Posted in: Comics | Tagged: daytbreak, keith champagne, kickstarter, pete tomasi

Peter Tomasi Talks To Keith Champagne About Daybreak On Kickstarter

Published Fri, 14 Jan 2022 06:57:12 -0600

Last updated Fri, 14 Jan 2022 10:07:50 -0600

Okay, cards on the table, this is a bit of PR from comic book writer Keith Champagne. Off the top of his head, he got Peter Tomasi, off of Super Sons, to interview him about his new Kickstartered comic book series Daybreak and asked if I'd run it. Now it's not some hard-hitting Panorama expose, it's a bit of puffery. But how could I say no?

TOMASI: I saw you posted a link to your Kickstarter for Daybreak! On twitter yesterday. Let's pretend for a second like I didn't read the first issue last month. Sell me: why should I fork over my hard earned cash to support this project?

CHAMPAGNE: Because we've been friends for almost 30 years now?

PT: You just lost me right there, chucklehead.

KC: Not the first time, won't be the last… Daybreak! is the first chapter of a planned five-issue series that the artist, Stefan Tosheff and I, are bringing to life through Kickstarter. It's a big story, an ambitious project and readers will get a sense, by the end of this first issue, that it's headed to places that mainstream superhero comics don't usually travel.

PT: Yeah, but you just said literally nothing about what it's about.

KC: It's hard to describe it in an elevator pitch without giving away the direction the story will be headed but in a nutshell, Daybreak is the hero the world both wants and needs. She's all about light and hope and optimism. On the flip side, her arch enemy is a nut named Doc Matter, all darkness and rage and hatred. The two of them are very much opposites; they've been locked together in one way or another since both of them crash landed on this planet together when they were kids. After a couple of decades of back and forth, the actual, real, final battle between the two has arrived and the story takes off in the months after; as Daybreak realizes what she always thought was her greatest foe maybe actually wasn't…and the real fight for her life is coming like a freight train now. Much like we did with The Mighty, the story is set up in a way that seems comfortable, almost familiar to the reader and then skinning that onion layer by layer to get to the heart of the characters and what's really going on underneath the surface.

PT: So it's an "absolute power corrupts absolutely" kind of story like Mighty?

KC: Not at all. Except now that you've put it like that, maybe it kinda is, in a totally different context. There's definitely a price to pay for power.

PT: So with Kickstarters, there's always something else along with the actual book. What kind of yard sale have you got set up?

KC: Yard sale, huh?

PT: Enticements. Rewards. You know what I mean.

KC: Some cool stuff, I think. Along with the regular cover by Tosheff, we've got a couple of variant covers: one by Val Semeiks and John Dell, one of my personal favorite art teams of all time. And another by Ale Garza, who just nails the character perfectly. We've put together a t-shirt, original art rewards, even a black and white artist edition of the book to really show off the tonal work that Stefan put into the pages.

PT: Yeah, who is this guy? I've never heard of him before but he's pretty good.

KC: Stefan is a Canadian talent; we connected creatively when he drew the SILVER STREAK series I wrote for Chapterhouse and I guess we liked working together because we created this project. He's a really natural storyteller; I write in full script and he really manages to capture the spirit of what I'm imagining. Back to the rewards, there's also some fun stuff that will be revealed during the campaign. These things are hard, it's important to try to keep the energy up over the time the project is live. Oh, and again with rewards, Bleeding Cool readers who back the project just have to leave a comment, just the words "BLEEDING COOL" is enough, and we'll have a raffle at the end and upgrade the winner with a special reward.

PT: Do you want to tell people where to find the campaign?

KC: bit.ly/daybreakcomic is the link, thanks for mentioning it. And thanks for doing this with me, pal. Let's flip the switch when SNIPE AND SLUG is out.

PT: Yeah, we'll see. Call you later this week, good luck with the project.