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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Last Ride of the 4 Horsemen is the tale of Cager Dobbin, a local hired gun, and his battle to survive and destroy the monstrous, Apocalyptic Horsemen who emerge, one by one from nowhere, to obliterate his town of Promise.
But why did the Horsemen target his town? Why did they hunt him and his circle to near annihilation? What unseen master unleashes them on the world? And what arcane power do they wield so destructively?
Over the 264 pages of story in these three volumes of Last Ride of the 4 Horsemen, Cager embarks on a quest to answer those harrowing questions and, in so doing, must overcome his old frenemy Wilbur Fairless - in many lethal forms - on his mission of vengeance against the celestial forces that ignited the Steampunk Apocalypse.
Five comics launched yesterday, August 19 — four of them 18+. That’s an 80% NSFW slate on a day that was otherwise thin.
$27,451 raised across those five comics from 508 backers.
NSFW titles made up 80% of yesterday’s comics by count — but only 20% of the dollars. One non-NSFW reprint (Kolchak) out-earned all four adult titles combined, nearly 4-to-1.
Two token-goal campaigns (Kolchak at a $172 goal, Lunar Smoke #10 at $100) finished the day at 12,770% and 4,134% funded, respectively.
Two more campaigns — NEREIDS and Dovewood — are still short of considerably smaller goals ($256 and $200) with single-digit backer counts.
Two non-comics campaigns also launched: a pinup/ad special and a comic convention, covered below in The View from the Gutter rather than in the rankings.
James Aquilone (Monstrous) · Horror anthology reprint, licensed Kolchak: The Night Stalker tie-in
Aquilone keeps coming back to Kolchak for a reason. This isn’t a straight reprint cash-grab — it’s the corrected version of a book that got rushed the first time around. The new EV Cantada cover (a Killing Joke homage), the bookend story that got cut from the original edition, and a new essay from Kolchak historian Mark Dawidziak on creator Jeff Rice make this the edition longtime Night Stalker readers have actually been asking for. Worth backing for the essay alone.
$21,964 raised / 412 backers / 12,770% funded
⚠️ IP note: Kolchak: The Night Stalker is a licensed property. This is an authorized anthology reissue from the book’s original editor, not a public-domain reprint — it’s back in print because the original run sold out and stayed out of print for years.
Night Phoenix Press · NSFW urban fantasy horror, ongoing Victor Locke Demon Hunter series
Night Phoenix Press has been building its “immersive universe for mature readers” since 2006, and Unification #2 continues the Victor Locke thread with the kind of character continuity that comes from 21 prior campaigns in the same shared universe. It’s also a useful case study in how NSFW publishers are navigating this year’s Kickstarter/Stripe crackdown — see The View from the Gutter below for what that actually looks like on the page. Adult content — 18+ only.
$1,028 raised / 24 backers / 68.5% funded
The clothed-cover economy. Kickstarter’s relationship with Stripe has been messy since May (and earlier at times), and yesterday’s slate is a tidy illustration of where things have settled. In mid-May, Kickstarter rolled out a stricter mature-content policy — reportedly at Stripe’s insistence — that banned not just explicit nudity but “implied nudity where the subject is wearing lingerie, fetish wear, or clothing that is see-through or very tight,” and, critically, barred creators from getting around it by blurring or censoring the image.
Comics creators pushed back hard enough that Kickstarter walked the specific language back within about a week, returning to its older, vaguer “no pornographic or illegal content” standard. But the underlying leverage never went away: Stripe enforces its own separate rules independent of Kickstarter’s terms of service, and can still flag or shut down a funded campaign mid-run.
Kickstarter’s current guidance to creators — published in its help center as “Navigating Stripe Mature Content Reviews” — is blunt about the one option that’s off the table: censored or obscured nudity still doesn’t count as compliant. If an image is suggestive enough to need blurring, it can’t go on the page, blurred or not.
That’s exactly the shape of what’s on offer this week. Night Phoenix Press’s Unification #2 page routes shoppers through a sidebar of cover categories — Nice, Naughty, Spicy, Sketch — where the public hero image is a clothed silhouette and the spicier art sits behind navigation clicks and reward tiers, not the main scroll. NEREIDS keeps its nereids in opaque bikinis on the campaign header despite billing itself, in its own subtitle, as “an EROTIC parody comic.” Lunar Smoke #10’s SHIKARRI Special cover is a fully-clothed cowgirl portrait. None of that means the finished books are tame — creators can still write and draw whatever they want for the actual reward — it just can’t be the thing a browsing visitor sees on Kickstarter’s dime.
The workaround publishers have landed on isn’t hiding that mature content exists; Kickstarter’s own guidance still allows NSFW/adult/explicit labels on tiers. It’s keeping the public-facing artwork just inside Stripe’s line and pricing everything spicier as an unseen reward.
Backers on any of yesterday’s adult titles should assume the campaign page undersells exactly how adult the finished book is.
Genre trends. For a thin day, the four NSFW titles covered real ground — sci-fi western (Lunar Smoke), urban fantasy horror (Unification #2), erotic mermaid fantasy (NEREIDS), and heist-drama shared universe (Dovewood). This wasn’t four variations on the same cheesecake anthology; it was four different genres that happen to share an age gate.
Goal-setting strategy. The day’s two biggest overfunders — Kolchak ($172 goal, 12,770% funded) and Lunar Smoke #10 ($100 goal, 4,134% funded) — both used the token-goal trick: set the ask absurdly low, let the “funded in minutes” badge do the marketing. Compare that to NEREIDS and Dovewood, which set realistic goals ($256 and $200) and are sitting at 68% and 75% funded with three and four backers, respectively, well into their runs. Same genre category, opposite goal philosophy, very different-looking campaign pages as a result.
Extraordinarily unusual. Yesterday’s non-NSFW comics pool — the group that actually populates the main Rankings chart below — consisted of exactly one campaign. Every other new comic on the slate carried an 18+ label. That’s not a rounding error in this report’s methodology; it’s the headline of the day.
1. LUNAR SMOKE #10 — SEXY, SPACE COWGIRL COMIC SHIKARRI SPECIAL — Submarine Playhouse Classics — $4,134 — 65 backers — Goal $100 — 4,134% funded — Avg pledge $63.60 — NSFW Sci-Fi Western — Funded ✓, 24 days to go
2. UNIFICATION #2: VICTOR LOCKE DEMON HUNTER NSFW ACTION HORROR (Comics I Like) — Night Phoenix Press — $1,028 — 24 backers — Goal $1,500 — 68.5% funded — Avg pledge $42.83 — NSFW Urban Fantasy Horror — Funding, 14 days to go
3. NEREIDS — AN EROTIC PARODY COMIC — Passion Series — $175 — 4 backers — Goal $256 — 68.4% funded — Avg pledge $43.75 — NSFW Erotic Fantasy — Funding, 29 days to go
4. DOVEWOOD — Lawrence Peterson — $150 — 3 backers — Goal $200 — 75% funded — Avg pledge $50.00 — NSFW Crime Drama (Shared Universe) — Funding, 29 days to go
Creator: Submarine Playhouse Classics (also publishing historically as Submarine Treehouse) · Location: New York, NY · Genre: NSFW Sci-Fi Western · Goal: $100 · Raised: $4,134 (4,134% funded) · Backers: 65 · Avg pledge: $63.60 · End date: September 13, 2026 · Pages: 24 · Paper: 100# gloss cover, 70# gloss interior · Prior campaign history: extensive — Lost Magic (multiple seasons), Elixir: The Last Days of Death, Ocean Smoke, three separate Martian Smoke campaigns, Angels vs. Demons, and Lunar Smoke #1 through #9, all run through the same Kickstarter account under both the Submarine Treehouse and Submarine Playhouse Classics names.
⚠️ The campaign lists “Expected Delivery: August 2026” while funding itself stays open through September 13, 2026 — meaning the stated delivery window has technically already passed before backing even closes. Most likely a stale template date rather than a real promise, but worth flagging.
