The Day "Sequential Art" Became Optional - What's New in Kickstarter Comics for July 30-31, 2026
Four campaigns launched calling themselves comics yesterday. None of them showed a single panel.
The mission of The Comics Crowd is to curate the crowdfunding campaigns in the Kickstarter Comics category in order to identify and spotlight those projects most likely to yield actual comics and to yield the most high quality comics in terms of story, design, and cover/interior artwork.
The Comics Crowd - Brought to You By:
The Deep Space Lovecraft Collected Edition - 184 Pages of Hard Sci-Fi Cosmic Horror!
Launching on Kickstarter for a 1-week engagement on August 4!
Featuring SEVEN classic H. P. Lovecraft first-person short stories reimagined as tales of a retrofuturistic spacefarer encountering and enduring the very monstrosities conjured by Lovecraft’s own tortured mind, but in the environs and technologies of deep space and adapted to the artform of comics.
By the Numbers
14 campaigns submitted from the July 30-31 slate — 13 comics, 1 non-comic tool.
$16,195 pledged across all comics on day one, from 302 backers.
3 campaigns funded within 24 hours: Redland Humour Magazine (114%), Dreamland #1 (4,773%), and 1-Up (1,007%).
3 campaigns launched at $0: BLACKBIRD, Relatos de Dandain, and Most Likely To Kill Everyone.
4 of the 13 comics — nearly a third of the slate — show no sequential art on their campaign pages. More on that below.
Comics I Like
Comics I Like
Necessary Evil issue 3
Owen Hammer · Los Angeles, CA · Superhero satire
Two issues in, Necessary Evil has already done the thing most superhero-vs-supervillain books never bother with: given the villains an actual point. O.V.E.R.L.O.R.D. wanting to reverse climate change and the “heroic” Freedom Council fighting to stop him isn’t a twist, it’s the whole premise, and issue 3 pushes it further by putting a literal carbon-scrubbing doomsday device in the hands of the guy the story wants you rooting against. Hammer, who’s disabled and works in VFX and writing, keeps the tone somewhere between camp and genuine ethical bind — worth a look for anyone tired of superhero comics that already know who’s right before page one.
$890 raised / 23 backers / 25.4% funded
WHISPERING DOORS
Randall Rozzell · Clayton, NC · Psychological horror
Rozzell’s pitch is a clean one: a psychiatrist who coined her own term for repressed trauma — the “Whispering Door” — has to reckon with it becoming literal when a patient she couldn’t save dies and leaves hers open. It’s a horror premise built on a genuinely interesting question (is the demon real, or is this what unprocessed grief looks like from the inside) rather than just a haunted-house shuffle, and artist Anibal Suarez’s interiors lean into that ambiguity instead of resolving it early. Thirteen prior campaigns and 162 backers behind him, Rozzell knows how to build dread on a page.
It’s worth noting here that Rozzell is working with a human artist on this new project after his previous work relied on (honestly spectacular) imagery generated using AI (he is a graphic designer). Given the skyrocketing costs of, well, everything, we’re going to see a lot more of this model of producing higher-margin, AI-infused infused comics to make financially feasible collaborations with traditional artists, as writers continue to strive to fairly compensate them. I have a lot more to say about this, and I will soon in a feature post devoted to that very topic. In the meantime, kudos to Rozzell for his thoughtful approach and really killer comics.
$716 raised / 24 backers / 35.8% funded
The View from the Gutter
Funding & Backer Trends for July 30-31, 2026
A rant, because it needs saying: Nearly a third of yesterday’s “comics” slate — four of thirteen campaigns — launched on Kickstarter’s Comics & Illustration shelf without showing a single sequential panel. BLACKBIRD: Bring the Universe to Life pitches an “original sci-fi/fantasy comic” and delivers a mission statement and some concept art. THE ONES & TWOS Filipino American Mobile DJ Comic Book #2 is, per its own materials, a comic in name and continuity only. Project Renaissance bills itself as “Comic + Dub,” which on inspection means the dub — full voice cast, sound design, a Twitch-adjacent composer — is doing the work while the “comic” half stays theoretical. And 1-Up, funded over 1,000% by the time we looked, is refreshingly honest about what it actually is in its own pitch copy: “a collection of illustrations,” 24 boss-level pin-ups with zero panels, gutters, or story beats between them.
That’s not a knock on any of these as projects — pin-up collections and animated dubs are legitimate things to crowdfund. It’s a knock on calling them comics. Sequential art — one image leading to the next, telling a story a reader assembles panel by panel — is the thing that makes a comic a comic and not an art book, a proof-of-concept reel, or a lookbook with dialogue. Kickstarter’s own category browsing doesn’t enforce that distinction, and increasingly, neither do the creators filing under it. We’re not excluding these four from today’s rankings — they cleared my bar for inclusion, and I flagged them for exactly this reason, not for exclusion — but if you’re backing based on “comic” in the title, read the actual page first.
Elsewhere in the numbers: the day’s two funded-many-times-over campaigns were both adult content — Dreamland at 4,773% of a deliberately tiny $100 goal, and 1-Up at over 1,000% of a $500 goal — while the four highest-goal, most conventionally “comic-shaped” projects (BLACKBIRD, Relatos de Dandain, Most Likely To Kill Everyone, Project Renaissance) sat at or near $0. Draw your own conclusions about what Kickstarter’s comics audience actually opens its wallet for on day one.
Also Launched Yesterday (Not Comics)
LetterMyComic Pro comic lettering that lives in your browser — Mindy Wheeler · $598 raised / 3 backers · FUNDED ✓ (598% of a $100 goal) · A browser-based lettering app for balloons, SFX, and print-ready pages — a tool for making comics, not a comic itself.
Rankings by Day-1 Funding
1. Die Hard of the Dead Book 5 — Matt Stapleton — $1,887 raised — 21 backers — Goal $4,044 — 46.7% funded — Avg pledge $89.86 — Zombie Horror — Funding
2. The Death of Bobby Hart - SECOND PRINTING!!! — David F. Walker — $1,079 raised — 24 backers — Goal $2,100 — 51.4% funded — Avg pledge $44.96 — Crime/Neo-Noir — Funding
3. Necessary Evil issue 3 (Comics I Like) — Owen Hammer — $890 raised — 23 backers — Goal $3,500 — 25.4% funded — Avg pledge $38.70 — Superhero Satire — Funding
4. Redland Humour Magazine — Sonny Wilson — $772 raised — 13 backers — Goal $674 — 114.5% funded — Avg pledge $59.38 — Humor Anthology — FUNDED ✓
5. WHISPERING DOORS (Comics I Like) — Randall Rozzell — $716 raised — 24 backers — Goal $2,000 — 35.8% funded — Avg pledge $29.83 — Psychological Horror — Funding
6. Trio Trouble Comic — The Squibbles — $697 raised — 9 backers — Goal $1,617 — 43.1% funded — Avg pledge $77.44 — All-Ages Humor — Funding
7. THE ONES & TWOS Filipino American Mobile DJ Comic Book #2 — Kid Heroes Productions — $330 raised — 6 backers — Goal $2,500 — 13.2% funded — Avg pledge $55.00 — Slice-of-Life Comedy — Funding
8. Project Renaissance - Comic + Dub — Aidan Hogan — $17 raised — 1 backer — Goal $5,000 — 0.3% funded — Avg pledge $17.00 — Dystopian Sci-Fi — Funding
9. BLACKBIRD: Bring the Universe to Life — Mark Thomas — $0 raised — 0 backers — Goal $3,500 — 0% funded — Avg pledge n/a — Sci-Fi/Fantasy — Funding
9. Relatos de Dandain — Alberto Arias — $0 raised — 0 backers — Goal $1,037 — 0% funded — Avg pledge n/a — Horror Anthology — Funding
9. Most Likely To Kill Everyone (MLTKE) Issue 1 — A. Miranda — $0 raised — 0 backers — Goal $5,500 — 0% funded — Avg pledge n/a — Horror/Superhero — Funding
Kickstarter Comics Launches for July 30-31, 2026
Die Hard of the Dead Book 5
Creator: Matt Stapleton (What If? Stories) · Location: London, UK · Genre: Zombie Horror · Goal: $4,044 · Raised: $1,887 (46.7%) · Backers: 21 · Avg pledge: $89.86 · End date: ~Aug 28, 2026 · Pages: not specified in submitted materials · Tiers: not visible in submitted materials · Prior campaigns: Die Hard of the Dead Books 1-4, funded, plus the original What If? Stories anthology that gave the studio its name back in 2018.
