Posted in: Comics | Tagged: comic, entertainment, kickstarter

The Center Of Somewhere: All Over But The Shouting And The Kickstarter

Published Sat, 13 Feb 2016 09:00:37 -0600

Luke Foster writes,

Ending a long-form project is always weird. Even if you know when or how you're going to end it, you never know exactly what's going to happen on your way there, and you can end up having a lot of fun.

My comic strip, The Center of Somewhere, ended it's 3 ½ year run at the end of January. The book I'm Kickstarting, The Center of Somewhere: All Over But the Shouting, collects the final two years of the strip.

I always knew in the back of my mind that the strip had a finite life, and while I didn't know exactly when I was going to get to the end, I knew where I was heading and also knew I was going to enjoy myself along the way. And with this book you'll get to see all the fun I had in those last two years.

On it's surface The Center of Somewhere was a typical comic strip about humans, talking animals, and ghosts (yes, ghosts) having fun in small-town middle America. But dig deeper and you'd see that it was a slightly surreal bit of fun I was having, sometimes compared favorably to Regular Show. Yes, it had its normal story arcs with its recurring characters in a typical small-town setting, but then there were the times I really cut loose.

Like the six-month story about the time-traveling fish. Or the time I did a week of the strip in Korean because I realized a friend could translate it for me. Or when I did an Old West story because I wanted to do something in sepia tones. Or the time I drew a week of the strip like a 1930s cartoon just because I wanted to. Or all the other things I did because I wanted to experiment and stretch my muscles as a cartoonist and just have fun.

Oh yeah, it's all-ages friendly, too. That means yes, you can give it to a kid and feel comfortable they're not going to read anything too mature for them, but it also means there's plenty of humor for the grown-ups, too. To me, all ages means all ages.

The Kickstarter is set up to raise $2,000 to print The Center of Somewhere: All Over But the Shouting. This will be a 112-page, full-color book collecting the final two years of the strip. All the money goes directly to production costs, mostly to printing. Even though this is the second volume in the series, it's completely standalone so you don't have to read the first book to understand what's happening here.

I have 19 different backer rewards, where you can get not only this book in print or digital form, but tons of other things, too. For example, you could copies of the first Center of Somewhere book, Small-Town Heroes, so you can read the first 18 months of the strip if you really want to (and I hope you do). You can also get copies of my previous book, Drawn Away: A Cartoonist Tours America, copies of different books from an old series I did, book bundles for retailers, and original art drawn just for you.

In fact, as an added incentive to Bleeding Cool readers, if you pledge any time between now and the end of the Kickstarter and send me a message that you saw the Kickstarter on this site, I will send you an extra full-color sketch card at no additional cost. It's just my way of saying thanking you to anyone here who might be taking a chance on an unknown cartoonist.

I've said it a lot, but I really did have a lot of fun making this comic, and part of me is sad it had to end. But I'm really proud of what I produced, and I really hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did making it.

So that's that. The strip is done, the book is laid out, and everything's ready to go. All that's left is to finish the Kickstarter. And, of course, the shouting.