#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
Of course, one hopes this won’t make us the Star Citizen of comics. Meanwhile, Captain Europa celebrates the good news that Alt★Hero is now the #1 crowdfunded new comic of all time. It will probably surprise no one to learn that Dynamique could not care less. Meanwhile, we’re less than 4k away from Stretch Goal #12, so don’t hesitate to jump on the bandwagon.
Such incredible support from the 1,700+ Alt★Hero backers. Some of you mentioned the traditional U-shape of a kickstarted campaign, but given the two mid-campaign bumps, I thought it was possible that we’d already pulled too much demand forward through our various announcements to see it play out in monetary terms. Alt★Hero is now one of the top 25 comics ever kickstarted, and may well be the one of the top three comics ever launched this way.
Thank you from me, Chuck Dixon, and the entire Alt★Hero team. We are extremely motivated to live up to the faith you have expressed in our ability to deliver a high-quality comic series – or two, really – and we hope to exceed your expectations. Some of these elements are going to take a while, particularly the RPG, but we will deliver them when they are ready. As a thank you to all of the backers, we are accepting Observer’s suggestion to give one cameo to the entire backing community to decide. Nominations here on the blog and a deciding vote-by-email will be done after the campaign concludes.
It won’t be up on the site for a few hours yet, but I can tell you what the $200k reward is going to be: Spacebunny cosplay and a photo of the cosplayer signed by the real Spacebunny included with every shipment to a backer that includes a hardcover Reward. If you are not still tired of all the winning and would like to help close out the campaign with a bang, you can do so here.
UPDATE: As the Alt★Hero campaign has now exceeded $194,145, it is the most-funded new comic book ever crowdfunded. Congratulations to Freestartr, to the creative team, and to all 1,751 backers and counting.
I used to work at a Conservatism Inc. institution with a $60 million/year budget, the ~$170k @Voxday Alt★Hero project will be more impactful than the past ten years of the aforementioned institution’s activities combined.
– Nick at Instapundit
The image above is fan art contributed by a freelance pro who is supporting the project. If you’d like to see more of the real story, we’ve added another draft page at the Alt★Hero campaign, which has reached its penultimate day. And for those who may happen to be under the mistaken impression that I am laying it on a bit too heavily, please note that the threats being uttered by Captain Europa there are a direct quote of the Metropolitan Police in London via their twitter account.
The big news promised earlier is this: Chuck Dixon has agreed to write an Alt★Hero novel! Entitled Vendetta, the novel will be set in the city of Avalon and published by Castalia House in ebook, paperback, and audiobook formats. We’ve added two rewards so you can buy it today in either ebook or paperback format (as part of the trilogy of novels that have been announced) by backing the campaign. Vendetta is a new character he has created who appears in Avalon volume I and will be the protagonist of his first novel.
Also, due to more than a dozen requests for them, we have added two conditional Rewards. Chuck Dixon and Castalia House will commit to producing volumes IV, V, and VI of the Alt★Hero series Avalon if the campaign reaches the $185k mark, and we will provide the digital editions of those three volumes to all the appropriate backer levels. $23k in two days is a little ambitious, but the general consensus seems to be that it is reachable if people have the option of backing the 4th omnibus print editions.
$5.00
Novel Ebook #3
This is to receive a copy of Alt★Hero novel #3, Vendetta, by Chuck Dixon, in DRM-free EPUB and MOBI formats.
$49.00
Paperback Trilogy
This is to receive three paperbacks consisting of Alt★Hero novels #1 and 2 by Jon Del Arroz and Vox Day and Alt★Hero novel #3, Vendetta, by Chuck Dixon. The paperbacks will be 5.5 x 8.5 and 200+ pages each. Worldwide shipping is included.
$30.00
Add-On: Paperback #4
This is to receive the paperback omnibus that includes volumes IV, V, and VI of the Alt★Hero series Avalon, written by Chuck Dixon. You will also receive the digital editions of the first nine volumes if you are not already receiving them. Worldwide shipping is included. NOTE: This Reward is conditional. If the campaign does not reach $185,000, this Reward will not be delivered and backers will not be charged for it.
$65.00
Add-On: Hardcover #4
This is to receive the hardcover omnibus that includes volumes IV, V, and VI of the Alt★Hero series Avalon, written by Chuck Dixon. You will also receive the digital editions of the first nine volumes if you are not already receiving them. This will be a collector’s item with a cover that will only be made available to backers; it will not be the cover that goes into distribution. Worldwide shipping is included. NOTE: This Reward is conditional. If the campaign does not reach $185,000, this Reward will not be delivered and backers will not be charged for it.
By the way, one important aspect of supporting the #4 options is that this will create the material for SIX additional small comics, bringing the total we’ll be releasing to 24. That’s the equivalent of a full year of two comics series, which should help us considerably in kicking down the door of the retail channel.
