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Here’s a round-up of more IDW announcements during ECCC, most of them part of a “Five Featured Firsts” program which will see a new book every week in July.

• Onyx by Chris Ryall (Zombies vs Robots) and Gabriel Rodriguez (Locke & Key),

Onyx tells the tale of a female metal-suited warrior who comes to Earth on a quest to either save the planet or destroy it. It’s up to a team of super-soldiers to figure out which before it’s too late, and before a much greater threat overwhelms both them and the planet itself.

The series will be introduced with a standalone 5-page story, Onyx #0, that will run in Many of IDW’s May titles. Variant cover artists for Onyx #1 include Ashley Wood, Charles Paul Wilson III, Alan Robinson and Sal Buscema.

•The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson, Ted Adams and Mark Torres

IDW CEO and Publisher Adams adapts Matheson’s famed science fiction novel, The Shrinking Man

This legendary tale chronicles the events of an average family man, Scott Carey, who, after being exposed to a mysterious cloud, comes to the frightening realization that he is shrinking slowly day-by-day is being brought to vivid life in this 4-issue series.

• String Divers by Ashley Wood, Chris Ryall and Nelson Daniel
Wood and Ryall write this title based on Wood’s 3A Toys’ line of titular figures, String Divers “incorporates string theory as threats to our universe at the sub-microscopic level have dire and lasting repercussions in our universe and across all dimensions.” Daniel provide the art.

• Godzilla in Hell
James Stokoe, whose Godzilla: The Half Century War mini-series stunned and delighted many, returns with the first issue of a five-issue mini series that sends the Big G to, yes, the underworld. “This July the mystery of what led to Godzilla’s damnation, and what it will face, will take readers on a dark and twisted journey unlike any Godzilla story! A rotating creative team will each take Godzilla through a new layers of Hell, beginning with writer/artist James Stokoe with successive issues by Bob Eggleton; Dave Wachter; Ulises Farinas; Erick Freitas; and Brandon Seifert with artists to be announced at a later time.”

•EC Comics Cover Month
IDW jumps on the “variant cover month” trend with “EC Comics cover month” in July. Here’s the line-up, and that’s Jeff Zornow’s Godzilla variant above, via Multiversity

• Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency #3 – Robert Hack
• Edward Scissorhands #10 – Drew Rausch
• The Fly: Outbreak #5 – Alberto Ponticelli
• Ghostbusters: Get Real #2 – Doc Shaner
• Godzilla in Hell #1 – Jeff Zornow
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• G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #216 – Andy Suriano
• Onyx #1 – Alan Robinson
• The Shrinking Man #1 – Mark Torres
• Star Trek #47 – Derek Charm
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #48 – Ryan Browne
• T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents 50th Anniversary Special – Andrew Pepoy
• Zombies vs Robots #7 – Mark Torres

• X-Files Season 11 is coming, with writer Joe Harris on board.

• Ghostbusters: Get Real by Erik Burnham and Dan Schoening.

Art for Lost Angeles by frequent Eastman collaborator Simon Bisley, via CBR

• New IDW exlcusive artist Kevin Eastman reveals more of what’s coming in a CBR interview:

Besides the Turtles stuff I do, my next project, that I’m actually working on now, is “Lost Angeles.” It’s a post-apocalyptic retelling of “The Warriors,” if you will, all set in LA. That’s the first one I’m working on now, but we looked at the stuff I wanted to do — there’s one story I developed 10 years ago, and drew 200 pages on, and just got frustrated with, and it wasn’t working the way I wanted it to, so I put it on a shelf, and it sat for five or six years. [Laughs] That’s another project that will probably find its way into the IDW schedule.

It feels like home. It’s a great bunch of people, really creative. I buy all of their Artist’s Editions. The first time when they did one of the “Turtles” collections — such a beautiful package.

Superior Iron Man #1 by Tom Fowler. (I love this.)

Can’t get enough of Rocket Raccoon and Groot, the dynamic duo that busted 2014 wide open? Marvel thinks you can’t and in November will present no less than 20 comics with Rocket and Groot variant covers, by artists including Chip Zdarsky, Ulises Farinas and Tom Fowler.  And Marvel SVP sales and marketing David Gabriel agrees. “People everywhere can’t seem to get enough Rocket & Groot! As soon as we came up with the concept to do Rocket Raccoon & Groot variants, the ideas just started pouring in. We couldn’t wait to get our hands dirty creating some really fantastic cover homages. This program is really the best of both worlds and we know it will really excite old and new fans everywhere.”

