Posted in: Comics | Tagged: kickstarter, steve bissette, tyrant

Success May See Steve Bissette Return To Comics To Finish Tyrant

Success may see Steve Bissette return to comics to finish Tyrant... it all comes down to Kickstarter...

So far, Steve Bissette's Tyrant Complete Edition Kickstarter has raised $240,352 against a $50,000 goal from 1,736 backers with twelve days to go. I mean that's good, that's very good, almost a quarter of a million good, but is it enough? For what we really want to happen?

Let's back up. Steve Bissette, born in 1955 in Vermont, is a comic book artist, writer, editor, and publisher, best known for his work on Swamp Thing, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, 1963, Tyrant and Taboo. For detailed, atmospheric horror, and a strong commitment to creator rights. He graduated from the very first class of The Kubert School in 1978, alongside Rick Veitch and Tom Yeates, and built a career in horror and independent comics. He broke through when Alan Moore and John Totleben joined him and Rick on DC's Saga of the Swamp Thing, for a run that both revolutionised the character with mature, literary horror, changed the entire comic industry over the following decades, and also brought us DC Vertigo and John Constantine.  He then self-published through his imprint, Spiderbaby Grafix, edited the horror anthology Gore Shriek and launched Taboo, which serialised Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell. After working again with Moore and Veitch and others on the Image Comics series 1963 in 1993, he used that windfall to fund the self-publication of Tyrant in 1994, a long-form comic, serialised in single issues, telling the story of a Tyrannosaurus Rex in the Late Cretaceous Period, from being laid as an egg, hatching, and eventually to death, planning a ten year, fifty issue run.

Well ahead of its time, if published as a series of graphic novels, in today's market, it would have made it. Then, it didn't last as the direct market was truncated, making it to four issues in two years. But in late 2025, new publisher Lighthouse Press, founded by Chris Stevens in Tucson, Arizona, announced plans to collect Tyrant for the first time in deluxe editions, with a Kickstarter, including a standard collected edition and an oversized "original art" edition shot directly from Bissette's hand-drawn pages, overseen for high-fidelity reproduction by Sean Michael Robinson. And it will also include material that would have appeared in Tyrant #5 and #6. This will be the only place to find it… right now at least. The collection will come with over 200 pages of material, including essays by comic book creators such as Rick Veitch, palaeontologists, process drawings, and archival content, as well as a fold-out reversible triptych with colour by Charles Forsman. Designed by Jim Rugg, who helped revive interest via praise on Comic Book Kayfabe with the late Ed Piskor, it features a new 7,000-word introductory essay by Bissette. Bissette has expressed excitement about the revival, calling it a long-overdue "hatching" of his "lost Odysseus." If the campaign succeeds, there are discussions of a potential colour edition aimed at younger readers/libraries. Lighthouse sees this as the start of a line reviving cult comics from the 1990s/2000s. But also, if this does very well, Steve Bissette may return to the boards to at least continue, if not complete, one of his greatest creations.

Chris Stevens tells Bleeding Cool that this "isn't just a hook, Rich, it's a true dream of Jim Rugg's and mine that Steve has a nest egg and is comfortable enough to try to do more Tyrant." And apparentl;y Steve is warming up to the idea. That's enough for me…, time to back a Kickstarter..

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