The mission of The Comics Crowd is to curate the crowdfunding campaigns in the Kickstarter Comics category in order to identify and spotlight those projects most likely to yield actual comics and to yield the most high quality comics in terms of story, design, and cover/interior artwork.
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Featuring SEVEN classic H. P. Lovecraft first-person short stories reimagined as tales of a retrofuturistic spacefarer encountering and enduring the very monstrosities conjured by Lovecraft’s own tortured mind, but in the environs and technologies of deep space and adapted to the artform of comics.
8 campaigns crossed our desk for August 10 — 6 comics, 1 non-comics (an enamel pin reissue), and 1 excluded on suspicion of being an AI-generated listing.
$35,890 raised across yesterday’s six comics from 722 backers, for a blended average pledge of $49.71.
NSFW titles accounted for $31,973 of that — 89% of the day’s total comics dollars from just 2 of 6 books.
GRIPS #4 topped everyone, comics or not, at 449.5% funded on day one.
The Phantom Beat (today’s Comics I Like pick) posted the day’s lowest percentage, at 10.1% funded.
Keith Gaston (Romulus, MI) · supernatural detective noir
Gaston is a novelist with nearly 20 books under his belt making his comics debut, and it shows in the pitch: a hardboiled detective is murdered mid-case and wakes up in the “Afterlife Precinct,” a purgatorial squad room where death doesn’t clear your caseload, it just changes what you’re hunting. The black-and-white noir art (cover by Rully Akbar, colors by Godstime Austine) leans hard into pulp-detective shadow work, and the premise — ghosts working ghost cases — has more hook than its funding numbers suggest. Worth a look before the rest of the day’s slate buries it.
$152 raised / 6 backers / 10.1% funded
It was a thin day — six comics total — which makes the genre split unusually clean to read. Every campaign that actually moved money yesterday had one of two things going for it: an established, adult-content audience, or a franchise backers already knew. Every campaign without one of those two things stalled.
The NSFW bracket (Fairy Tale Wars #1 and The Naked Truth #1) pulled in $31,973 combined — more than eight times the $3,917 raised by all four non-NSFW comics put together, Comics I Like included. Both NSFW books were funded or within 11% of their goal by the end of day one; neither non-NSFW debut cracked 15%.
The other genre that outperformed wasn’t really a genre — it was legacy IP. GRIPS #4 isn’t a new comic; it’s a remastered 1986 cult book (originally Kris Silver’s Silverwolf Comics, with early art from Tim Vigil) that Everette Hartsoe’s Razorverse acquired and is now re-releasing in serialized, colorized chunks. It funded at 449.5% on a goal ($699) sized to be cleared in hours. Compare that to Star Cross United #3, a genuinely original creator-owned superhero anthology with two decades of continuity behind it, which needed a $400 goal to hit 78.25% — solid, but a fraction of GRIPS’ dollar total on a similarly modest ask.
The two books without either advantage — PROVIL: Book 2! (an LGBT+ action-romance webcomic sequel) and The Phantom Beat (a debut supernatural noir) — came in at 14.1% and 10.1% respectively. Both are creatively distinct, neither is derivative, and both are the day’s laggards. Draw your own conclusions about what that says about where Kickstarter comics money is actually going in 2026.
One goal-setting pattern worth flagging across genres: the two best-performing non-NSFW books (GRIPS #4 at $699, Star Cross United #3 at $400) both set goals small enough to clear almost by accident. That’s not a genre trend, it’s a strategy trend — and on a thin day, it’s doing a lot of the work that “% funded” headlines get credit for.