The fifth and final chapter of Stapleton’s zombie-siege riff on Die Hard, closing a saga he’s been building since 2018 under the What If? Stories banner. It’s straightforward genre comfort food — a lone protagonist, a building full of the undead, and a title that tells you exactly what you’re getting. Stapleton frames this as the emotional finale of the whole run, thanking backers who’ve been there “from the start and those that haven’t.”
Day-1 note: $1,887 of $4,044 (46.7%) from 21 backers, avg pledge $89.86 — a healthy open for a fifth-installment closer, with 27 days left to close the gap.
Cover and interior art at the Kickstarter page.
The Death of Bobby Hart - SECOND PRINTING!!!
Creator: David F. Walker (co-creator, Bitter Root) · Location: Portland, OR · Genre: Crime/Neo-Noir Graphic Novel · Goal: $2,100 · Raised: $1,079 (51.4%) · Backers: 24 · Avg pledge: $44.96 · End date: ~Aug 24, 2026 · Pages: 68-page main story plus 30+ pages of back matter · Tiers: not visible in submitted materials · Prior campaigns: the original Bobby Hart Kickstarter (2025) funded at 346% and — per Walker — sold through its entire extra print run.
A neo-noir true-crime graphic novel about the 1970s murder of pulp “street literature” author Bobby Hart, king of gritty paperback crime fiction, gunned down alongside his pregnant wife while working on his next book. Walker is telling the exact same story as the first printing — same 68-page script, same art by Dietrich Smith and Craig Johnson II, same Chris Sotomayor colors and Canaan White cover — with only back-matter corrections. This is a Kickstarter “Project We Love” pick, and Walker’s publishing pedigree (Bitter Root, journalism, education) shows in how tightly the pitch is written.
Day-1 note: $1,079 of $2,100 (51.4%) from 24 backers, avg pledge $44.96. Given the first campaign’s 346% run, this reprint is likely to clear goal well before its Aug 24 close.
Cover and interior art at the Kickstarter page.
Redland Humour Magazine
Creator: Sonny Wilson · Location: Birmingham, UK · Genre: Humor Anthology · Goal: $674 · Raised: $772 (114.5%, FUNDED) · Backers: 13 · Avg pledge: $59.38 · End date: ~Aug 29, 2026 · Pages: 64 · Tiers: not visible in submitted materials · Prior campaigns: none — debut Kickstarter.
A 64-page absurdist humor anthology in the MAD/Eightball tradition, built around messy relationship-drama strips and social-media pettiness rendered in bright, deliberately garish comic-strip style. Wilson, a Birmingham-based visual artist and writer, pitches this as a pivot after a rough festival run with a trio of animated shorts he felt were “too disruptive” for that circuit — Redland is the print version of that same sensibility. The pitch itself is written in the same voice as the comic: sardonic, self-deprecating, and unbothered.
Day-1 note: funded within 24 hours — $772 of a $674 goal (114.5%) from 13 backers, avg pledge $59.38.
Cover and interior art at the Kickstarter page.
Trio Trouble Comic
Creator: The Squibbles · Location: Colne, UK · Genre: All-Ages Humor · Goal: $1,617 · Raised: $697 (43.1%) · Backers: 9 · Avg pledge: $77.44 · End date: ~Aug 29, 2026 · Pages: 96 · Tiers: not visible in submitted materials · Prior campaigns: none — debut Kickstarter, though the studio says it has spent six years building out colouring books, animation, and games.
Ninety-six pages of one silly, brightly colored panel per page starring a trio of characters — a horned blue monster, a googly-eyed cassette-tape-looking sidekick, and a pink-haired girl — in a format built for very young readers. The Squibbles frame the whole project around “emotional literacy,” positioning the comic as one piece of a larger character-driven media world rather than a standalone book. It’s a gentler, lower-stakes entry than most of yesterday’s slate, and reads that way.
Day-1 note: $697 of $1,617 (43.1%) from 9 backers, avg pledge $77.44 — a strong per-backer average for an all-ages title.
Cover and interior art at the Kickstarter page.
