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Kickstarter is already off to another huge year for comic book projects on the platform, both from independent creators and established publishers, with multiple projects cracking the top ten all time funded Kickstarter comics in the first six months of 2021 alone.
Which ones? Well, we’ll get to that – as we’re taking a deeper dive into the history of successful Kickstarter comic book projects, including some that remain controversial, and some you may learn you never knew you wanted to read.
Here are the ten most funded Kickstarter comic books of all time – with a combined funding total of $6.9 million dollars.
10. Girl Genius Volume 12 Printing and Reprint Frenzy!
Girl Genius Volume 12 Printing and Reprint Frenzy! stats
Backers: 4,441
Amount Raised: $389,079
Before there was Kickstarter or even formalized webcomics, Phil and Kaja Foglio’s Girl Genius was a cult-favorite independent comic book series. The steampunk serial was an early adopter of the webcomic format in 2005, and found an even bigger (and paying) audience when it began crowdfunding collections on Kickstarter.
The Foglios’ first Kickstarter, for printing Girl Genius Volume 12, was their most successful to date, but they have followed it up with eight subsequent campaigns, with the latest concluding in August 2020.
9. Check, Please!: Year Two
Check, Please!: Year Two stats
Backers: 5,088
Amount Raised: $398,520
Check, Please! writer/artist Ngozi Ukazu built an extremely loyal social media following with the webcomic, which translated directly to crowdfunding success for the print version.
Check, Please! began as a webcomic in 2013 following Ethan ‘Bitty’, a vlogger and figure skater turned ice hockey player as he navigates life as a college athlete and a gay man.
After a successful campaign to fund a print collection of the first volume, 2016’s Kickstarter for Check, Please!: Year Two was even more successful, with tripling the amount collected in pledges.
8. Lady Death: Cataclysmic Majesty #1
Lady Death: Cataclysmic Majesty #1 stats
Backers: 3,306
Amount Raised: $426,241
Among the many independent comic book creators who have found a home for their stories on Kickstarter are many writers and artists who were once big names in the mainstream industry before either departing to the world of creator-owned stories, and eventually crowdfunding, or who have found new homes for their old creations that once fell out of popular view.
Case in point, Brian Pulido’s Lady Death, a cult-favorite ‘Bad Girl’ character of the ’90s whose recent Lady Death: Cataclysmic Majesty #1 Kickstarter campaign raised $426,241 from 3,306 backers through a wide variety of reward tiers.
Lady Death was a staple of ’90s comic shelves, with a whole slice of the speculation market all her own for the many variant covers and special gimmick editions put out by her original independent publisher Chaos! Comics.
Now, Pulido’s Coffin Comics has revived the character through crowdfunding campaigns, with the most recent drawing enough nostalgic goodwill and modern interest to reach the top ten comic book projects evert funded on Kickstarter.
7. Cmon Comics Vol. 1
Cmon Comics Vol. 1 stats
Backers: 12,261
Amount Raised: $501,632
Tabletop gaming company Cmon has a hungry audience for their hit games Zombicide, Cthulhu: Death May Die, and Zombicide: Invader, and found a way to expand this year with a graphic novel anthology of stories set in the worlds of their games.
After already having success with Kickstarter for their tabletop games, Cmon brought the Cmon Comics Vol. 1 anthology to the crowdfunding platform and hit a nerve, in a good way. Fans of Cmon were already used to buying from them on Kickstarter, and that experience (and the positive track record) made the expansion i
nto comic books an easy purchase for their fanbase.
6. Ava’s Demon: Reborn
Ava’s Demon: Reborn stats
Backers: 6,650
Amount Raised: $530,310
Ava’s Demon: Reborn is one of the more recent crowdfunding campaigns on our list, but like many other entries on this list, the success of the comic’s Kickstarter campaign builds on a long history and fanbase that’s grown for the past eight years.
Ava’s Demon is an ongoing sci-fi/fantasy story by Michelle Czajkowski that has been running online as a webcomic since 2012. After early successes with Kickstarters for two print collections, Ava’s Demon: Reborn offered a remastered version of those early stories – and the fans responded. This recently-concluded campaign doubled the number of backers from the previous two.
Over the past eight years, Czajkowski has built a sizeable social media following with Ava’s Demon – and that built-in fanbase showed up in force for this remastered edition of a comic they were already enjoy.
5. The Tomorrow Girl: Dresden Codak Volume 1
The Tomorrow Girl: Dresden Codak Volume 1 stats
Backers: 7,565
Amount Raised: $534,994
Dresden Codak has been a thriving webcomic since 2005 (notice a trend here?), and when writer/artist Aaron Diaz launched a Kickstarter for a massive collection of its first five years, the campaign was an overnight success.
Dresden Codak is a unique blend of science fiction and fantasy, following Kimiko Ross as she applies her hardline stance about science in a world with magic, ghosts, and more that can’t quite be explained.
2013’s The Tomorrow Girl: Dresden Codak Kickstarter campaign reached its initial $30,000 goal in just 24 hours, and went on to break a half-million dollars by the end of the campaign.
Like many of the other Kickstarters on this list, Dresden Codak had a built-in fanbase who were online savvy. And in this case, they already knew the comics were completed before the Kickstarter began, so had confidence in both the story and creator, as well as Diaz’s
ability to deliver the promised product.
4. Ctrl+Alt+Del 1.0: The Box Set
Ctrl+Alt+Del 1.0: The Box Set stats
Backers: 5,553
Amount Raised: $665,725
Successful webcomic with a long track record and a cult fanbase leads to big success on Kickstarter. See a pattern here?
Tim Buckley launched the video game-centric webcomic Ctrl+Alt+Del back in 2002, and 13 years in decided to give something to those that like to hold a physical comic in their hands. But instead of a small collection, Buckley was bold – his first Kickstarter was for a three-volume hardcover boxed set that would take $150,000 to produce.
And in just 16 hours, his fans came through, fully funding the ambitious project.
This slice of life webcomic follows Ethan, an over the top video game fanatic, his sarcastic roommate, Lucas, and his girlfriend (now wife) Lilah with a slew of gaming puns and jokes sprinkled throughout their daily lives.
Buckley continues to publish new Ctrl+Alt+Del webcomics to this day, but as of yet hasn’t followed up with a second collection – though he remains active on Kickstarter, backing others’ projects.
3. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Complete Comic Book Collection
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Complete Comic Book Collection stats
Backers: 1,584
Amount Raised: $804,018
Boom! Studios has broken ground for itself with Kickstarter not once but twice (we’ll get to the first time they pulled it off in a moment), winning over enough of a Kickstarter audience to bring in almost a million bucks – $804,018 to be exact, from 1,584 donors – for a five volume hardcover set of the entire 55-issue run of Boom!’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers comic book title to be shipped between April and November 2022.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was a fan-favorite title for its entire run, w
ith the series rebooting as two separate titles after its conclusion. The global Power Rangers fandom took to the title and its more mature (but not dark or off-putting) tone, which both catered to readers who had grown up with the franchise and those who simply sought an exciting comic book experience.
Given the love of collecting shared by many Power Rangers fans and comic book readers alike, it’s not particularly mysterious how Boom! managed to entice donors to pledge an average of around $500 each for the oversized deluxe editions, which also include new material.
The practice of larger publishers with an established Direct Market presence taking to Kickstarter is seen as controversial by some, who envision the crowdfunding platform as a place for independent…
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Read More:The most successful comics Kickstarter projects of all time