Comixlaunch: Crowdfunding For Writers, Artists & Self-publishers On Kickstarter... And Beyond!

In this month's ComixLaunch Pro Spotlight, Clay Adams interviews comic book creator Gerald von Stoddard, who splits his time between Tivoli, New York, and Florence, Italy. Gerald shares insights from his journey in the comics industry, as he emphasizes the value of asking for help and being an active part of the comics community.

Elections have consequences, and the new US administration has promised tariffs or new taxes on imported products, which may include things like comic book paper, ink, enamel pins, plush toys and more. In this session, Tyler shares his take on the coming tariffs, the uncertainty they're creating, and the challenges for creators.

In this session, Tyler will shares numerous strategies and a bunch of real-world examples creators like us can use to enhance sales and make compelling offers to their fans too good to refuse.

Veteran comic book creator crowdfunders Kevin Joseph (Tart) and Mike Shea (Miskatonic High) join Tyler for a discussion about collaborative cross-over Kickstarter launches. Recently, Mike and Kevin launched a project two years in the making, crossing their characters over in an innovative trading card series.

Comic writer John Burke joins ComixLaunch's Tyler James to discuss the power of biting off more than you think you can chew, and why getting comfortable with getting uncomfortable is a part of becoming a comic creator. This session is a deep dive into navigating uncertainty, facing awkwardness, and maintaining perseverance for something truly important.

Creating is hard, even in the most ideal conditions. But how do we do it when conditions aren't ideal? When the world around us is stressful and the demands upon our time and talents, how do we keep our mental health in tip-top shape so we can do our best work? Tyler is a work-in-progress on this, just as you are, but he'll share some of his strategies to keep sane in a crazy world!

Bestselling illustrator and art direct Amri Birdi is in the ComixLaunch Pro Spotlight, as he chats with Clay Adams about his crowdfunding journey, balancing his day-to-day art director duties with pursuing his own self-publishing creations.

Tyler shares some good news and productive updates to a number of Kickstarter related topics, including steps the popular crowdfunding platform is taking to crack down on AI spam projects, a fix to the biggest problem to their new survey tool, and an update for creators looking to launch back-to-back projects.

When building a Kickstarter campaign, creators often face the challenge of deciding how many reward tiers to offer. Comic creators especially often have lots of variant covers and extras that could easily lead to dozens of reward tiers... but is that overwhelming to prospective backers? In this session, Tyler shares his thoughts on reward tier volume and crunches some live Kickstarter data to back his insights!

For the last five years, comic creators, artists and fans have been celebrating their love of indie comics with 31 days of art centered on indie comic characters! In this session, Tyler chats with Indietober architect Travis Gibb about running the annual event every October, the state of indie comics and how organizing online challenges can impact your creative career.

In this session, Clay Adams from ComixLaunch interviews Ryan Claytor, a cartoonist and professor at Michigan State University, who shares his journey in comics. Claytor has been self-publishing for 20 years and recently launched a successful Kickstarter for an oversized hardcover art book, 'One Bite at a Time', celebrating his two-decade career. They discuss the creative process, the challenges of Kickstarter, and Ryan's passion for physical book design, and the importance of perseverance and community in achieving success.

Anthology projects draw on the creativity and talent of many different creators contributing to one shared project. With a long-gestating anthology finally launched, ComixLaunch host Tyler James is on the hotseat for a change, as a roundtable of creators brainstorm ideas for ways to encourage and empower the contributing creators to promote the project during the Kickstarter. Note, this episode is a clip from "Of Mice and Wolves: A Comics Workshop Show" hosted by JD Calderon and Rob Multari on JD's YouTube Channel. Watch the full workshop episode and more of JD's streams at https://www.youtube.com/@JDCalderon

In this month's ComixLaunch Pro spotlight, two-time Harvey Award Nominated cartoonist Craig Taillerfer, shares insight from his creative journey. An early member of ComixLaunch Pro, Craig took a long five year hiatus after his first successful launch... but that didn't stop him from having his best launch ever!

Comic book collector's are a major part of the crowdfunding and direct market ecosystem. In this session, Tyler chats with Josh Eggebeen, a life long collector and one of the authors of After Action Report: An Unofficial Collector Guide Book for G.I. Joe & Transformers Comics. They'll discuss the current state of the comic collecting, how crowdfunding changed the game for collectors and creators alike, and what creators can do to make their offerings more attractive to the collector class!

Creator Matthew Schofield is in the ComixLaunch Pro spotlight this month. Matt is an animator, storyboard artist and director who has worked on films such as Cats Don't Dance, Prince of Egypt and The Iron Giant. In this interview with Clay Adams, Matt shares his creator owned journey bringing his superhero comedy webcomic, Steamroller Man to Kickstarter.

A ComixLaunch listener alerted Tyler to a sudden and suspicious proliferation of seemingly AI-Generated Comic Book Kickstarter projects that have appeared on the platform recently. After taking a look, it does indeed seem like something fishy is going on, and one or more actors have been able to get obviously soulless, fraudulent projects past the Kickstarter project screeners. In this session, Tyler shares signs of obviously fraudulent comic book Kickstarter projects, discuss the ramifications should projects like this proliferate on Kickstarter, and offer advice on what legitimate creators should do now.

Commonwealth Comix co-founders Ryan Kroboth and John Endingfield II join Tyler for a discussion about their new partnership and collaboration on Wurst & Mayhem, a D&D style adventure comic. We'll talk about the evolution from friendship to creative partnership, the challenges and best practices for getting a new joint venture off the ground, and how much fun they're having on the new project!

Join us for a special panel on ComicTopia, the inaugural crowdfunding event hosted on BackerKit this month. The discussion features Lafayette Morrow from BackerKit, as well as creators including James Mascia of Dren Productions, writer Frank Martin, Joel Rodriguez of Metal Ninja Studios, and Eric Erdek, known for Espresso Detective. Lafayette provides an overview of BackerKit’s evolution from a crowdfunding support tool to a full-featured platform, emphasizing community engagement tools and their successful transition to hosting events like Pintopia and ComicTopia. Creators involved share insights on their current projects, their experiences with BackerKit’s platform, and unique event features such as cross-collaborations and the backer train feature. The discussion also touches on issues like handling mature content and strategies for successful crowdfunding.

In this episode of ComixLaunch, Tyler James interviews Christian Douglas, a Dublin-based writer and founder of Unpopular Comics. They discuss Christian's creative journey, his new Kickstarter campaign for 'Unpopular Tales 2: Pinochia, a cyberpunk retelling of the classic fairy tale, and the broader mission of Unpopular Comics to revitalize classic stories with modern twists.

For the past decade, illustrator Dave Swartz has moved from self-publishing, to pencil-for-hire, and back again. His current project, Confederate Monster is back on Kickstarter. In this conversation, he and Tyler will discuss the challenges and opportunities for comic book illustrators working in comics today.