Big Haul This Week in Comicsgate aka Crowd Funding books!

Well I had a pretty big week receiving books I have supported off of IndieGoGo and Kickstarter.
I have read all of them and will either write a review for each on this blog/and or create a video review for them in the vein of my Totally Biased videos. Sadly the videos are probably unlikely this week because as of this morning I am coming down with a cold and it is still up in the air how bad that will be. :)

Again, even though as I said I have read all of these books already, I will want to read them a second time at least before I review them. So here are the books that I backed and were fulfilled this week in order of their arrival.
                                                 

First here was Flying Sparks vol. 3 by Jon Del Arroz and was backed via Kickstarter. I had bought the first two volumes off of Amazon HERE and HERE and decided to support Jon on his Kickstarter because he's pretty cool guy and has an amazing work ethic. Below you can find my totally biased video review of Flying Sparks 1 and 2. I slaved 30+ hours on that review just for the audio to end up out of sync and that made me have to redo it quickly and the whole process was so frustrating it put me off making Video Reviews for a while. Hopefully I have learned from my mistakes and can do better in the future. If you watch till the end of the review I go on a long rant about how a lot of people in Crowd Funding would do well to learn from people like Jon and Vox Day in how they can do business better and hopefully grow the community of crowd funded comics. That was a lot of work for one video that has ended up getting about 20 views. LOL.

                                                   
 While I want to reread Vol. 3 of flying sparks before reviewing it I will go so far now as to say it is a much better quality book than the first two especially in printing and production. So it will probably be worth looking at future campaigns if you are at all interested.

Next up I received Kyrie from the enigmatic Matt Crotts which is a pseudo historical adventure based in northern Africa and set during the Roman Empire.
                                       

 This was one of my most anticipated books because I had backed it on a whim and wasn't sure what it would exactly be about. My, initial hope, going off the title KYRIE "Lord Have Mercy" was that it would be a Christian inspired tale and possibly be about early Christianity and its impact on the past. By my first reading that does not appear to be the case and I doubt it will end up being so because of the timeline but I will have to read it again so I can better process it. The first reading happened at work and there were quite a few distractions going on and the book was made so beautifully I was literally afraid of damaging it and making it dirty so I look forward to reading it again.
                                   

The book is 117 pages and has some of the most pleasing color schemes I have seen in a crowd funded book to date. And again the production is TOP NOTCH and I can see a lot of care and investment went into its making.

Next is the Christian inspired comic book Soulfinder by Doug Ernst and Tim Lim and tells the story of a Catholic priest who works with his local police department to settle a case with supernatural undertones.
                                               

The book has some top notch writing on it, especially script wise and some nice character development for the main protagonist. I look forward to the second reading. I missed this book on its original crowd fund push basically because I didn't know of the writer until he was unfairly embroiled into some seemingly War Campaign inspired twitter drama. I contacted him via email and was able to order the book just after the campaign ended and I was really impressed by his friendliness and customer service. Those are just two of the more important things crowd funding was made for and Doug excelled at them both and that is something all creators who interact with the community on Twitter should learn from. Good customer service and friendly interactions with fans can go a long way and can not only help you fund your books but can help crowd funding grow as a whole.

Now last, and certainly not least by a long shot was Mari Sue by George Alexopulos. George is an extremely nice and thoughtful guy to follow on Twitter and he is hands down one of the most gifted artists in the crowd funding scene. Mari Sue 1 and 2 have the two most striking covers I have seen yet in any crowd funded book I have bought to this day:

Just look at that composition and those colors. If you don't know who George is yet I suggest you take note he will have a long and very successful career ahead of him. He is an amazing talent and his art looks effortless, in the good way. These books just came this morning so I haven't even taken them out of the bags yet but George has already released the digital versions for his backers to read and I have read them both once already.


                                       

These books seem to have a strong Anime/Manga influence and sadly I am not a fan of the genre.
If you are do not take that personally. I am not saying it is bad or that you are bad for liking it, I am just admitting that for what ever reason I have never been able to bring myself to understand or enjoy it.
And God knows I have tried to like it in the past. I love about all nerdy things and felt like Anime/Manga should be one of those things I like and have tired over and over to enjoy it for years and in many different ways. Even good friends that I like have tried to get me into the fold, so to speak, and so far it hasn't stuck. Still, I know quality when I see it and and if anyone can make me start to like that style of story telling it will be George.

So that's it for this week and maybe for a while if my memory serves me. Right now the next book I anticipate will be Mike Miller's LoneStar 2 but I am betting that will be a few months away. There are a couple of other campaigns I have backed that I have not followed the status of closely and those might show up whenever. But when they do I will be sure to share them either here or on my TWITTER!


Dwayne