Non-NSFW
GRIPS #4 — HouseofHartsoe (Everette Hartsoe) — $3,142 — 57 backers — Goal $699 — 449.5% funded — Avg pledge $55.12 — Archival/legacy revival — Funded
Star Cross United #3 — joe spicer — $313 — 10 backers — Goal $400 — 78.25% funded — Avg pledge $31.30 — Superhero anthology — Live
PROVIL: Book 2! — El Dettmann — $310 — 9 backers — Goal $2,200 — 14.1% funded — Avg pledge $34.44 — Webcomic action-romance — Live
The Phantom Beat (Comics I Like) — Keith Gaston — $152 — 6 backers — Goal $1,500 — 10.1% funded — Avg pledge $25.33 — Supernatural detective noir — Live
NSFW
FAIRY TALE WARS #1: EverAfterVerse Mature Sapphic CROSSOVER 🔞 — Kat Calamia & Phil Falco (Lifeline Comics) — $28,568 — 550 backers — Goal $32,000 — 89.3% funded — Avg pledge $51.94 — Dark fairytale crossover — Live
The Naked Truth #1 🔞 — New Pain Productions (Keith Champagne) — $3,405 — 90 backers — Goal $2,500 — 136.2% funded — Avg pledge $37.83 — NSFW superheroine action — Funded
Geeky Sparkles RETRO HALLOWEEN REVENGE Glowing Enamel Pins! — Nydaria Entertainment · $2,354 raised / 49 backers · 67.3% funded · A reissue of last year’s sold-out glow-in-the-dark Halloween enamel pin set, plus one new vampire-themed pin design.
Creator: HouseofHartsoe (Everette Hartsoe) · Location: Las Vegas, NV · Genre: Archival reprint / dark indie action · Goal: $699 · Raised: $3,142 (449.5%) · Backers: 57 · Avg pledge: $55.12 · Ends: Mon, Aug 24, 2026 · Pages: not specified in submitted materials · Lowest digital tier: $7 (GRIPS #4 – Digital) · Lowest print tier: not shown in submitted materials · Prior campaign history: Third re-release in a serialized remaster rollout — GRIPS #1 (Dec 2025), #2 (Jan 2026), and #3 (May 2026, $3,215 raised against a $999 goal, 62 backers) all funded successfully.
⚠ IP note: GRIPS is not a new work — it’s a colorized remaster of a 1986 black-and-white indie series originally published by Kris Silver’s Silverwolf Comics (later Greater Mercury Comics), with early art by Tim Vigil. Everette Hartsoe’s Razorverse acquired the property and is folding it into his existing dark-anti-hero universe alongside Razor.
GRIPS follows a comic illustrator turned vigilante in a raw, violent narrative that helped define the black-and-white indie boom of the mid-1980s. Hartsoe’s Razorverse is reintroducing the series in a multi-phase rollout that preserves the original’s grit while folding it into his own mythology, with talk of new storylines and cross-media plans down the line. Issue #4 continues that rollout with the same creative team credited on the colorization.
Day-1 note: $3,142 from 57 backers on a $699 goal is the most lopsided funding-to-goal ratio of the day by a wide margin — the campaign was mathematically funded within hours. Average pledge ($55.12) is also the highest of any non-NSFW book, suggesting a collector base buying premium/bundle tiers rather than single issues.
Cover and interior art at the Kickstarter page.
Creator: joe spicer (Star Cross Comics) · Location: Milwaukee, WI · Genre: Faith-based superhero anthology · Goal: $400 · Raised: $313 (78.25%) · Backers: 10 · Avg pledge: $31.30 · Ends: Wed, Sep 9, 2026 · Pages: not specified in submitted materials · Lowest digital tier: $5 (Digital Edition) · Lowest print tier: not shown in submitted materials · Prior campaign history: Spicer has run Star Cross Comics for over 20 years, including prior Star Cross United volumes, the Star Cross 2022 Spring Bundle, and Star Cross Team-Up campaigns; industry bios credit him with multiple fully delivered Kickstarter campaigns.
Star Cross United #3 is a five-story anthology drawing on Spicer’s Star Cross Universe, a creator-owned shared world blending superheroes, biblical fantasy, and science fiction that he’s built over two decades. Each of the five stories features its own cast while contributing to the larger continuity, positioned explicitly as a jumping-on point for new readers. It’s a serialized, faith-inflected spin on the classic team-up anthology format.
Day-1 note: 78.25% funded on a deliberately modest $400 goal — the campaign will almost certainly clear before its September 9 deadline, and stretch-goal territory is the more interesting number to watch from here.
Cover and interior art at the Kickstarter page.
Creator: El Dettmann · Location: Los Angeles, CA · Genre: LGBT+ action-romance webcomic · Goal: $2,200 · Raised: $310 (14.1%) · Backers: 9 · Avg pledge: $34.44 · Ends: Wed, Sep 9, 2026 · Pages: not specified in submitted materials · Lowest digital tier: $5 (Digital PROVIL: Book 2!) · Lowest print tier: not shown in submitted materials · Prior campaign history: PROVIL: Book 1! funded in October 2025 at $3,518 against a $2,500 goal (73 backers) and appears to have delivered — the printed edition is now sold direct via Dettmann’s Etsy shop.
