In April 2016 I ran my first Kickstarter, for a print collection of Irregular Webcomic! Fantasy comics. This Kickstarter funded successfully, and several hundred backers had their copies of the book delivered in time for Christmas last year! I also had a few extra copies printed, and you can buy them right now from TopatoCo, here.

Here is a post-mortem analysis of the financials of running this Kickstarter campaign, for general edification and posterity. All amounts are in Australian dollars (AUD) unless indicated (converted from US dollars at the exchange rate on the date of transaction, if applicable).

First, the good news! Here’s how much income I made from the Kickstarter! Wowee!

Now some mildly bad news: Here are the expenses I incurred in putting the book together, advertising the Kickstarter, mailing out original artwork as rewards for higher tier backers, and other miscellaneous things.

Read more: analysis of expenses and grand total profit/loss

Oh my. How had I not heard of Monster of the Week before?!? A webcomic rendition of every episode of The X-Files? And it’s by Shaenon Garrity!! So you know (1) it’ll be good and (2) this isn’t a project that the writer will quit after a dozen strips.

Sign me up!

This is the main cast of the webcomic Lightning Made of Owls, which I run. It’s different from normal webcomics in that I don’t make (most of) the comics. Instead, readers contribute them. Since 2008, collectively all of the contributors have managed to produce over 450 strips.

The concept is fairly simple. If anyone has an idea for a comic, they can draw it up and send it in. “Draw” can be interpreted loosely. The art can be made in any way that tickles the contributor’s fancy. Most are drawn, either by hand and then scanned, or on a computer. Several people have illustrated their comics with photo art. You can also use clip art, or re-use art from previously submitted comics.

Comics are submitted and published under a Creative Commons licence, so all of the art of previous comics is available for remixing and turning into new submissions. Another rule is that comics are approximately PG-rated. No words or images you wouldn’t want a 12-year-old exposed to.

The only other condition on submissions is that they use one or more of the characters from the main cast list. Each of the six primary characters has several distinctive, defining characteristics:

Holly wears big round glasses. You can see her green eyes through them, and she has messy, wavy, auburn hair of medium length. Her colour is green, which she tends to wear a lot, mixing it with floral or other plant-related prints. She’s young, bright, vivacious, and cheerful.

Delkin has long, unkempt black hair. Sometimes he wears it in dreadlocks. Sometimes it covers his eyes. The funny thing is, even when his hair isn’t in his eyes, something else covers them up – dark glasses, goggles, a mask. You never see his eyes. He wears purple and likes diamond check patterns. He’s a bit of a geek, and a joker, always poking fun and seeing the funny side.

Meridien is the mother figure. She is spiritual and mystical and caring. She has long blonde hair and hazel eyes. Her colour is yellow, and her patterns tend to be stars, planets, or mystical symbols. She always wears an accessory made of cloth – be it a scarf, a bow, a scrunchie, a ribbon.

Oliver is bald and has brown eyes. He is strong and noble, which leads him to careers like law enforcement, charity work, or being a superhero. Which is probably why he sports an obvious L-shaped scar, somewhere in his face. He tends to dress in orange and eschews patterns for solid colours.

Samantha is a firebrand. She lives fast and parties hard; she likes being the centre of attention and has a strong will and ambition. She wears red, matching her short, neat hair, and likes stripes (because everyone knows red stripes make stuff go faster). She also loves earrings, and is never seen without a large pair. Her eyes are grey.

Ambrose is the old man of the group. He wears patched clothing, predominantly blue in colour. He has grey hair, bright blue eyes, and a bushy moustache. He’s bright, but eccentric and unpredictable.

These characters form a sort of Commedia dell’Arte, or in more modern terms, a universal adaptor cast. They change jobs frequently. They change species. Sometimes they’re not even living creatures. They also exist in all time periods, from prehistory to the far future, and all places, from downtown Earth to the far corners of the universe. They’ve been microbes, and dinosaurs.

As an example, here are just a few of the ways in which contributors have portrayed Holly.

Now why am I writing all of this, in such detail? Because, my friends, even though we’ve managed to publish 460+ comic strips in this project, the contributions are starting to thin out. I’d very much like to keep it going for as long as possible, and to do so I need to rustle up some more contributors.

So, if you have ever wanted to make a webcomic, but haven’t been able to find the time or energy or web skills to do so, here’s your chance. We have ready-made characters for you to use. All you need to do is come up with a single comic strip, make it, and send it in (my e-mail address is at the bottom of the Lightning Made of Owls home page). There are no ongoing commitments or update deadlines that you need to keep. You can send in one strip, or a dozen. Or become a regular contributor. If you have even an inkling of a desire to make a funny piece of artwork, please give it a go.

And what would also be cool: If any of you reading this are actually established webcomic artists – how about making a guest comic for Lightning Made of Owls? It’ll be a nice change of pace for you, and it’ll give you a chance to plug your own comic. I’m happy to include links to your other work. I’d love to hear from you.

Being creative is fun, but I know it’s hard work. Contribute a comic – be creative for just a day, for fun. See how you like it. Thank you.

An Android app developer is using Darths & Droids, plus the work of many other webcomic creators, without permission or even prior knowledge, and making money off it with advertising. I’ve contacted the developer and asked him to remove Darths & Droids from the app. You may want to spread the word to other webcomic communities.

So I’m finally reading The Order of the Stick. I know, I know… I really should have read it ages ago, and be totally up to date, and read each new strip as it comes out. In fact I’ve been meaning to read it for ages, but could never get over the archive panic it stirred in me each time I tried to start on it. So I never got further than about half a dozen strips into it.

Until recently when I linked two things which I really always knew but had for some reason never put into close proximity with one another: (1) the comic is available in collected book form, and (2) I have enough disposable income to afford the books. So I ordered every book I could – which unfortunately excludes the currently out-of-print Book 3: War and XPs. Nonetheless, the remainder of the collection arrived last week and I’ve been devouring them as bedtime reading. I’ve just finished Book 2, and will now read the prequels (Book 0 and Book -1) before resorting to the online format to work my way through the strips of the missing Book 3. (I’ll buy Book 3 as soon as it comes back into print – in case Rich Burlew needs any more justification for another print run.)

So let me say, it’s much easier to digest a webcomic with an ongoing plot and text-heavy strips and a 500+ strip archive when it’s presented in a book than it is to click through it online. At least for me, anyway.

No doubt many of you are avid followers of The Order of the Stick already. You know how good it is, so I don’t need to go into that. Despite not having read it until just this last week, I had absorbed enough of the opinion and general aura around it to know that it must be good, so I knew I wasn’t plunking down good money for something I’d regret later. Deep down I already knew this was a good webcomic, and I still couldn’t get over the entry barrier of that archive of a few hundred strips until I could get my hands on them in book format. Which naturally makes me think about things.

Tacking to port slightly, the books come with introductions written by Rich Burlew, both at the beginning of the book, and before each chapter of action. Unfortunately for people like me, as I discovered, these introductions are written based on the assumption that you have already read the strips that they are introducing. They actually give away plot elements in the upcoming chapter, and in some cases for several chapters in advance. And I’m pretty sure one of them gave away something that is in a future book that I haven’t read yet. So I’ve taken to ignoring the introductions entirely for now.

Which is a shame, because Rich has very interesting things to say about the creative process and the planning that goes into his comics. Being a comic creator myself, it gives me a good indication that this guy really knows what he’s doing – he’s not just throwing stuff together every week with no forethought. And I can understand the tiny detailed things that he must be thinking for every strip that he puts together – things that most readers will never consciously notice, but which add to the immersiveness and quality of his work.

I just wish that this stuff could have been written without referring to events in the comic that haven’t occurred yet, from the perspective of a first-time reader. Sure, most people reading the books will have already read everything online – but not all of them. I think some thought needs to be given to constructing the books in a way that doesn’t spoil things for new readers. It’s a minor annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless.

But overall, I’m very impressed by what I’ve read so far. What obviously began as a gag-a-day comic strip evolved very quickly into something with clear plans for a grand plot. It’s easy to see why Rich Burlew has grown such a large fan base. +1.