UPDATE: Only $19k $14k 7k to go with 24 hours left.
This exchange at Instapundit in response to the recent PJ Media article about the blackballing of conservatives by the comics industry nicely summarizes the core problem with conservatism and serves as a microcosm for the explanation for why the Alt-Right is inevitable.
bishopcruz
I hate seeing Chuck Dixon involved in this crap. Make your own conservative comics! Please you’re one of the all time greats. Nothing good comes from associating with Vox Day, just because he is right about Social Justice doesn’t make him less of a horrible person. One of the things I tended to like about the right was the expelling of the worst parts of us from the mainstream. Not as much anymore. I think part of the buildup of the alt-right has been to make them seem more palatable to regular conservatives by showing just how much they piss off the left. And hey, I get that pissing off the left is great, but if you don’t watch who you’re associating with when you do so, you’re going to be standing next to someone like Vox Day or Jared Taylor.Eric Ashley
If Conservative Inc wants to stop Vox, the best way to do that is for them to actually do their jobs. Tell the Koch Bros to support a line of socially conservative novels and comics, and make Kurt Schlicter the editor.
It’s not a bad idea, except time has already run out on conservatives. They had 37 years, the Presidency, the House, the Senate, nine Supreme Court nominations, and two economic booms with which to fight the cultural war. And they did absolutely nothing.
Nor will they do anything. Have you seen a single mention of Alt★Hero anywhere throughout the conservative media except PJ Media and Instapundit? Do you think that despite the hundreds of millions that conservatives will spend on the 2018 and 2020 elections, any of that will go toward fighting the culture war they are losing so badly?
The Alt-Right acts. The Alt-Right fights. The Alt-Right does not surrender. Because of that, the Alt-Right will be the only Right that survives to defeat the Left.
Although Rebel, Captain Europa, and Dynamique have been the stars of the Freestartr campaign, we have a number of other superheroes who have not yet been introduced. One of the most enigmatic is Shade of the Global Justice Initiative, whose identity is unknown to everyone, including Captain Europa, as are the full extent of his abilities. What is known is that he is ruthless in his devotion to the European vision and as unanswerable to any authority as the European Commission itself.
You will be able to meet him, and other Homo sequens, in the Alt★Hero Role-Playing Game, which will be published in the form of a hardcover rulebook by Chuck Dixon, Vox Day, and an anonymous RPG designer, and Campaign 001 by Jon Del Arroz.
We’ve been consulting with our distribution partner and kicking around various ideas, and between us we have tentatively worked out a way to deliver 24-page color comics to comic book stores for a retail price of $4.99 at a reseller-friendly discount. These will not be conventional comic books with a stapled, glossy paper cover, but thin perfect-bound paperbacks of exactly the same size on standard color 50-pound paper. A few questions still remain to be settled, but they are minor enough that we don’t anticipate any showstopping obstacles at this point. These 18 prospective books are NOT part of the campaign; we will simply be dividing the 48-page digital editions into 24-page quasi-comic books and selling them through the various retail channels in the interest of raising Alt★Hero’s profile.
Get in the game! Support the Alt★Hero campaign before it’s over.
UPDATE: a new draft page from Vol. 002 is up; scroll down to see it. Also, after consultation with Chuck Dixon, we have lowered Stretch Goal #11 to $185,000 for three more 48-page volumes of Avalon.
Dynamique was informed that she is letting down the Sisterhood by permitting herself to be objectified by the male gaze. Dynamique promptly apologized for not knowing English well enough to express the full extent of her lack of interest in what fat rosbif women with short hair and terrible shoes have to say about her attire, her career as a model, or indeed, anything at all. Then she blew smoke in their faces and didn’t bother to pretend it was an accident.
And less than 5k to go to the role-playing game. But we’re not just sitting around with our fingers crossed, we’re continuing to make progress on every storyline. Here is a snippet; to see the full page sketched out with updated dialogue, visit the campaign and scroll down.
We will have a new draft page or image up there every day until the campaign ends, plus a very exciting new Reward that will be announced on the second-to-last day. There are also some interesting possibilities to discuss here; it turns out that it would be possible to publish these in conventional 24-page black-and-white paperbacks through our conventional channels.
This won’t be part of the campaign, but would there be any potential interest in those if they sold for $5? They could either be b/w or color; they wouldn’t be a conventional comic book cover, but a regular perfect-bound paperback the same size. I’m NOT saying we intend to do these, but it is genuinely doable.
In case you had any doubts about the existence of the SJW-imposed blacklist of conservatives that Megan Fox reported on in her article yesterday at PJ Media:
Ashley Witter, since you almost certainly have no idea, is one of the “minimally talented hacks producing mediocre (to astonishingly amateurish) work loaded with left-wing and gender politics” for Marvel. And below is how Marvel and other SJW-converged comics publishers are not mixing politics with work.
