Posted in: Comics, Halloween, Recent Updates | Tagged: bubblegum, Comics, darth vader, entertainment, jason liebig, kickstarter, marvel

My Life After Marvel (Or How Darth Vader And The X-Men Led To Zombie Mouth Bubblegum)

Jason Liebig writes,

My name is Jason Liebig and I am a former comic book professional. I am proud to say that a lifetime ago, I served as an editor on some of Marvel Comics' best-selling and best loved (and feared and hated) X-Men family of titles. I'm especially proud to be responsible for the publication of what might have been Marvel's very first "hip-hop" or "funk" comic with Jim Mahfood's Generation X Underground one-shot. Of course, there are things I'm responsible for in comics that I'm not as proud of, but there's no need to go into that, today, now is there?

This was the late 1990s mind you, and on top of trying to wrangle one half of a dozen X-Men family of ongoing titles Marvel was publishing, I also had to navigate nearly two years of Marvel's bankruptcy restructuring and all of the wonder and fun that rolled down upon editorial row because of it. Inside of a few years, we had seven different CEOs or acting CEOs to contend with, each one bringing their own new agenda (while sweeping away the in-progress plans of the previous guy). It was chaotic and challenging and during Heroes Reborn, there were even credible rumors that Marvel was going to cease publication of comic books altogether and become purely a licensing company (with the FF going to DC, X-Men to Wildstorm, and so on). Like I said, fun times.

But we worked and fought, we got the heroes back, and we remained a publishing company – we navigated the harshest of storms. Then Marvel Knights happened and through a series of legendary events, the editorial line was remade with Joe Quesada at the helm, heralding in the first post-millennium, modern age of Marvel. It was at the dawn of this age that I exited the company and aside from the great friendships I made there, I never turned back, not exactly (fifteen years later I do find myself still looking over my shoulder just in case).

Much has happened in those years. Marvel has changed the face of superhero publishing in positive and marked ways, they've had countless big events and crossovers, making the X-Men much easier to follow (oh, no, they didn't do that) and what started while I was on staff with movies like Blade and The X-Men, has exploded as Marvel have also become the biggest thing in film. Oh, and Disney bought them for what-now-seems-like-a-bargain $4 billion. As an observer and fan, it's been a heckuva thing to witness and enjoy.

While all of that has been going on, I've become a producer, a bartender, an actor, a writer and now… a candy historian and prospective bubblegum inventor. So, my life after comics has been much like my life IN comics – it's been adventures and misadventures, successes and failures, thrills and heartbreaks. Which all seems right and good and how it should be.

While in comics, I was always game for trying new things, and for doing things in ways that had never been done before (hence that Generation X: Underground Special I mentioned at the beginning of this.) The past decade or so, I've been delving into the undocumented history of confection (mainly on my website CollectingCandy.com), focusing on the art, design, and marketing of candy through the years. It's been terrific fun pioneering the look at this genre of material and I have come to see candy as a "lost pillar of geek culture" – I think the primal love of things like video games, toys, comic books, and movies which start in adolescence, should go hand-in-hand with confection. I've uncovered forgotten brands and spinoffs, tracked down candy creators and shared their stories, but more than that, I've tried to document this part of our shared pop cultural past in an entertaining way and give people a way to tap into it and access it. And now, it's all led to me creating something in a way that no one has ever really done before.

Over the last couple of years, I've looked at all of the great things being created utilizing crowdfunding to get them done and made. People are creating things now that would have been virtually impossible a decade ago – all because the tools to bring communities together and rally behind these creations exists. These communities, made up of people like you and me, are making new toys, games, comic books, even films and television shows possible.

So, I thought I would try to take everything I know from comics as a professional and everything I've seen in the years since as a fan and observer, and wrap that all up with all that I've learned as a passionate candy historian to create a new bubblegum. And I would approach the creation of it more like a comic book guy than a candy guy.

And so I've launched the Zombie Mouth Bubblegum Kickstarter campaign.

There's never been a crowdfunding campaign for this kind of product before. No one's ever Kickstarted a bubblegum. There are many reasons why no one has, one of which is that it's tough, but the main reason is that I don't think it occurs to most people as something that can even be done.

It wasn't that long ago that people felt that way about making their own comic books, or toys, or even t-shirts. I'm hoping that my approach and my project will be successful but just as much I'm hoping that it will succeed in showing what can be done with this category. I've been inspired by so many amazing creators and their creations in the last decade, and I'm hoping that I can join with them in creating some cool and new, but also in helping inspire others to take the risk and to do the same. For me, that's what it's all about.

Inspired by my sixth grade Darth Vader birthday cake, my years working on the X-Men for Marvel Comics, and my love as a fan since, Zombie Mouth Bubblegum is something new. And there's never been a bubblegum that is as cosplay-friendly, geek-friendly, zombie-friendly, as this one. That's by design. Elements of the campaign should seem familiar, but as a whole, it is uncharted territory.

So please, check out Zombie Mouth Bubblegum on Kickstarter today. And don't look back.

[Special note: If we can hit the $10,000 mark by Monday, I'll be adding a special "Bleeding Cool Zombie Mouth trading card variant into all reward packages of $5 or more. That's still a ways off from our funding goal but spread the word and we'll get there!]

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