This week on Kickstarter Spotlight, I’m taking the reins for a week to highlight a Kickstarter effort that is both near its goal and near its end. Let’s take it the rest of the way shall we, as we highlight Joe Caramagna and Scott Koblish’s The Further Travels of Wyatt Earp. Support it soon!!
The Why: For me, the why on this book is simple: Joe Caramagna and Scott Koblish – like Wyatt Earp – are awesome. Both gifted and seemingly nice guys, it’s clear when checking out the Kickstarter page that this is a passion project of Caramagna. It’s all about Wyatt Earp (a person I am quite familiar with thanks to the rash of 90’s movies that featured him, namely the exceptionally awesome “Tombstone”) and what happened to him after everyone’s favorite stories of him ended. As Caramagna says on the Kickstarter page:
When most people today hear the name Wyatt Earp, they think of Hollywood and stars like Kevin Costner and Kurt Russell. But those movies end where our story begins, after the famous “Gunfight At The OK Corral,” for which he’s most famous. Did you know that after leaving Tombstone, Arizona, America’s most famous lawman roamed the American West for nearly fifty more years in search of his fortune and glory?
This story fills in the blanks over five full-color digital issues, with art through from Koblish (whose work you may recognize from Wolverine: First Class and World’s Finest). Koblish is a really gifted guy, and everything they show on the Kickstarter page shows an artist who is highly invested in the project, as well as pitch perfect fit. Bridging the passion of one creator with the sheer talent of the other is huge, and combining to tell a highly interesting and mostly untold story is one hell of an equation to get me onboard to supporting this project.
It’s a fairly non-traditional concept for a comic – westerns for the most part are not a heavily represented genre – but it’s assuredly going to be a good one. I mean, come on…the second issue is about Wyatt Earp’s time as a boxing referee. Plus, he goes to Alaska – my home – in it. I am most certainly this book’s huckleberry.
The Incentives: Because this book is a digital venture, there is one very obvious incentive involved: digital copies of this book. And the first couple levels focus around that. Contribute $5, you get a PDF of the first issue (with your name in the thank yous in the back). Contribute $10, you get the same plus issue #2 and a PDF of the script. When you get up to $28, that’s when the magic happens. Contributing $28 gets you a trade paperback of the first two issues (this will be the only way to get it in print), signed and numbered by Caramagna, plus those digital copies as well.
Those lower levels are very attractive, but if you struck it rich in some sort of old timey gold mining expedition, Caramagna offers some really exciting incentives for aspiring creators. If you reach a certain level, Caramagna (who, by day, is a letterer) will offer you an hour long lettering demonstration or letter your own creator-owned book. The highest level earns all of the prizes, plus you get drawn into this book as an outlaw. How great is that?
The answer is really great.
Get on supporting this book now – they have less than $1,000 to go and 3 days to do it. Support a good cause, and support good comics. Plus, get yourself some good comics at the same time. It’s a win win if I’ve ever heard of one.
