Guts N' Gutters #9 (June 2025)
TL;DR (Too Long, Don’t (Wanna) Read)
Prism Anthology Ends in 4 Days!
Grow In Grow Out Completed Soon!
Rise of the Flightless Submissions Close Today!
Letters from the Void Updates
Into the Gutters: Digging Into Grow In Grow Out’s Campaign
Go support Wrath Month, & Aces & Aros on Kickstarter!
Hey friends! Sorry for this being a day late. Things have been hectic both comics-wise and in my personal life.
WHAT’S THE WORD?
Hamper - To restrict the movement of by bonds or obstacles. To moderate or limit the effect or full exercise of. A large basket usually with a cover for packing, storing, or transporting articles (such as food or laundry).
Prism: An Anthology of Tomorrow
This anthology I’m a part of ends soon and needs your help to fund. We’ve got quite a bit to go, so every bit does wonders to get us there!
Grow In Grow Out
Grow In Grow Out reached $21 over its goal, and the physical books are on their way!
The eBook can be found on Kobo or on my Ko-Fi and Itch sites. Pick up a copy if you missed the campaign!
Rise of the Flightless Submissions Closed!
We received 70 pages worth of comics for this charity anthology. I’m incredibly humbled by the number of people who were willing to donate their time and craft to help raise money for the penguins.
Stay tuned for the upcoming launch on Itch!
Letters from the Void
There isn’t much to update here. Things are slowly moving along art-wise.
In the meantime, here’s a page of art from Daniel Wilson and Christian David Navarro’s “Echoes”!
Transmuted is in Pre-Orders!
INTO THE GUTTERS
Boldly Going For The Longshots
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write about this month until it looked like Grow In Grow Out might not fund. Though that would have been disappointing, it was something I had prepared for way back when the book was finished. This article might be a shorter, drier one, but I think it will be a good way to discuss how much work goes into a campaign, even one this small, and how to be realistic with artistic goals while avoiding pessimism.
Before the Campaign
Poetry, much like comics, is a niche genre, but unlike comics, there isn’t a huge community of poetry creators and patrons on Kickstarter. So, I didn’t have a ton to draw upon when crafting Grow In Grow Out’s campaign. I spent the last year taking a little time each month to check on poetry Kickstarters to see who was having success and what they were doing in their campaign that seemed to work.
To be honest, I didn’t see a ton of funded campaigns. There were a lot in their last week with less than 10 backers and far, FAR away from their goal. The successful ones also had few backers, but they either had a low funding goal or had very high average pledge amounts. These campaigns also tended to have connections with nonprofit organizations or were raising money for youths, prisoners, and other people in need.
Already, my campaign seemed like an uphill battle. I was just a nonbinary pal trying to fund their passion project, one that few Kickstarter backers seemed interested in.
Another thing I noticed within their campaigns was A LOT of text and few visuals. I understand why, since a poetry book is typically text alone outside of the cover, but I’ve been told and read multiple sources that confirm this is not best practice for crowdfunding. Audience’s glaze over big blocks of text, and multiple studies have shown that the eyes of people reading on a screen tend to be less focused, moving all around instead of following lines.
The Plan
What I took away from this research was that I had to be extremely conscious of my goal, my audience, and my strategy. This project couldn’t be one where, if I didn’t raise the funds, the book wouldn’t get made.
My goal would have to be low enough so that I could fund it myself (eventually) if it failed. That $350 marker would cover the bare minimum to buy an ISBN and print a small run. My cover and edits were paid for out of pocket, and I already had shipping materials on hand, so I was covered there. My research showed that it would have been unrealistic to expect anything more.
In addition, I knew this project would likely only attract those few who were fans of me more than my work. Most people who back my campaigns are comic readers and probably have no interest in poetry. This proved accurate as I had more pledges for no reward this time than any other campaign.
As far as marketing, I followed the advice of Charlie McCelvey, who has had years of Kickstarter success. He believes that other industries should be following the crowdfunding practices of comics since they are one of the most successful products on Kickstarter. My campaign would have to be as visually stimulating as possible.
Instead of copy/pasting my poems into the body of my campaign, I made screenshots of the book pages to be slightly better looking. I decided to get pull quotes because they’re more expected for non-comic books, and then designed graphics to make them pop.
The Result
After all of that, the book did fund, and I even got 4 backers who had never pledged to me before. I’m very grateful that this happened, and I think I became a stronger creator by running a campaign where I had to balance a realistic goal with artistic passion. It’s not defeatist at all to accept that some projects aren’t going to have mass appeal as long as one prepares appropriately and still boldly goes for it. It saved me what could have been a painful campaign.
GUTTER BUDS
Shout out to these campaigns by friends and colleagues!
Wrath Month - Stories of Queer Rage
Anger lies at the heart of queer liberation—Wrath can be a spur to action and the only righteous response to a world that would prefer we didn’t exist. And right now, we at Bona Books are fucking angry. So join the riot. Let's crash mainframes, collapse empires, and break normativity.
I was so happy to stumble on this campaign via BlueSky. I think it’s important to acknowledge our anger, and this anthology sounds like the perfect place to do it. It’s through channeling our rage that we find the fight to make a better world. This campaign is already well past its funding goal, so every cent is going toward making the book better and providing new opportunities for the publisher!
An 8-page ash can about a Hot Watermelon, a punk band defending their turf? Yes please!
From the host of the Long Box Punk podcast, Chris Stall, comes the start of a suit-bashing good time. Help out a new indie creator get their first comic made!
Islands in the Sky: A Comics Anthology From the Survivors of Hurricane Helene
When Hurricane Helene devastated Southern Appalachia in the fall of 2024, it left both our landscape and our communities forever changed. But in the aftermath, something remarkable emerged: stories of survival, solidarity, and strength.
Islands in the Sky brings those stories to life—pairing real survivors with award-winning comics creators like Brian Michael Bendis, Gene Luen Yang, Matt Fraction, Nate Powell, and more—to preserve what happened and help the region recover.
Comics for a good cause are always getting my support and this book should have yours as well:
