Kickstart My Starship
My Gourmand Go Kickstarter is ready for blast-off, so strap into your gravity mesh. We're boldly going for some fine dining.
Today is the big day. The Kickstarter for my new sci fi/horror/comedy graphic novel Gourmand Go is now live and now I’m going to tell you all about it. Strap into your gravity mesh and spit out that feeding tube, because we’re boldly going, and the cuisine is tasty.
What’s it about?
The Gourmand Go is a tramp freighter that travels the galaxy on a mission to seek out new life--and eat it. But when times are lean the officers are not above eating more… human… cuisine.
From shopping mall food courts to the heart of a gas giant, from reality cooking shows to the table of a planetary warlord, the crew of the Gourmand Go will face any challenge with a thirst for adventure and a taste for the finer things.
Gourmand Go is a 64 page graphic novella (56 pages of story), in full colour. There are seven chapters, all written by me, with art by seven different artists: co-creator Harry Purnell, Laura Renfrew, Gavin Thomson, Matt Kyme, Cristian Roux, Aly Faye, and Ben Michael Byrne. All chapters are coloured by Graeme Jackson.
This book has weird aliens, a cue robot dog, space battles, reality TV, and… it even has an XMas episode. If that sounds good already you can hit that campaign page right now:
Where did this come from?
There’s a famous Golden Age science fiction story, written by Damon Knight, called “To Serve Man” . You’ve probably seen the Twilight Zone adaptation of it, or maybe the Simpsons Halloween parody. In the story, aliens with weird foreheads come to Earth professing a desire To Serve Man. Turns out, they mean to serve us on the dinner table.
“To Serve Man” got me to thinking: what if that was us, cruising the galaxy, looking for aliens to eat? And what it I wrote it as a serial space opera?
I wrote the script for chapter 1 in 2005, and I knew I was onto something. I went in aiming to do a short story, but the crew (who didn’t even have names in the first draft) quickly developed personalities. Personalities that demanded more page space.
I was just at the start of my career as a comics writer and I had real trouble finding an artist for what I had written, but I already knew I wanted to write more.
Finding Hazz
I found Harry Purnell, my co-creator, on the old Pulp Faction forum. Pulp Faction was the central online space for Australian comics in those days. I put out a call for artists who wanted to draw horror stories for my Kagemono anthologies and Hazz put up his hand. I was blown away with his samples and was ready to give him something immediately, but he felt he wasn’t ready, and wanted to go to the woodshed for a bit and hone his skills.
A year later Harry came back to me, and his work had gone from brilliant to incredible. He drew the first chapter, Memorial Soup, and I published it in black and white in the final Kagemono volume, Flowers and Skulls.
Engine trouble
Harry and I both wanted to do more with the story. Digital Webbing published it in colour, and I planned out a series of new stories. By then I had sold my first graphic novel, The Sixsmiths, and I was hoping Gourmand go would be a good followup, but my publisher had run into some financial trouble and wasn’t much interested in a space opera book.
Crash landing
With the end of Kagemono, some friends pushed me to edit a newsstand comics magazine full of serial and stand-alone shorts in the vein of 2000AD or Heavy Metal. We brainstormed up Terra magazine, and I decided that Gourmand Go would be one of the flagship features. I planned a slew of new chapters and it felt like a slam dunk. But a couple of years years had past, and Harry was no longer available to draw more stories. I decided I would find a new artist for every instalment.
The first one I found was Gavin The Thomson, the artist of what is now chapter 3, “Purple Haze”. Gavin had a fluid, lanky style that I really enjoy, I was pretty thrilled with the result. He developed an digital grey-tone look for his story and I had his piece teed up for the second issue of Terra when the project came crashing down.
After printing the first issue of Terra Magazine (with a Gourmand Go alien on the cover), our publisher had a falling out with the newsstand distributor and now we had no way to get the book in stores. Although I had most of issue #2 ready to go, we had to pull the plug on the project.
But I still wanted to do these Gourmand stories—and I decided I wanted them in colour. Which brings us to today.
Over the years since Terra Magazine vanished, I have recruited more artists, as well as a colourist and a book designer. I think we have put together what I think is a feast that you’ll enjoy if you like Galaxy Quest, Army of Darkness, or 2000AD/Judge Dredd. It’s weird, it’s funny, it’s gross, and the satire is pitch black. Best of all, it’s complete and ready to be served.
That’s where you come in, my hungry children dear readers.
Kickstart my starship
I was trepidatious about running a Kickstarter. I sat on this completed book all through the Covid lockdowns trying to decide what to do with it. But I have come to believe that crowdfunding is the best way to get the book out to the biggest number of people.
The economics of comics has changed a lot since I was self-publishing the Kagemono series. Print and shipping prices have skyrocketed. Comics distribution—always a chancy proposition for a small player—has over the last 18 months fragmented from a monopoly into… chaos… and looks almost impossible to navigate at present. Meanwhile, the proliferation of digital marketplaces we had in the 2010s has collapsed, leaving only ComiXology—which has now been folded into the Kindle store. It’s almost impossible to make an impact in the Kindle store with indie comics.
Crowdfunding is the place to be for this kind of work. It’s a vibrant community of people who are interested in discovering new work, especially stuff that is, ah, a bit left-of-field. It’s forced me to get wise to the promotion and marketing side of things, which is important. Because let’s face it—right across publishing these resources are funneled mostly to the top end of the business. Promotion and marketing falls to creators now.
And… well, now many big publishers and creators have turned to it. Neil Gaiman and the Terry Pratchett estate crowdfunded a graphic novel version of Good Omens, a huge property that is currently an immensely popular TV show. If that doesn’t legitimize crowdfunding as a publishing platform, I don’t know what does.
So that’s why we’re on Kickstarter. Because I think this is a good book, and my team worked damn hard on it, and I firmly believe that this is the best way to get it in front of people.
Make it so
Alright, space cadet, now it’s in your court. If any of this sounds good to you, please check out the campaign and support us if anything looks good to you. In addition to Gourmand Go, this is a good opportunity to pick up some of my backlist books and comics, if you browse deeper into the rewards and add-ons.
Regardless, I would very much appreciate it if you would share the link around, like this post, and generally help win the favour of the algorithm gods.
Next time: the Kickstarter Diaries! More about the art team! A look at some of the rewards! The Ghost Who Walks! And… I’m going on holiday…
Live wrong and prosper,
— Jason Franks