Alice of Spades Live on Kickstarter!!!

We’re so happy to finally share this project with you!

I wanted to take the time to tell you all, as some of you have backed previous projects of ours over the years, how much of a big deal this is for us.

In 2015 our little book launched on Indiegogo. It was the culmination of a tremendous amount of work: years of rewrites, multiple artistic visions, and some very unlucky printing mishaps (apparently pages need to be printed in order? - who knew?) We weren’t big or even small names in indie comics at that point. But a lot of you saw potential in this series and backed the first issue of the Saga of the Jack of Spades. It was not an unsuccessful campaign. We didn’t meet our funding goal, but what we did raise went into printing (and reprinting) the first issue, delivering rewards to backers, and setting up the next instalment.

Five issues later we were picked up by Renegade Arts Entertainment and the trade paperback of the first five issues was released in late 2019 with plans to tour the book around in 2020 (I think you see where I’m going with this).

Conventions were cancelled. Touring was out of the question. Like a lot of people, we did the right thing and stayed home. But Jack’s journey wasn’t finished. We desperately wanted to find a way to continue this story and we somehow found an opportunity to produce a sequel. A sequel with a twist. It was always our intention to bring Alice into the fray and I think you can see the groundwork for that in the very first issue.

Unlike the first campaign, Alice of Spades is a stand-alone, 100+ page graphic novel. The first half of this book has already been completed. We’re waiting on final art and lettering, but we’re expecting the book to be completed by late Fall 2022. The Kickstarter is set to run for 30 days. It’s all or nothing, meaning that if we don’t meet our funding goal, that’s it. We don’t take a percentage of the raised funds. No one’s card is charged. The campaign ends.

We’ve set a very modest goal of $3500 (what we were able to raise previously in our Indiegogo campaign) to cover printing and shipping costs as well as creating, printing, and shipping the various rewards we’ve produced specifically for this campaign.

Even though some conventions have started to open their doors and return to business as usual, we’ve made the decision not to appear in large gatherings for the time being. Which makes this extremely hard to market, especially since comic conventions are where we make 95% of our sales.

I guess what we’re asking is: if you’ve backed our book previously, picked it up at comic conventions, your local comic book store, or heck even on amazon, please also consider backing our Kickstarter. We’re incredibly proud of how this book is turning out and we’d love to continue playing around in this universe.

If you decide to back our campaign, please also share with your friends and family, recommend us to your co-workers, suggest us to your LCS, review our previous books on Amazon, Goodreads, etc. We don’t have fancy marketing teams or the resources to bring this series the attention it deserves, so small-time indie creators like us truly rely on people who are passionate about these stories and want to see more of them on their bookshelves.

What happens after we launch?

Well, you’re going to get sick of hearing about us over the next 30 days. It’s gruelling work promoting a crowdfunding campaign and your various social media feeds are going to be inundated with funding updates, stretch goals (hopefully), and calls to like/share and back. The algorithms hate these types of online campaigns, so reaching new backers is near impossible. This is why we continue to need your support in getting the word out. If we surpass our funding goals, we have plans for some really amazing additional content to be included in the final product. If enough people back this book and we meet our stretch goals, everyone benefits.

The Rewards

To sum up: back the book, back early, tell your friends/family to back and we can continue making fun stories.

Sincerely,

The JOS Team