Rocket Bomber - article - linking to other people's stuff - comics - This is not an invitation for everyone to start sending me unsolicited PR about Kickstarter projects

So let’s start with the links, shall we?

Hana Doki Kira, a shojo comic and illustration anthology Kickstarter project
http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/1191994790/hana-doki-kira/

From their pitch:
“An original art anthology in homage to Shōjo, showcasing a diverse group of over twenty artists!

“Hana Doki Kira is a collection of comics and drawings from a fantastic group of artists all inspired by Shōjo – a sub-genre of comics that for many of us were among the first illustrated stories we fell in love with. We asked over twenty artists with diverse skills and styles to consider what Shōjo personally means to them, and to create art based on their interpretations.”

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Hana Doki Kira will be a 120 page ‘limited edition’ book (another way to say, ‘small print run’), “filled to the brim with lovely illustrations and comics from our participating artists. Our goal is to print the book and compensate our contributing artists for their hard work!”

also: “107 pages of illustrations and comics!”
with 23 artists, that’s 4 pages each?

Obviously some submissions might be longer, and of course advertising “illustrations” as part of the work means we’ll be getting some splash-page-type single page contributions, leaving more room for the rest. And of course a decent little story could be packed into just 8 or 12 pages, but I still feel that this is going to be much more of a sampler: Heavy on the Art Book, rather light on “shojo” comics.

I’m being prejudicial, and also being unfair. But I am still skeptical.

I personally am not backing the project.

With all that said,

I don’t think my bias should stop you (or anyone else) from backing this particular project:

• if you feel like any effort along these lines should be supported, just to help these particular artists a bit and perhaps encourage others to experiment with print projects.
• if you think $5 isn’t that bad price a for a PDF copy of a book like this.
• if you are much more optimistic about the contents than I am.
• if you are interested in seeing this American/Tumblr take on Shōjo (of course there is a tumblr).
• if you just want to pile on:

The project is 90% funded with 3 weeks to go, so it looks like it should fund anyway.

I’m just being old and crotchety — but don’t let me and my grumpy-blogger act get in the way: Please visit the links, judge for yourself, and see if this is a project you’d like to get behind. I certainly support the idea of “roll your own”, minis, zines, and “authors doing it for themselves” comics in theory, but this project didn’t grab me. Your mileage may vary.