Here’s the line-up:

· All-New Captain America #1

· All-New X-Men #34

· Amazing Spider-Man #9

· Amazing X-Men #13

· Avengers #38

· Avengers World #15

· Bucky Barnes: The Winter Soldier #2

· Captain America & The Mighty Avengers #1

· Deadpool #37

· Guardians 3000 #2

· Guardians of the Galaxy #21

· Hulk 8

· Legendary Star-Lord #5

· New Avengers #26

· Rocket Raccoon #5

· Spider-Verse #1

· Spider-Woman #1

· Superior Iron Man #1

· Thor #2

· Uncanny X-Men #28

Marvel didn’t give the names of the variant artists but using our deductive powers and the file names, we’ve made some guesses.

Avengers #38 by Chip Zdarsky

Hulk #8 by Tom Fowler

Guardians of the Galaxy #21 by Dustin Nguyen

Captain America and The Mighty Avengers #1 by Ulises Farinas (be still my heart)

Bucky Barnes The Winter Soldier #2 by Sanford Greene

Thor #2 by James Stokoe

James Stokoe is a self taught artist from Canada who occasionally releases a new issue of his ongoing opus, Orc Stain, from Image Comics. He began his comics career in the mid-2000′s with titles such as Wonton Soup from ONI Press, Popgun Volume 1, and 24Seven from Image. He was banned from the U.S. for a few years for working(drawing comics) here illegally, but he has put those darker days behind him now.

Coming off of increased interest in his work on Orc Stain, and other high-profile projects like Sullivan’s Sluggers(a wildly successful Kickstarter project with writer Mark Andrew Smith), Stokoe was hired to write & draw Godzilla: Half Century War for IDW in 2012, which received high praise from critics. This week sees the release of Avengers 100th Year Anniversary, an imaginary “what if?” future story, which is a perfect type of project for Stokoe to run free with some of Marvel’s most iconic characters.

More Orc Stains are in the works, and fans will wait patiently for their release, because a talent like James Stokoe is certainly not one to be rushed.

James Stokoe sometime posts updates on his site here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com - Andy Yates

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Well, that didn’t take long. The SULLIVAN’S SLUGGERS thing we reported on a little while ago has now blown up everywhere.

First off, Kickstarter has suspended the campaign, which seemed to be being used for selling new stock, which is against Kickstarter rules:

Hi there,
This is a message from Kickstarter Support. We’re writing to inform you that a project you backed, ‘Sullivan’s Sluggers’, Baseball Horror Graphic Novel Ext. KS, has been suspended by Kickstarter. Your $35.00 pledge has been automatically canceled and you will not be charged. No further action is necessary.

As a policy, Kickstarter does not comment on specific reasons for a project’s suspension to the creator or backers, but included below is information from our FAQ regarding suspensions. Project suspensions are not reversible.

Thanks, Kickstarter

But before that, writer Mark Andrew Smith released a statement rebutting artist James Stokoe’s distancing himself from the campaign, blaming Stokoe’s lateness for everything from ending Smith’s marriage to…kicking his cat.

I hired James Stokoe for Sullivan’s years ago starting in 2009, and then he’d go missing for months and months at a time, one year turning in about 8 pages total. 8 pages in one year! That said, I was foolish enough to bet the house on Sullivan’s Sluggers with Stokoe and things didn’t go at all to plan with the schedule. That said, I’ve been trying to make the tastiest lemonade from three years of James Stokoe lemons.

My life fell apart and took all kinds of turns because of Stokoe’s pace with the book. It was fuel for the fire of me getting divorced in Korea because of money and trying to turn comics into a career and having prospects other than being an English teacher forever in South Korea. So I’ve suffered enough.

Stokoe was a grown man, he agreed to do a job for a certain amount like many of you do every day, and took three years to finish that job which was only to deliver art for the book. He was paid for the job in full. I offered to pay more but he declined. I don’t look at him like a brilliant artist but more as someone that built a house for me, finished, and moved on to what’s next. If things went smoother on the book that wouldn’t be the case but they didn’t.

I can understand the sting on his end from the perception that this Kickstarter made a billion dollars and that people think I should write him a check for half of it but this guy ruined my life. No one cares when books don’t make any money which most of mine haven’t for the past ten years under Image.

Any project that takes three years to get turned in is going to have it’s amount of bad blood. It was absolute hell for me on my end, and it’s a shame that people continue to make it a hell for me saying that I ripped him off and by spreading the story and other stories that aren’t true. I paid on the front end for two years of hell, and now his camp has been stirring the pot and causing so much commotion and trouble posting every story of story, most of which aren’t true or have been warped again and again.

Really, it’s like having an ex and they’re not happy and are going to say all of the worst things about you, and get people worked up to try to take sides.

It’s a shame that this laundry had to be aired, because it’s really no one’s business but they’ve done a good job of doing that. Personally, I want the book to be wrapped and over with.

In the past few months have just been nonstop bullying, targeted harassment from his camp, comics alliance doing hit articles (And I’m the only one they’ve done for their Kickstarted reviews to date, 3 of them), and people anonymously on 4Chan posting the worst things that aren’t true and reposting and are spreading misinformation.

