While anthologies from prominent creators and featuring equally prominent characters can be great, anthologies are also a great way to be exposed to new talent; pick up the right anthology, and you could find yourself with five or six new favorite creators to keep an eye on. The Kickstarter project “The Black Torch” is an anthology by a group of approximately twenty creators who you may or may not know, depending how close your ear is to the online comic-making community, all centered around a single idea that can easily be interpreted into a variety of themes. “The Black Torch” has only a couple of weeks to go and is nearing its goal of $12,000, so let’s give the book that extra push so LavaPunch’s artists can cover all the costs of the massive expense that is printing.
Many anthology series, especially from creators who are just starting out, are just collections of entirely unrelated stories slapped together in an effort to cut costs the creators would incur by printing their short stories individually — not that there’s anything wrong with that. However, it’s always nice when an anthology has some overarching theme, which makes it seem more like a complete whole and less like a batch of separate projects sharing the same cover. On the other hand, you don’t want to homogenize your collection; if the shared theme is too specific, you end up with an anthology from which you might only want the two or three very best stories, as each story offers more or less the same thing. LavaPunch has made a smart choice by having their stories’ common link be rather broad: the fixture in each story is the titular Black Torch, though it is up to each artist whether said torch is literally a black torch, or something else entirely. It’s a clever idea: while a simple term that can be interpreted a variety of ways, there are sure to be some thematic similarities that will pop up from story to story, creating a cohesive yet eclectic work.
I’ll admit that the only creator on LavaPunch’s list that I recognize is Lars Brown, creator of the Kickstarter success “Penultimate Quest.” However, their project page has a few small thumbnails and provides links to each artists’ webpage (sometimes professional, sometimes personal, sometimes both), where you can see the kind of artwork might be getting in this book. Checking out each page, one can see there’s a little bit for everyone — personally, I particularly enjoy the preview pages by Evon Freeman and Kadi Fedoruk, both of whom have very appealing styles, but every artist is very talented and brings something new to the group. If the goal of an anthology is to offer the reader a wide selection from which to pick from, LavaPunch is on the right track (which isn’t a surprise, seeing as they have produced three other anthologies so far).
Having printed before, Lavapunch has set their eyes on a reasonable goal of $12,000, understanding that they may need to make up some of the difference out of pocket. Hopefully, they won’t need to do that; after all, they have a really great “base incentive.” It only takes $10.00 to get the entire 200-or-more page collection in .pdf form, which is an outstanding price-to-page ratio. $25.00 gets you the actual physical copy, which is still a fair price for two hundred plus pages of comics. From there on, the double-digit incentives are rather typical — postcards, t-shirts, bookplates — but of note is one of the $60.00 incentives which nets you not just “The Black Torch,” but each of Lavapunch’s other anthologies. At $150.00 and above, you may commission a sketch from the various artists involved. Be advised that many artists are fully booked at this point, but many great choices still remain.
Sixteen days and less than $2,000.00 to go. I think we can help push this promising Kickstarter over the edge within that time. Don’t you?
