Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, entertainment, flintlock, kickstarter, turncoat

Kickstarters from the Heart: Flintlock Book One And Turncoat

Published Thu, 03 Mar 2016 16:30:27 -0600

By Olly MacNamee

A new month and a new set of Kickstarters for your consideration from a number of indie creators over here in Blighty.

Flintlock Book One

First off the blocks comes a Kickstarter for Time Bomb's first proposed ongoing series, Flintlock and set in 18th Century England.

Flintlock Book One features the debut of two brand new female lead characters in their own stories – the highwayman Lady Flintlock and Shanti the Pirate Queen. Both stories are written by Steve Tanner, the face (and a multi-coloured jacket that would make Joseph blush) behind Time Bomb since its inception back in 2007 and illustrated by Anthony Summey and Lorenzo Nicolletta respectively.

"I'm describing it as adventures in the eighteenth century!" Tanner explains. He further told me that the book will be a shared universe anthology that features regular and rotating characters – and each story in Flintlock will take place at some point between 1701 and 1800.

Having previously delved into this particular era for past graphic novels such as Dick Turpin and The Crimson Plague (2011), Tanner returns to the 18th Century once more because, "Researching the Dick Turpin stories really opened my eyes as to how rich the eighteenth century was as a setting, and sparked off for me a real fascination with the period. I used to think it was the boring bit between the middle ages and the Victorians – how wrong I was!"

And, at just £500 as its goal, this is certain to achieve it, especially when a £80 pledge, for example, would see you gain the original page art that debuts Shanti, the Pirate Queen. It's a great looking black and white title and the Kickstarter campaign, in this instance different way to seek out new readers and a new distribution mode too.

For more details, click here.

The comic itself will be debuted at the Birmingham Comic Festival on April 23rd. But more on that later this month.

Turncoat: The Graphic Novel

Having recently waxed lyrical about the tribulations of self publishing here at Bleeding Cool, Ryan O'Sullivan (and Plaid Klaus on art duties) plan to take their darkly humorous webcomic and publish it as a graphic novel.

Turncoat follows the story of Duke. Duke is the world's worst superhero assassin. He straight up sucks at killing superheroes. He always needs a supervillain partner to help him on his hits, he's constantly fending off his ex-wife-and-rival-assassin, Sharon, and the agency only ever seems to send him after d-list loser superheroes. But it's okay, Duke's gonna show everyone he's got what it takes by taking out the world's number one superhero team – The Liberty Brigade. You know…once he figures out how to.

Of course, the art is already in the bag, having been published daily at a page a day, and at 164 pages, all in colour, it's a promisingly big read too. And, looking at dollar bill pledges, its one for my American friends out there looking for a new and interesting take on the superhero genre. You can read my review here, and check out the Kickstarter campaign here too.

Olly MacNamee teaches English and Media, for his sins, in a school somewhere in Birmingham. Some days, even he doesn't know where it is. Follow him on twitter @ollymacnamee or read about his exploits at olly.macnamee@blogspot.co.uk. Or don't. You can also read his articles fairly frequently at www.bleedingcool.com too.

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