As promised, David Brothers weighed in with a long examination of the whole controversyand revealing a few things that I didn’t mention earlier, such as the way books were being sold in COMICS SHOPS when they hadn’t even been shipped to backers yet.

That smelled fishy to me, so I started paying more attention. The comments section on the Kickstarter are full of people who have yet to receive their books and people who are upset that comic shops have received copies of the book before backers, in addition to fulsome praise.”
[snip] This week, comics creator Dustin Harbin asked Smith about the problems with the Kickstarter on Facebook. Smith responded with vitriol first, saying that Harbin was a “HUGE bully” and decrying a “nonstop orchestrated online bullying campaign.” Harbin defends himself well in the thread, and Smith’s response is another thing that makes me question his behavior and motivations. He’s extremely defensive and paranoid every time someone asks him anything but a soft question, and that’s not good.

Finally, Kickstarter is not a store. It’s not meant to help someone sell backstock of pre-produced material. It’s meant to fund a project that will result in the production of a thing. Mark Andrew Smith has set the goal for this new Kickstarter at $1. That goal means that he has gamed the system and ensured that no matter what happens, he’s guaranteed to make money off the project.

That’s not how Kickstarter is supposed to work. You come to Kickstarter with a project and a firm goal in mind. Smith claims that he made a fifteen thousand dollar mistake by screwing up the shipping. Why isn’t the goal for this project $15,000, or $15,000 plus whatever is required for the shipping of the books that he’s selling on Kickstarter? Again: shady.

A couple of historic notes here. This isn’t the first time Smith has fallen out with an artistic collaborator. In 2008 he and Paul Maybury, artist on the fantasy AQUA LEUNG, also had a falling out over Maybury not being credited for writing. Although Maybury’s original complaints are gone to the sands of the internet, Smith’s rebuttal is still out there:

“Paul is a terrible thief and a huge backstabber and he shouldn’t be trusted at all. Working on Aqua Leung with him was the worst experience of my life and he did every single fucked up thing you could imagine on the book. There will never be anymore Aqua Leung. Paul owes me thousands of dollars as well that he just kept. Everyone you should not trust Paul at all and he’s a horrible human being.”

Hm, sounds familiar. Sounds like Smith hadn’t learned his “lesson” by the time he hired Stokoe for SULLIVAN’S SLUGGERS.

Finally one more interesting piece of corroborative evidence from the internal annals. Last year after the successful Kickstarter for SULLIVAN’S, he wrote a much-quoted manifesto called “The Creator as Retailer.”

In order for comics to grow the creator has got to take the center stage as one of the retailers and we need to start cultivating a spirit of entrepreneurship among creators so that they take their own destiny in their hands. In 1988 a group of creators got together and came up with the ‘Creator’s Bill of Rights’, I think now with so many technological breakthroughs that it’s time to update that bill of rights to include a new right which is the right of the creator as retailer.

While this is sound advice, it seems Smith may have taken it a little too far by using Kickstarter as a retailing platform. As one of my comics pals put it: “That’s what Etsy is for.”

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This one is like one of those baseball games that goes into the 17th inning, long and murky with no real payoff.

SULLIVAN’S SLUGGERS by Mark Andrew Smith and James Stokoe has a rather interesting history. An irresistible tale of a baseball team that has to go up against a team of monsters, it’s drawn in Stokoe’s choice style, and since the first images started circulating, it’s looked great. In 2010 it was to be published by Image Comics, and a big round of promo for this followed. However, that book never came out—although it was released digitally as a creator-owned comic—and instead it bounced back as a Kickstarter last year. With over $97,000 raised, surely this was a big success. Although the book was long drawn, copies only started shipping recently, after a bit of complaining over the delays. However it was worth the wait, as a super deluxe edition was declared to be worth the international postage:

The real unsung hero in this entire project is Sullivan’s Sluggers creator Mark Andrew Smith for the constant communication with the backers, and making sure everyone is still in the loop after all this time. Who could have possibly foreseen how massively successful this project would have been? Smith has remained professional throughout, delaying his other projects such as Gladstone’s School for World Conquerors and the eventual Sullivan’s Sluggers sequel, Pele’s Pounders. Has he learned a thing or two for the next Kickstarter project he starts? Absolutely.

As someone who desired to read SULLIVAN’S SLUGGERS but didn’t get in on the Kickstarter thing, I was happy to find you could now purchase it again…on Kickstarter. Smith started a campaign with a $1 goal, so people who want various levels can just pledge and get the package they want.