PROVIL is Dettmann’s action-romance webcomic, running since 2020, about Pro, an eager new hero, and his nemesis-turned-love-interest Vil, one of the city’s most powerful villains. Book 2 collects chapters 4–7, in which the pair try to balance the weight of their heroic and villainous responsibilities against their growing relationship. The series is built around two non-binary leads and has an established, if niche, webcomic readership behind it.
Day-1 note: 14.1% funded with 9 backers is a slow but not alarming start for a sequel campaign — Book 1 also opened modestly before closing at 141% of goal, so a similar late push wouldn’t be a surprise.
Cover and interior art at the Kickstarter page.
Creator: Kat Calamia & Phil Falco (Lifeline Comics) · Location: New York, NY · Genre: Mature/NSFW dark fairytale crossover · Goal: $32,000 · Raised: $28,568 (89.3%) · Backers: 550 · Avg pledge: $51.94 · Ends: Thu, Sep 10, 2026 · Pages: 32 · Lowest digital tier: $1 (Indie Comic Book Bundle, digital, includes 3 comics) · Lowest print tier: not shown in submitted materials · Prior campaign history: Extensive and strong — The Beast & Snow launched April 2024 at $80,736 against a $30,000 goal (1,774 backers), and Witches of Oz closed in May 2026 at $25,669 against a $7,500 goal (575 backers, 342% funded). Calamia and Falco have built the EverAfterVerse across a dozen-plus prior campaigns and a 60,000-subscriber Webtoon readership.
Fairy Tale Wars #1 is a 32-page, new-reader-friendly crossover event uniting three of Lifeline Comics’ EverAfterVerse series for the first time: The Beast & Snow (vampire Snow White and werewolf Belle), Nightmare in Wonderland (exes-turned-lovers Sleeping Beauty and Assassin Alice), and The Witches of Oz (Glinda and the Wicked Witch, newly coupled). The book is a Kickstarter “Project We Love” pick and forces the EverAfterVerse’s princesses to join forces against a shared threat, the Evil Queen, in what’s billed as a “Big Two”-style event issue. Adult content — 18+ only.
Day-1 note: $28,568 from 550 backers puts this within striking distance of its $32,000 goal after one day — the single highest-dollar campaign of the day by a wide margin, on pace to fund well before its 30-day window closes.
Cover and interior art at the Kickstarter page.
Creator: New Pain Productions (Keith Champagne) · Location: Hartford, CT · Genre: NSFW superheroine action · Goal: $2,500 · Raised: $3,405 (136.2%) · Backers: 90 · Avg pledge: $37.83 · Ends: Thu, Sep 3, 2026 · Pages: 44 (the campaign’s own body text describes it in one spot as a “40-page adventure” — pagination isn’t fully consistent across the listing) · Lowest digital tier: $10 (The Naked Truth #1, digital) · Lowest print tier: not shown in submitted materials · Prior campaign history: New Pain Productions (Eisner/Ringo/Inkwell-nominated creator Keith Champagne) has run numerous prior campaigns — Daybreak! #1, #1–3, and #1–4, Microscopic, The Switch, and Electricia #1 among them — with no fulfillment complaints surfacing in available research.
The Naked Truth #1 introduces Ruth Tandy, whose superpowers only activate once she removes her clothes — a premise the campaign leans into unapologetically as “Naked Cash Grab.” In her debut adventure, she’s lured into what looks like a routine bank robbery that turns out to be a trap. The book plays its central gimmick for both comedy and cheesecake, in the tradition of NSFW superhero parody titles on the platform. Adult content — 18+ only.
Day-1 note: 136.2% funded with 90 backers on day one — already comfortably over goal, with the highest backer count of any non-crossover book on the slate.
Cover and interior art at the Kickstarter page.
BloodBlade: DragonBlood — excluded on suspicion of being an AI-generated or low-effort automated listing: no art beyond a single hero image, dense unbroken text blocks, a $7,400 goal on a pre-order campaign with almost no story specifics, and a first-time creator account with zero prior backing. Funding figures ($115 raised, 1 backer, $7,400 goal) are confirmed via screencap, but the campaign’s underlying legitimacy could not be verified.
Kickstarter link for readers who want to investigate independently.
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