Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/06/09/duncan-jones-is-raising-money.html
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I never saw Mute but Moon is a fantastic movie. If i can afford to pitch into the KS i definitely will 
Thanks for the heads up
Edit: Got the Deluxe version. 100 bucks to get the comic signed by Duncan Jones and and the artist Alex de Campi? Sounds like a deal.
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Kickstarting? Did dad give all his money to charity? I find it very hard to believe Duncan Jones is at a loss for funding.
Well you know, even a lot of established companies these days use Kickstarter. It’s a thing.
I for one am in for a hardcover. Really liked both Moon and Mute, been a fan of cyberpunk since the early 90s, and adore graphic novels. So hell yeah!
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Moon was great, while Mute was kinda miserable, but in an interesting way.
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As NickyG says, many well connected companies and people still use KS and there are legitimate reasons to do so. Mainly it is because of the infrastructure, familiarity, confidence and visibility KS brings, i might have a harder time finding out about it if it had been self-published and overall they might’ve made less money and they would’ve had a much bigger risk to manage themselves. I’ve had excellent experiences backing other comics from artists over the years and personally i’m psyched that Duncan Jones is doing the campaign.
The only times i tend to be more skeptical of campaigns is when it is for tech or things that looks too good to be true.
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While I’m aware it happens, I find it really in poor taste, and make a point not to support established brands going this weird bootstrapping marketing route.
Wifey and I watched Moon just a couple weeks back. Really interesting and great flick. But it’s hard to have a bad film when Sam Rockwell is chewing up the screen.
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Duncan Jones isn’t exactly a name most people would recognize, and a graphic novel in the setting of Moon isn’t exactly a follow up the average person is clamoring for so for me supporting it via KS is more than fine. If you don’t want to back it then you do you Just wait until its out and buy it later at your local book/comic shop, you can let them know you’re interested and hopefully they’ll try to stock it.
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I was going to go in this but 2 things stopped me:
The international shipping cost. USD55 for shipping to Australia?? At the current exchange rate that’s about AU 80 bucks for a $45 softcover
No electronic version, which is what I usually go for when the shipping is prohibitive
Sorry, but nice as it is, the cost is just way too high
Artists the caliber of Pia Guerra and the rest are in high demand, they need a reason to work on something like this instead of doing work for the big 3 comic companies. While Jones no doubt has a good amount of money to fund the project, Kickstarter is not just a funding source, it’s a marketing focal point to pre-sell the book to determine size of a print run.
Comics distribution is really at a crossroads now. Diamond Distribution stopped paying suppliers during the pandemic and stopped shipping product, a move that has led DC to drop their exclusive deal with Diamond. Diamond was the tastemaker for the industry, if they refused to carry your solicitation, then you were basically unable to recoup production costs. DC and Marvel aren’t comic companies any more anyway, they are IP parking lots for movie and TV production. Something like this book needs to be self-published, and since it’s not a known quantity, it can’t depend on the comics direct market, which you might notice is in a shambles with all the comic shops closing down during the pandemic.
Traditionally, an indie publisher would solicit their book through Diamond, do as much of the creation and pre-production as they could afford ahead of getting orders, then finish the book and print it, with their printing order driven by the size of the Diamond order. Books for the direct market are non-returnable, so you don’t need as much up front money – most of the big comics printers would accept a Diamond invoice as proof you were good for the bill, and you’d assign your Diamond disbursement to them first. Minimum print runs and prepress for books used to be very expensive, especially when dealing with color. The books were sold to shops at 55 - 65% of list price, Diamond would pay publisher 45%. The economics necessitated printing enough to meet the Diamond order, with some extra to sell at shows and fulfill the rare Diamond re-order, and that would be it. Reprints were rare.
The market has shifted dramatically in comics – the direct market was never good for non super-hero stuff. All ages material, autobiographical material, LGBT-themed, etc. only show up in the best direct market shops, with a lot of shops sticking with ‘mainstream’ superhero titles. Turns out that traditional book distributors move more books and get them in more places to the diverse audiences that want them, but there’s a catch. In traditional distribution, books are returnable. This means you need to pay for your printing and production up-front.
Kickstarter helps a lot with this model. If you are able to attract 1000 backers or more, you’ve basically pre-sold the book and proven you have an audience for your material. Also, since you aren’t giving 55% of your cover price to a distributor, you can afford to print enough books to feed the book distributor pipeline. Companies like Chicago’s Iron Circus Comics have turned this into a very viable business that can afford to take big creative chances with the books. The stretch goals and pledge levels also help fund merchandise and other things that can help you expand your audience. It’s a win all around, especially in comparison to the old way of publishing comics.
Anyone who thinks this is in ‘poor taste’ has never had their apartment filled with 2100 extra copies of a book that Diamond was guaranteed never to re-order, with them threatening to drop the next issue.
All this aside, Alex di Campi is a superb writer who has done a bunch of work for 2000 AD, an action series called ‘Smoke,’ the graphic novel Bad Girls, and a number of cool projects like ‘Archie vs. Predator.’ She also recently Kickstarted her first novel, “The Scottish Boy”. There’s no doubt this will be a very high quality book with excellent production values all around.
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I really liked Mute too, and was glad I watched it before reading what other people thought.
I was really shocked when I discovered that people thought it was a bad movie.
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I “liked” that but I’d like to thank you for that informative response too.
I mostly back board games on KS. I buy comics at small artist run things where my kids commission pictures for very, very little money from the starving artists.
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I’ve kind of been a bit confused about that as well. Maybe one aspect is that two of the lead actors, who are often cast sympathetically, in Mute are two horrible people.
Australia gets shafted a lot, sorry to see that the shipping is so high for you. As i recommended to someone else perhaps for you it might be best to either reach out to a book/comic store and see if they’re interested in stocking the title or wait until it’s out and see if you can get it through retail/online after the campaign has wrapped.
I thought the same thing.
Duncan Jones said he’d already paid for the project, but the Kickstarter was a storefront that would in turn pay the artists involved fairly. “Fair trade”
Yeah, that might have something to do with it. I also suspect that there’s still some latent snobbery around “Direct-to-Netflix” movies.
Although Adam Sandler also broke character for Uncut Gems which also went direct to Netflix and didn’t get anywhere near the same critical drubbing.
Fuck it. People are WEIRD.
Well, Mute is also really dark and features some very revolting things as ongoing significant plot elements. I think this can often turn a lot of people off, and I get it – it can be very triggering.
But, I think it’s well done, and that’s enough for me. Very glad to see this cyber-dystopia continued in graphic novel form, that’s for sure! The preview pages look pretty sweet.
Yeah, I’ve plonked down the cash for the HC version, as I really like the world Duncan’s created with Moon and Mute, and I was a MASSIVE 2000AD fan growing up thanks to my Gran owning a newsagents and sending me a new prog every week.
American comics seemed a bit tame in comparison when I started reading them. Everything was black and white with few moral conundrums. And there seemed to be no real exploration or criticism of real-world contemporary political events. Whereas strips like Judge Dredd, Zenith, Bad Company and Rogue Trooper, to name but a few, trusted in their audience to grapple complex issues.
If Madi manages to capture even a sliver of that vitality, it’ll be awesome.
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