The new Kickstarter is, in part to pay for postage, says Smith. Part of the delay was what is becoming more and more common with Kickstarters: not figuring out how much it is really going to cost. As Smith wrote on his tumblr

Yes, there will be another opportunity for those that missed Sullivan’s Sluggers to pick it up this next month.  I was a bone head and hugely underestimated international shipping because I saw another Kickstarter that was doing huge numbers at the time, and it said “International Orders Please Add $10”, and I said to myself “They know what they’re doing” and copied it FOOLISHLY. So lesson to be learned, look up the shipping costs by weight for international next time if you’re doing a Kickstarter.  I’m going to do an adjustment Kickstarter to help out with international costs, so that I can eat the difference and not ask for more money from international backers, but to ship for the low low original price of $10 per book.  But it’s only for the US, and the other books are going to post first. 

Soooo.. Mark Andrew Smith is having a second Kickstarter just to.. sell books left over from the first one? kck.st/YpNOHj Too far?

— Dustin Harbin (@dustinharbin) March 5, 2013

@jomperr So probably between 15-20 for shipping. Interesting.

— Dustin Harbin (@dustinharbin) March 5, 2013

@dustinharbin wow yeah that sounds like the opposite of “kickstarting” something

— Meredith Gran (@granulac) March 5, 2013

@granulac @mattbors Exactly. As you know, I will get VERY unproud around rent-time, but you can’t abuse the goodwill of your readers

— Dustin Harbin (@dustinharbin) March 5, 2013

While I understand the ire, for those who want a copy of the book it seems like a simple transaction. But Kickstarter doesn’t allow you to just sell things that are lying around your house.

And now more clarification: it turns out Stokoe, whose always spectacular art is the draw on the books, is not involved in ANY of this. He drew the book for a page rate and has now publicly distanced himself from it.

First off, I want to make abundantly clear that I’m in no way involved with the direction of either of the Kickstarters, or any other other outlet where that book is sold. The Writer and myself had briefly talked about working together on the KS, but due to some disagreements, I decided to remove myself from it completely.

There’s been talk on my behalf about fair compensation from the KS earnings, but I have to say that it personally doesn’t bother me. I have been paid what I was contracted for, and I’ve been very content to keep my nose out of anything involving the book post-Kickstarter. In other words, there’s really no reason to be offended on my behalf. I’m doing fine. I understand that some backers may feel mislead in that they were supporting me financially by backing the book, and for that I apologize. There was very little I could do once the ball started rolling in that regard, shy of shitting on the whole parade.

Complicating matters even more, SULLIVAN’S SLUGGERS is in development as a movie, billed as “Major League meets Zombieland”—although that was last year and we know how these things tend to fade away.

We haven’t yet seen crowdfunding turn into an angry mob in the comics sphere, and it’s hard to pinpoint the exact smoking gun here, but selling backstock on Kickstarter does seem to be against the spirit of the thing at the very least. And backers are beginning to feel annoyed.

Jankiness in the form of this entire kickstarter. I funded the original and still haven't received my copy and now there is another kickstarter to enable me to get my copy. I could have ordered it on Amazon instead.

And as Stokoe’s statement makes clear, the “creator owned” comics world is often not what it seems.

If you don’t want to bother with the whole mess, for a short while you can just download the first two digital “issues” for free.

SULLIVAN’S SLUGGERS by Mark Andrew Smith and James Stokoe is a project that has been around a while, but it took Stokoe a bit to finish it. The premise is simple: a struggling minor league team has to take on a town full of monsters.

Given that Stokoe is drawing it, it’s no surprise that it looks astonishing.

But that’s not what we’re here to talk about today. Smith started a Kickstarter campaign to raise $6000 to finish the book and put out a $30 hardcover.

To date, and with 26 days to go, the project has already netted more than $34,000.

Now, $6000 doesn’t seem like much for two years of work for two people. (The book was originally going to be published by Oni—the Kickstarter doesn’t mention if the softcover is still coming out from them.) So $34,000 (and counting) seems like a more reasonable amount.

But that’s still not our point, which is that five-figure comics Kickstarters are becoming fairly common.

Fairy Quest by Paul Jenkins and Humberto Ramos has raised more than $75,000.

Smut Peddler, an erotic comics anthology, has raised $66,000.

Jake Parker’s Antler Boy raised $85,000.

A book called Cucumber Quest by someone named Gigi D.G. has raised nearly $63,000, after asking for $9000.

Anyway, you can go look in the link above and see how many books are raising a substantial amount of money.

Now, even though this seems like a good payday for the creators, it isn’t that simple. There are books to be signed and mailed. Lots of these Kickstarters come with personal appearances and events by the authors. There is a LOT to do after a successful Kickstarter campaign. And the actual money netted may be a lot less than we think.

However, Kickstarter has definitely become an important revenue stream for cartoonists in a world where advances are tiny and royalties often nonexistent. Maybe there’s hope for those starving cartoonists after all.