Refunding a failed campaign isn't a death sentence. Mike S. Miller (
Bless This Mess) and Antonio Brice (
Brand #2) both had failed crowdfunds recently, but are on track thanks to celebrity co-collaboration to do possibly their biggest campaigns yet. People are generally quick to forgive mistakes if they're not out any money - just look at Ribbitcoin. Failure to
fulfill a campaign once funds have been received is a whole other ballgame,
Wenger's
real problem is that the competition in crowdfunding comics is steadily growing and,
as I wrote about two months ago when BOOM Studios announced they were stepping into the Kickstarter game, the days of amateur efforts getting big payouts in CG is coming to an end, in the same way that just getting out a phone and recording yourself complaining at the latest issue of Iron Man no longer assures you a position as a Comicsgate leader and left many "OGCG" figures in the dust. The post-Fall of Rome era, where Comicsgate had about three creators total (Frog, Malin and Thibert) capable of putting out a professional quality comic, was an environment where someone like Wenger, a guy who bought a $50 webcam so he can stream himself in a dingy t-shirt talking over YT compilations towards the ends of making a comic book about cum, or made by someone without the ability to draw, and expect Frog to do the rest needed into making this a lucrative career, is slowly receding into the distance.
More people like Billy Tucci, Dan Fraga, Shane Davis, and now Bill Willingham and Trent Maniuega - people who bring much needed professional credibility as well as fans, and who are capable of producing a respectable comic and at least possibly building their own platforms are jockeying for the opportunity that was once given to the likes of Adam Post or Matt Wenger. And that's just internal pressure.
Last night at around 37 minutes in an otherwise languid Frog snorestream, peaceably a-logging Ray Fisher and basking in ambient MAGA, an autistically exhilarated Ya Boi Zack kicked in the door with some hot news about Kickstarter and the previously mentioned
BRZRKR, which he is personally stoked to be getting. It turns out BOOM Studios, in order to take some of the pressure off from woke comics twitter griping about stepping into crowdfunding, pledged $100 to a hundred KS comic campaigns, a move which Zack considers acquiescing to extortion and in effect a "woke tax". Frog's chat, however, was conditioned to boycott Kickstarter long ago and by and large are not inclined to care about the intricacies of publishers and platforms they were long ago convinced were irredeemably soy, cucked and corrupt.
(realtime reaction to the Kickstarter BOOMbux scandal)
Still, there were some real takeaways - while Comicsgate was an early adopter of the crowdfunding model (out of necessity), the comic book industry at large
is slowly taking notice (
with a Heidi MacDonald article at thebeat.com) and adapting to the changing landscape. Camilla Zhong is rumored to be slowly ushered back in to resume her function as a faciliator of (approved) campaigns at Kickstarter now that the KS union has been busted.
Established, credible creators like Sean Gordon Murphy and Scott Snyder are being brought into comics crowdfunding, with the direct assistance of a powerful corporation with deep pockets like kickstarter. And they're starting to dabble in youtube themselves,
with Zhong and Scott Snyder now doing (for now) shit comic youtube tours in the Comicsgate style. These channels and platforms are shit now, but there's no reason to presume that it's always going to be this way for the foreseeable future.
