Posted in: Comics | Tagged: crowdfunded comics, Heads Will Roll, Scarlet Couture, slow city blues, Zoop

Zoop Launches First Crowdfunded Comics Titles, More to Come

Zoop, the first end-to-end full-service crowdfunding platform created exclusively for the fandom community, officially launches today with Slow City Blues — a comic book almost 10 years in the making — as its first project.

Founded by Jordan Plosky (founder of ComicBlitz,(acquired by Cinedigm)) and Eric Moss (former head of Business Development at IDW Publishing and Project Manager of the #1 comics crowdfunding campaign of all time), with Kickstarter's former comics outreach lead Camilla Zhang serving as Advisor, Zoop redefines crowdfunding for the fandom community (comics, collectibles, games, more) by introducing a streamlined and intuitive interface with features like a la carte rewards and comics-friendly formatting. Zoop is a concierge service for creators, handling everything campaign-related from start to finish, including campaign setup and management, pledge management, production, fulfillment, marketing and more, so creators can focus more on creating and less on the business side of things. No other crowdfunding platform offers these services.

"Comics are the fastest growing crowdfunding category today, and COVID's impact on the industry highlighted the need for a new solution for creators" said Jordan Plosky, Co-founder and CEO of Zoop. "Zoop was created to solve these and more pain points by bringing crowdfunding, e-commerce, production, fulfillment, and distribution together under a single, simple platform."

Zoop is launching as a curated site featuring notable comic book creators, with the goal of eventually opening the platform to all creators across the fandom community. Zoop's first project at launch is the much anticipated Slow City Blues (Samuel Haine, Shawn Moll, John Livesay, and David Baron), followed by Scarlett Couture (Des Taylor), Resolution (Ron Marz , Andy Lanning and Rick Leonardi), and Heads Will Roll (Bart Sears) (more information on each can be found below), with a long list of other projects set to roll out soon after with top talent and publishers like Chris Ryall (partner, Syzygy Publishing and former CCO of IDW Publishing), who is using the platform as a component of his new publishing venture, award-winning writer and author Paul Cornell (I Walk With Monsters, The Modern Frankenstein, Doctor Who) and popular Chicano comic book artist and writer J. Gonzo (Image Comics' LA MANO del DESTINO).

"Zoop handles the heavy lifting so pros can focus on the work they want to do. Zoop takes the "ow" out of crowdfunding."

• Samuel Haine, creator of Slow City Blues

"I'm a creator, I want to build worlds, to write and draw as much as I can, and Zoop allows me to do just that. They take all of the hard, time-consuming work of crowdfunding off my hands, from start to finish. I

just have to create. Being able to turn over that detail-oriented, business-type work to a team of industry pros is a creator's dream." 

• Bart Sears, creator of Heads Will Roll

"One of the true pleasures of creating comics is being able to grab a handful of your friends and just make the thing you want to make. That's very much what we're doing with RESOLUTION. Rick and Andy and I have known each other for years, and we're not only friends, but admirers of each other's work.

The chance to get together and make something new was just too good to pass up. And getting to debut our cosmic saga on a new comics-centric platform like Zoop is a great bonus." 

• Ron Marz, co-creator and co-writer of Resolution

"Excited to be part of a new crowdfunding platform focusing on comic creators and artists alike, to share their products." 

• Des Taylor, creator of Scarlett Couture

FOR PUBLISHERS AND CREATORS, Zoop is an all-in-one crowdfunding solution that connects them directly to their fans and helps them validate the market for projects without having to risk resources up front.  

FOR FANS, this is the easiest way to have direct access to what you love. Want to support a campaign by getting more than one item? Get 'em all! Need multiple of a single item? Let's do it! Tired of having to buy something during a campaign, and have to wait for the "after-campaign" campaign to buy something else you wanted? No more of that! Let's make it easier on everyone!

LAUNCHING EXCLUSIVELY ON ZOOP

Slow City Blues – Now Available

Slow City Blues is a genre-bending new series for mature readers that features Indiana Jones-style action combined with Who Framed Roger Rabbit-esque insanity.

This five-issue comic, which the team is also developing as an animated series, has been almost 10 years in the making, and features the talents of:

• Samuel Haine (series creator)
• Shawn Moll (Black Panther, Venom, Nightwing)
• John Livesay (The Flash, Doom Patrol, Doctor Strange)
• David Baron (JLA, Batman Confidential, Green Arrow and Black Canary)
• Cover artists include Paul Pope, David Finch, Derrick Chew, Doug Mahnke, Brett Booth, Julian Totino Tedesco, Francesco Mattina, Yasmine Putri, Howard Porter, Phillip Tan, Cary Nord, Pat Olliffe and Randy Green.

Scarlett Couture – The Munich File, Vol 1&2 – Launching in June

From internationally-renowned artist Des Taylor (Superman, Doctor Who, pop-art and pin-up artist and fan favorite, with his art in galleries and museums around the world) comes Scarlett Couture – The Munich File Vol. 1 & 2.

Wealthy. Beautiful. Deadly. Scarlett Carver, the heir to the billion-dollar fashion empire Chase Couture, is at the top of her game as a fashion-forward front for covert investigations worldwide. She and her CIG (Covert Investigations Group) team retrieve an encrypted SD card that may contain evidence of those behind a Las Vegas terrorist attack. Little does her team know, forces are in play to kill anyone who has come into contact with the files. Now more than ever, Scarlett has to start thinking about who she can really trust.

Resolution – Launching in June

Comic legends Ron Marz , Andy Lanning and Rick Leonardi join forces to create a new cosmic saga with Resolution.

• Writer – Ron Marz (writer of over 1,000 issues of comics, best known for Green Lanter, Silver

Surfer, Superman, Witchblade, Skylanders, Marvel/ DC crossover books, and is part of Ominous Press publishing, which ran several successful Kickstarter campaigns)

• Co-Writer/Inker – Andy Lanning (worked on over 1,200 comics, best known as co-creator of the current Guardians of The Galaxy team lineup, and for his work on New Mutants, Fantastic Four, Punisher, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, Nova, The Annihilation Crossover Event)
• Penciller – Rick Leonardi (Co-Creator of Spider-Man 2099 (voiced by Oscar Isaac in Into The

Spider-Verse), also known for his work on Daredevil, Uncanny X-Men, Nightwing, Astonishing Spider-Man)

Resolution tells the tale of Xaan Maddox, a legendary member of the outer-space corps of heroes known as The Resolute. Now retired, Xaan Maddox has withdrawn to a remote world in solitude. But former comrades arrive and attempt to recruit her to again don the exo-suit of a Resolute Blade, so they can bring to justice an alien warlord who was Xaan's arch-nemesis. What follows forces Xaan to confront her own past, and places the entire universe in deadly peril. Resolution is an epic new tale by masters of cosmic storytelling, presented as a large-format hardcover.

Heads Will Roll – Coming in July

Bart Sears (Justice League, Captain America, Turok, Conan, Blade) likes to draw heads – usually severed heads lying at the feet of some monstrous barbarian warrior or god-like anti-hero – but he's also drawn countless headshots of heroes, villains, damsels and creatures pulled from all forms of literature, including pulp fiction, cult classics and the darkest folklore. Heads Will Roll is a comic art book that will have a head for everyone and contains over 140 beautifully rendered character headshots drawn by this master illustrator.

For more information on Zoop, visit https://zoop.gg/ or email hello@wearezoop.com.

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