THE ONES & TWOS Filipino American Mobile DJ Comic Book #2
Creator: Kid Heroes Productions (Patricio Ginelsa) · Location: Los Angeles, CA · Genre: Slice-of-Life Comedy · Goal: $2,500 · Raised: $330 (13.2%) · Backers: 6 · Avg pledge: $55.00 · End date: ~Aug 31, 2026 (early bird bonus cutoff Mon. Aug 3) · Pages: not specified in submitted materials · Tiers: not visible in submitted materials · Prior campaigns: extensive — Lumpia With a Vengeance (13 years ago), Jemini, The Legendary Lumpia Squad (2022), the Pan De Crisis/Long Live Philbert crossover saga, and the first Ones and Twos (2024), all funded.
Volume 2 of the mobile-DJ-crew saga spun off from Ginelsa’s award-winning Lumpia With a Vengeance film franchise, following the X-tremes crew as they prep for a DJ battle. As flagged in today’s Gutter rant, the submitted materials for this campaign show no sequential comic art — it’s continuity-driven merch and momentum from a fifteen-plus-year franchise more than a standalone comic pitch. Ginelsa’s built real goodwill with backers over that run, which likely explains the modest but real early support.
Day-1 note: $330 of $2,500 (13.2%) from 6 backers, avg pledge $55.00 — slow open for a franchise with this much prior-campaign history behind it.
Cover and interior art at the Kickstarter page.
Project Renaissance - Comic + Dub
Creator: Aidan Hogan (AJDoesStuff) · Location: Booneville, AR · Genre: Dystopian Sci-Fi · Goal: $5,000 · Raised: $17 (0.3%) · Backers: 1 · Avg pledge: $17.00 · End date: ~Aug 30, 2026 · Pages: not specified — project is structured around a full voice cast and dub rather than pages · Tiers: not visible in submitted materials · Prior campaigns: none — debut Kickstarter from a six-year YouTuber pivoting into original fiction.
Billed as a “dubbed comic series” about rising against a controlling government, Project Renaissance is really an audio-drama-first production — Hogan and co-writer UserOnlyne lead a full crew including artists AxoAzey and Ansuuri, composer GloopyGirl, and a cast of voice actors. As flagged in today’s Gutter rant, no sequential comic art appears anywhere in the submitted materials; the “comic” half of “Comic + Dub” is, so far, aspirational.
Day-1 note: $17 of $5,000 (0.3%) from a single backer — the softest open of the day, 29 days still on the clock.
Cover and interior art at the Kickstarter page.
BLACKBIRD: Bring the Universe to Life
Creator: Mark Thomas (SomindlesssMedia) · Location: Los Angeles, CA · Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy Webcomic · Goal: $3,500 · Raised: $0 (0%) · Backers: 0 · Avg pledge: n/a · End date: ~Aug 29, 2026 · Pages: not specified in submitted materials · Tiers: not visible in submitted materials · Prior campaigns: none — debut Kickstarter.
An anime- and superhero-inflected sci-fi/fantasy webcomic centered on Amaru, a teenager who discovers a connection to a long-dormant “ancient power” as his city buckles under fear and corruption. Thomas, founder of SomindlesssMedia, describes years of prior work building the world through published chapters and concept art ahead of this campaign. As flagged in today’s Gutter rant, the submitted materials show no sequential art or cover art — this is a zero-backer, day-one launch built entirely on world-building copy so far.
Day-1 note: $0 of $3,500 (0%), zero backers — one of three campaigns to open the day at exactly $0.
Cover and interior art at the Kickstarter page.
Relatos de Dandain
Creator: Alberto Arias · Location: Mérida, Mexico · Genre: Horror Anthology (Spanish-language) · Goal: $1,037 · Raised: $0 (0%) · Backers: 0 · Avg pledge: n/a · End date: ~Sept 6, 2026 · Pages: 72 · Tiers: not visible in submitted materials · Prior campaigns: none as creator, though the anthology itself has been self-published independently since 2023.
⚠️ IP note: this campaign funds a fully re-illustrated “definitive” reprint edition of a horror anthology Arias has self-published since 2023 — the underlying material is his own prior work, not third-party IP, but it is a reprint/re-edition rather than new content. Relatos de Dandain (”Tales of Dandain”) is a horror anthology rooted in everyday Mexican settings and experiences, where the supernatural surfaces in familiar streets, homes, and ordinary people. This campaign funds a 500-copy print run of a 72-page, 13x19cm black-and-white edition, with every page redrawn from scratch.
