What Do Killer Clowns Have to Do With Christmas, Anyway?
My current Kickstarter campaign for the Vicious Circus Christmas comics enters its final week today.
Today marks one week since I launched the The Vicious Circus 4-Issue Killer Clown CHRISTMAS BOX SET on Kickstarter, and it’s been a busy one. The low initial funding goal was surpassed within 16 hours, and the project has maintained solid momentum since, today reaching $1852 in funding from 64 backers. Thanks to all of you for making these comics possible. All pledges, shares, follows, likes and subscriptions to this Substack make a difference in my ability to functionally publish my own comics, and I truly appreciate it all.
This particular Kickstarter campaign is of special significance to me, because it marks the completion of the Vicious Circus Christmas Special project begun nearly 4 years ago. What started as an idea for producing more of our popular vigilante killer clown concept, but with a shift in tone and a seasonal focus, became an ongoing story in its own right. The one-shot story of a brutally vindictive mall Santa, who performed real heroic deeds in defense of endangered children, expanded to include that Santa’s quest to become the real deal when Ole St. Nick succumbed to the treachery of the Krampus.
Unless you’ve read our long-running Vicious Circus killer clown stories, you’re probably wondering how these supernatural, bloodthirsty buffoons fit into a Christmas story in any coherent way. The truth is that they are a perfect fit for Christmas tales and for tales of Santa Claus in particular. While our clowns hail from places of dark magic, demons, and the scary unknown, their mission has always been one of protecting the innocent and vulnerable - usually kids - from those evils that would harm them, and that purpose aligns perfectly with that of Santa.
As I finished the script for the first installment of the series, in which we first meet the new, weapon-strapped Santa as he crosses paths with the Vicious Circus on a parallel mission to extricate an endangered little girl, it became obvious to me that the clowns would see this Santa installed as the new Jolly Old Elf. So, that’s the direction the narrative took, and the journey to that throne at the North Pole put the Circus and Santa in conflict with sinister spirits of punishment conjured by lazy parents to scare children into false acquiescence, monsters like the Krampus and the Seven o’Clock Man.
Along the way, the mall Santa grows into the larger role of the actual Santa, especially after the discovery of the loss of the original to the Krampus, and we discover the strange, yet heartwarming, Christmas traditions among the clowns and misfits of the Vicious Circus. It’s been a blast twisting and bending the usual Christmas tropes into shapes that fit the bizarre world of the clowns yet still feel familiar in some weird way. Trust me. It works.
We’re just today at the halfway point of this Kickstarter, and it’s going well. I’m eternally grateful for the opportunity to self-publish comics afforded me by Kickstarter and by you. It may seem that some of my posts are primarily critical of the platform, but that’s only because I know from personal experience how critical it is to the creative dreams of aspiring writers and artists, and I want it to be the best conduit for that output that it can be. The ultimate goals are to achieve a better understanding of the platform and its content and to then identify actions to transmute that understanding into positive change that works for us all, creators and backers.
I hope you’ll take a few minutes to click one of those linked buttons, visit my Kickstarter page for the Vicious Circus Christmas Specials, pledge what you can, hit the ”Remind me” button to follow the campaign, or share the link in whatever way you might. Any or all of the above make a huge difference for self-publishers who rely on crowdfunding to pay for some of the costs incurred by production, printing and fulfillment.
Thanks for making comics with me!
Kevin