Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, Image | Tagged: jamie mckelvie, kickstarter, kieron gillen

Yes, Yes, Kieron Gillen, I Am Doing Your Kickstarter Thing Now

Yesterday, for the tenth anniversary of The Wicked + The Divine, Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie launched a covers collection on Kickstarter

The Wicked + The Divine by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie was published by Image Comics, the first issue ten years ago. The series ran for 45 main issues with a few spinoffs along the way, telling the story of teenage girl, Laura, and a Pantheon of twelve reincarnate gods, who reincarnate in the young every ninety years before dying two years later, burning out after living lives of fame and superpowers.

Yesterday, for the tenth anniversary of The Wicked + The Divine's publication, Gillen and McKelvie launched an anniversary covers collection on Kickstarter. The problem was I was out seeing Guys And Dolls at the Bridge Theatre, so I have only just got round to it now, and I am being nagged. For a second I wondered if Guys And Dolls would make an appropriate alternative name for The Wicked + The Divine before realising no, it would be the very worst and least accurate name possible. Even more than "Small Serbo-Croatian Post Office". Jamie McKelvie writes in his newsletter;

On 18 June 2014, The Wicked + The Divine #1 was released. That was ten years ago. A lot has changed for me since then, and a lot of that change is because of WicDiv. We knew we'd made something special right from the start, but we weren't prepared for the response – and community – it created. Not everyone in comics gets to make something like this, a career-defining work that they also own, so I'm enormously grateful that we got to do that.

One thing we took away from our time at Marvel was a (maybe unhealthy) need to control every aspect of the book from cover to cover (which involved working closely with designer Hannah Donovan to set the tone of everything outside of the actual comic pages). The covers were obviously the most important aspect of that. I had very strong ideas of what I wanted to pull from other fields, to try to make the book look like nothing else on the stands, because the comic inside was like nothing else on the stands. Looking back at all of the covers, I think we succeeded.

To celebrate the book that changed our lives, we've put together a project we always talked about doing but never got around to: a beautiful, super-sized hardback art book of all the covers we ever printed.

While the main attraction is presenting all 126 covers* in a super-sized hardback format (240mm x 320mm or 9.44" x 12.59") we're also including extra material, such as Kieron writing an introduction to the book and me explaining my thinking behind each arc of the covers. Also included are making-of features, where I demonstrate how I went from concept to sketch to inks to the finished work. It will also include a bonus cover by me to truly make it a COMPLETE collection: Sahkmet will finally get her head cover.

Ah yes, the head covers, which became an iconic design and motif for the book. Filling the cover, looking straight forward, and running through the cast. Apart from one, Kieron Gillen adds from his newsletter;

"As well as all the other extras, Jamie will draw a Sakhmet cover in the classic WicDiv headshot style. Due to the nature of publishing, she didn't get one originally, and it's bugged us ever since. This is our chance to undo the historic wrong, and we're grasping it. Finally, the complete set."

As to the differences between The Wicked + The Divine: The Covers versions, Jamie describes it thus:

"You can get the standard book, or the deluxe version of the book. The deluxe is a fancy companion to the previous four hardcover deluxe editions of The Wicked + The Divine, this version is bound in sumptuous black cloth, with a stunning stamped holographic foil title on the cover, spine, and back cover. It has holographic gilded pages. It has full-colour, custom endpages. It has a sewn binding with custom head and tail bands and a black marker-ribbon. A gorgeous work of art. It also comes with a high-quality bookplate signed by both me and Kieron. There's also an option to add a giclée art print of the cover image."

And Kieron Gillen goes with;

"Want even fancier than our basal fancy? Want black cloth binding? You got it? Want a holographic foil all over the place? You got it? Gilded holographic pages? We got it too, and I don't even known what that means. Sewn Bindings? Yay! Also a black ribbon, because books with ribbon are the kind of opulence we demand for an event like being 10 years closer to death."

Kieron Gillen also recalls;

"It's the 10 year anniversary of WicDiv. I probably should write about it, but my brain rebels. There's a distance between how especially early WicDiv is viewed from the outside (a hugely successful, critically acclaimed and generational book which was significant part of many other people's own journeys) and how I view it (Hell). 2013-2015 is perhaps the worst period of my life, and I was imploding and barely hanging on throughout."

He does elaborate. But in its first day, The Wicked + The Divine: The Covers raised £41,795 against its £40,000 goal from 672 backers. It also has very cheap shipping options in this day and age. Also media rights are available again.

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