Day-1 note: $0 of $1,037 (0%), zero backers, 36 days to go — plenty of runway for a Spanish-language anthology with an established fan base to catch up.
Cover and interior art at the Kickstarter page.
Most Likely To Kill Everyone (MLTKE) Issue 1
Creator: A. Miranda · Location: Bridgeport, CT · Genre: Horror/Superhero · Goal: $5,500 · Raised: $0 (0%) · Backers: 0 · Avg pledge: n/a · End date: ~Aug 30, 2026 · Pages: not specified in submitted materials · Tiers: not visible in submitted materials · Prior campaigns: none — debut Kickstarter.
A slasher-horror/superhero mashup pitched as “Jigsaw meets the Avengers”: a survivor of high-school bullying tracks down his tormentors at their fifteenth reunion, only to find they’ve since become the world’s most powerful superheroes. Issue 1 opens with one hero tortured for information before being confronted with his own buried crimes. Miranda’s own content advisory flags strong language, graphic violence, and handled-seriously references to sexual assault as part of the narrative.
Day-1 note: $0 of $5,500 (0%), zero backers — the highest goal of any zero-dollar launch yesterday, with 29 days to build momentum. Adult content advisory noted by creator; not platform-tagged NSFW.
Cover and interior art at the Kickstarter page.
🔞 NSFW Launches — July 30-31, 2026
NSFW Day-1 Funding Ranking
1. 1-Up 🔞 — The Kreeper — $5,034 raised — 84 backers — Goal $500 — 1,006.8% funded — Avg pledge $59.93 — Erotic Illustration Collection — FUNDED ✓
2. Dreamland #1 - Spicy, Theme Park Fantasy Comic 🔞 — Jared C — $4,773 raised — 97 backers — Goal $100 — 4,773% funded — Avg pledge $49.20 — Adult Fantasy — FUNDED ✓
1-Up 🔞
Creator: The Kreeper (Kreeper Studios) · Location: Clearwater, FL · Genre: Erotic Illustration Collection · Goal: $500 · Raised: $5,034 (1,006.8%, FUNDED) · Backers: 84 · Avg pledge: $59.93 · End date: ~Aug 9, 2026 · Pages: 24 · Tiers: not visible in submitted materials · Prior campaigns: 12 prior Kreeper Studios projects, including Kink ($26,442/581 backers) and Variants ($12,666/167 backers).
Twenty-four pages of video-game-character pin-up illustrations from Kreeper Studios’ in-house art team — by the creator’s own description, “a collection of illustrations,” fully completed and print-ready before the campaign even launched. As flagged in today’s Gutter rant, this is a gallery, not a sequential story; Kreeper Studios’ own bio describes the outfit as a source for “the best erotic comic art and stories,” and this campaign is squarely the art half of that. Adult content — 18+ only.
Day-1 note: funded over 1,000% of a deliberately modest $500 goal — $5,034 from 84 backers, avg pledge $59.93, the single largest day-one haul of the slate.
Cover and interior art at the Kickstarter page.
Dreamland #1 - Spicy, Theme Park Fantasy Comic 🔞
Creator: Jared C · Location: Norwich, CT · Genre: Adult Fantasy · Goal: $100 · Raised: $4,773 (4,773%, FUNDED) · Backers: 97 · Avg pledge: $49.20 · End date: ~Aug 10, 2026 · Pages: 32, full color · Tiers: not visible in submitted materials · Prior campaigns: 33 prior Kickstarter projects, including the “spicy” Christmas comic Ho Alone #1-2.
Recent grad Bella spends her last carefree summer avoiding adulthood — and her boyfriend’s proposal-shaped future — at Dreamland, the nostalgic Florida theme park where her family vacationed as kids, only for the park’s mascot Ricky Rodent to flip a switch and wake the park’s “true magic” once she and her stepsister’s bachelorette crew arrive. It’s the second entry in Jared C’s “spicy” theme-park continuity, an award-winning screenwriter’s pivot into adult romance/fantasy comics with a heavy pin-up art style. Adult content — 18+ only.
Day-1 note: the day’s most dramatic overfund — $4,773 raised against a $100 goal (4,773%) from 97 backers, avg pledge $49.20. A goal this small relative to the eventual haul reads as a deliberate “funded in minutes” strategy rather than a real budget target.
Cover and interior art at the Kickstarter page.