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Gail Simone Jumps On Board The Bingo Love Bandwagon As Tee Franklin Wins The Prism Comics Queer Press Grant

Published Mon, 10 Apr 2017 12:00:20 -0500

Last updated Mon, 10 Apr 2017 12:19:33 -0500

Last week at WonderCon, the recipient of the 2017 Prism Comics Queer Press Grant was announced at the Queers, Comics & Social Justice panel by its chair Elizabeth Beier, to Tee Franklin for writing the upcoming Bingo Love, currently being crowdsourced on Kickstarter. Franklin was named by Bleeding Cool as one of the hottest writers in comics last month.

And clearly other people want some of that heat. The Kickstarter campaign for Bingo Love, by Franklin, Jenn St. Onge and Joy San was fully funded in five days, and now with less than a week to go, has told backers that if they reach $60k in funding then digital and physical backers will receive a short story, set in the Bingo Love world, written by Gail Simone.

"You'd be hardpressed to find any Disabled Black Queer women making comics. This is the reason why I wanted to tell a story like Bingo Love," says Tee Franklin. Bingo Love is an 80-page, full-color graphic novella telling the story of Hazel and Mari, who meet and fall in love as teenagers, separate and lives as wives and mothers, and then find their ways back to each other fifty years later — rekindling a romance that began in a church bingo hall in 1963.

"It is not exaggeration to say this [Bingo Love] is absolutely going to be a smash," said Simone. "It's one of the best comics of the year. I ADORE IT TO PIECES."

Available tiers include a $5 pledge for Bingo Love wallpaper art, softcover copies with a choice of three variant covers by Genevieve Eft, Nilah Magruder, or Carla "Speed" McNeil, postcards by Shauna Grant, Meredith McClaren, Christina "Steenz" Stewart, and Vicki Tsai, an enamel pin by Asia Kendrick-Horton, script reviews by comic book writers Erica Schultz, Al Ewing, or Shawn Pryor, a portfolio review by Dark Horse Comics editor Patrick Thorpe, Skype sessions with Top Cow editor Bryan Edward Hill, writer Steve Orlando, or writer Scott Snyder and a commission by artist Benjamin Dewey.