Issue #10 of this long-running NSFW sci-fi western opens with the White Hood’s debut attack in Moon City, targeting Sarah Silvers — a werewolf hunter turned werewolf and former sidekick to space-cowgirl heroine Lunar Smoke. Lunar and her ally Rosy race to intervene, rattled less by the danger to Sarah than by the public panic a mystical threat like this could set off across Moon City. It’s a serialized continuation for readers already following the Shikarri arc rather than a jumping-on point, and the western-meets-space-opera-meets-monster-hunt premise still holds its footing ten issues in. Adult content — 18+ only.
Day-1 note: Overfunded more than 40x its token $100 goal on day one — a funding-goal strategy, not a proportionate demand signal — but 65 backers and a $63.60 average pledge is a real number for a niche NSFW western this deep into its run.
Cover and interior art at the Kickstarter page.
Creator: Passion Series (debut Kickstarter account) · Location: Lugo, Spain · Genre: NSFW Erotic Fantasy · Goal: $256 · Raised: $175 (68.4% funded) · Backers: 4 · Avg pledge: $43.75 · End date: September 18, 2026 · Pages: Issue #1 runs 40 pages · Prior campaign history: none — debut creator, no supplementary research performed per this project’s rules for first-time backers’ accounts.
An expedition crew reaches forbidden waters and encounters three nereids — mysterious, seductive sea-dwelling women who take an unusual interest in the newcomers — kicking off “a dangerous game of attraction, deception, and power.” The premise leans on mystery-thriller structure underneath its erotic-fantasy frame, promising the crew, and the reader, will eventually learn what the nereids are hiding beneath their kingdom. It’s a full-color debut from a new studio built explicitly around “bold, provocative comics that blend sensuality, drama, and intense relationships,” and the creators note the book is already 100% complete and print-ready — lower production risk than most day-one debuts carry. Adult content — 18+ only.
Day-1 note: A slow start — 4 backers and roughly two-thirds of a modest $256 goal — but a debut studio with a completed, print-ready book has less execution risk than the raw numbers suggest. 29 days left to close the gap.
Cover and interior art at the Kickstarter page.
Creator: Lawrence Peterson · Location: Clarksville, IN · Genre: NSFW Crime Drama (Shared Universe) · Goal: $200 · Raised: $150 (75% funded) · Backers: 3 · Avg pledge: $50.00 · End date: September 18, 2026 · Prior campaign history: Peterson’s creator profile shows 2 projects created and 0 backed; supplementary search turned up no identifiable prior campaign to check for fulfillment.
⚠️ Not tagged NSFW in the original submission list, but the campaign page itself is labeled “ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY... 18+” — flagged here accordingly, per the page’s own age gate.
Dovewood sets up a shared-universe anthology built around a fictional wealthy New England waterfront town where “wealth, power, ambition, romance, and danger exist just beneath the surface.” This launch entry, subtitled “A Heist Gone Wrong,” is billed as the first chapter of a growing, interconnected cast designed to cross over across future stories. It’s an ambitious structural pitch — a whole town-sized shared universe — from a creator with almost no Kickstarter track record yet, so treat the world-building promise as aspirational rather than proven. Adult content — 18+ only.
Day-1 note: Modest but real traction — 75% funded on $150 from 3 backers with 29 days still on the clock. The low-backer-count/near-goal combination is typical of a small, deliberately conservative opening goal from a debut-adjacent creator.
Cover and interior art at the Kickstarter page.
FANGERS PRESENTS: SWIMSUIT SPECIAL — William Tener · $17,002 raised / 327 backers · FUNDED ✓ · A variant-cover pinup gallery built around four fake ad pages and a cover-art showcase, with two short 4-page comic stories as backmatter rather than the main event.
B.A.C.E. (BLACK ATLANTA COMIC EXPO) — Greg Burnham · $1,206 raised / 11 backers · 24% funded · A two-day Black-creator-focused comic, cosplay, and fandom convention in Norcross, GA over Halloween weekend — an event, not a publication.
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