Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Andrew Clemson, Comics, entertainment, Jethro Morales, kickstarter, Star Bastard

Clemson And Morales Kickstart That Bastard

Published Sat, 21 Jan 2017 17:00:13 -0600

Andrew Clemson writes for Bleeding Cool:

"Kickstart that Bastard"

Star Bastard is a book that does exactly what it says on the tin. It features a big sweary space captain who drinks, punches and shoots his way across the galaxy alongside an equally dysfunctional crew of reprobates. If you like Red Dwarf, Guardians of the Galaxy, Firefly or a violent foul-mouthed mashup of all of the above, this book might be for you!

If I'm honest, the comic itself came about somewhat by accident. Id been writing scripts as long as Ive been reading comics. I never felt they were good enough to be published. Then in 2015, a good friend of mine passed away and I had one of those bucket list moments where I asked myself what I had wanted to achieve when we were younger. As a teenager I had the ubiquitous dream of working in comics, but I fell into animation at university, which in turn lead to working in the film industry.

I started out (as I believe most people do when they try to write their own comics), attempting to create my own watchmen or DKR. The little know secret of creating a masterpiece of that level is that it is f#@&ing HARD. So in (one of many) moments of writers block, I starting writing down a nonsensical script about an overly violent, foul mouthed crew flying through space blowing stuff up. Purely to blow out the mental cobwebs. No complicated setup, no origin, just straight into laser blasts and space armadas.

Surprisingly the scripts flew out one after another, and before I knew it I had 6 sat in front of me on the screen. Writing purely for fun rather than plot twists let me get pen to (virtual) paper so much faster.

I had a shortlist of artists, found through the usual places – deviant art, other indies, and of course the ever-present Facebook groups. Whilst trying to convince the best of them to work on my 100 issue magnum-Opus superhero saga, I thought what the hell, throw in the first script. If nothing else I can get some feedback to perhaps turn it into something usable…

Surprisingly they all immediately decided they wanted in on Star Bastard. Go figure. I suppose the point I'm trying to make here is that you don't know what you're sitting on. That comic, novel or script you've written that you just can't convince yourself is good enough to share with anyone? Show it to people! You never know what might happen. I even found a creative team off the back of Star Bastard to work on one of my earlier scripts. Issue 1 of "A Child of the Machine" is underway now, and should be making its way to Kickstarter sometime later this year.

I ended up lucking out on Star Bastard and getting to work with Jethro Morales, an artist who has worked on multiple big titles, such as Vampirella, Army of Darkness, Green Hornet and Deja Thoris for Dynamite. Colour duties are by Teo Gonzales (Executive assistant:Iris) and Lettering is by the bastion of indie comic book lettering HDe Smith. Lettering was not something I thought about until last, but I can hold my hand to heart and say that HDe has been an amazing font of knowledge, and has helped me no end. He's given me a whole new level of respect for letterers in the industry as a whole.

We self published the first issue, which sold out completely at various conventions. I then took to kickstarter to fund a second print run, which was 300% funded and helped to get the book out to a wider audience.

Now, the second kickstarter didn't make it. I fell victim to vanity and thought I would be so overfunded I would be able to start pushing mid 90s style chromium covers, but unfortunately the campaign fell short. Speaking to the backers, of issue 1 who I think I can be cheeky enough to call fans now, we reworked the pledges, went back to work on the book and came back with a slightly lower target.

The current campaign for issue 2 runs until the 8th of February, and this time we managed to hit 100% funding in the first 24 hours, but every penny helps us make the book as good as it can be and potentially get to work on issue 3.

We've got a bunch of Variants for folks who like that sort of thing, including a variant of issue 1 from Edwin Huang (of skullkickers fame) plus all the original Artwork is available at pretty reasonable prices. Alongside the original pages, Jethro has also volunteered a few personal commissions, so its a great chance for collectors to get a nice piece to hang on their wall.

To say thanks for the support we are also running a special limited tier for bleeding cool readers.

The rewards include a copy of a special bumper edition of issues 1 and 2, with an exclusive Bleeding cool Sketch variant cover, and exclusive bonus content such as a cover gallery and script to page breakdowns. As an added bonus, I will sketch any character you like on the rear of the book with all the artistic skill one might expect from a writer!

If people would like to get a preview of whats happened already, issue 1 is available in digital and print form as a reward in the issue 2 campaign or you can buy a digital copy direct from https://gumroad.com/l/srHix for $0.99!

In case you need a little more encouragement, here's a little preview of the opening to issue 1: