, Kickstarter support reached out and confirmed they were working to resolve the issue. But the time I was home and unpacked, a second message from Kickstarter indicated the issue was resolved. A fast look via my phone browser revealed I could, in fact, set the end date for the Kickstarter to September 8. After a quick consult with Amanda, we decided to launch on Monday evening but maintain that 9/8 end date.
We finally got this thing off the ground, and it has been flying ever since, funding fully in just over 4 hours and still maintaining that momentum even now. This is the first full-length Vicious Circus comic created by Amanda and I together in nearly three years, and we’re very proud of it. Big House Big Top carries on the mission of our vigilante clowns but brings the chaos to a claustrophobic and tense environment…a modern, high-security women’s prison.
Jailed for killing an abuser in defense of a child, a disgraced birthday clown is reborn as a monstrous agent of the Vicious Circus. She is offered the chance to become a force beyond her normal abilities, to wield arcane might in brutal vindication of the helpless. Will she accept it? Will she sacrifice her promise to never kill again in favor of defending those who can't defend themselves? Does the image above answer any of those questions for you?
A lot of you are already in on the Big House Big Top Kickstarter, but, if you haven’t already, please jump over and give it a look. Rewards for the full story start as low as $4 (seriously), with plenty of varied and premium rewards available. Kickstarter is our primary method of funding our comics self-publishing venture, and we appreciate and value your support, however you provide it.
Here’s hoping the next launch goes smoothly…it’ll be for the Vicious Circus Halloween Special I’ve been doing each year with the amazing Oscar Pinto. Here’s a sample of that awesomeness:
It’s gonna be freaky…but more on that soon.
Enjoy the rest of your week!
Kevin