Of course, we all know that “when SJWs say keep politics out they mean keep YOUR politics and morals out. THEY have free reign to do and say as they please.” So, help us beat them and their blacklist, and help us beat them badly.
As for the idea that we “stole” the G.I. Joe logo, that is obviously false. There is no possibility of confusing the two. But regardless, whoever is presently publishing G.I. Joe should not even be permitted to publish it anymore, given how it has allowed SJWs to transform it from an American military force called Special Counter-Terrorist Unit Delta into a global task force known as the Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity.
CK discovers that truth is now hate in the eyes of the converged Churchians on Facebook:
Apparently saying that 3 does not equal 1 now qualifies as “hate speech.” An episode unfolded yesterday here in town that exposed just how far gone even most conservative evangelicalism is in riding the inclusivity train right off the cliff.
A local Christian women’s Facebook group, after a couple months of ambiguity, determined to update their policy to clarify that they were open to Christians only, not unbelievers. My friend politely asked what this did and didn’t mean, since there were Mormons in the group as well, who by definition are not monotheists. The group admin *deleted* her comments, then, when confronted, insisted that she had somehow done so by accident.
So my friend dutifully posted again, bending over backwards to coat her words with grace and love, and merely noting that it was important to be clear that Christians and Mormons don’t really share the same faith at all, so the group should be simply be renamed for the sake of clarity and accuracy. A Mormon friend of hers cheerfully rejoined and said that actually Mormons are Christians, and another said, “Yeah, we believe the Trinity—three distinct beings in one Godhead, etc.”
My wife piped up briefly to say, “Well, see, that’s the problem. Actually Christians don’t believe in three distinct beings” and quoted from the Athanasian Creed. One of the Mormons responded fairly defensively seeking to justify the Mormon view from Scripture.
At that point, the group admin shut down the thread, declaring that it was not glorifying to God, the devil was at work, it was hateful and slanderous, and posted a general rebuke warning people not to debate their beliefs. This was the cue for the other (mostly conservative evangelical) people in the group to pile on and accuse my wife and her friend of “hate speech.”
Meanwhile, BP in Arizona is entirely unimpressed with his departing senator:
I know you keep being right on just about everything, but it is still strange and impressive to watch it happen, again and again, exactly as predicted. Watching Senator Jeff Flake (may God forget he was our countryman) talk about muh principles, while blubbering about all of Trump’s failure of character, leadership, etc, ad nauseum, and then quitting, announcing he isn’t running for re-election…
Well, you nailed it, exactly, again. Flake is everything you said conservatives are and have become was illustrated perfectly in that self-important speech, in all its limp-wristed glory. What an amazing cuck. It also amazes me that the idiocy he says is self-evidently false, and yet he stands up there and says it anyway, illustrating he’s an evil, duplicitous, lying, traitorous bastard, or he’s just the stupidest, most egotistical asshole ever. Arizona is going to be so much better off with him and McCain gone, and so will the rest of the country.
Drain the swamp, and MAGA!
And finally, a woman writes in of her husband’s unexpected enthusiasm for Alt★Hero:
So Sig. Other, after over 10 years of mocking me for my mild interest in comics, has not only backed the Alt-Hero campaign at the figurine level, he suggested Rebel as a middle name for our daughter. While the name would be a tribute to his Southern heritage and not the character, he admitted he wouldn’t have thought of it if it weren’t for Alt-Hero.
Thought you’d be amused. Alt-Hero is changing hearts and minds already.
I am indeed amused. But taken in the whole, it should be readily apparent that across the increasingly divided West we are now caught up in a full-blown culture war. It is still a cold war, in that it is merely livelihoods rather than lives that are being lost, but it is clear that the conflict is gradually heating up.
Megan Fox proves that Marvel, DC, and other comics publishers are blacklisting non-SJW artists and writers in her article at PJ Media entitled Prominent Conservative Artists Blacklisted Because of Involvement with Alt*Hero Comics Series:
Conservatives are mocked in comics circles for claiming there is a blacklist in the industry, but the evidence points to work being withheld from writers and artists deemed too right-wing. Lim feels he is now on that list of unemployable deplorables. “I understand the decision, but it IS a blacklist. And these are things other writers and artists should know before taking on work,” he said. Lim feels that an artist’s job is to do the work he is hired for. “Recently I did two covers for a Bernie supporter for his book. Considering how political SJW Marvel is, practically every drawing I did for the company merchandise is a depiction of a narrative I disagree with. But I don’t live in an echo chamber and I carve out a living by taking on work I am asked to do and I fulfill it to the best of my ability. Some people cannot separate the work from the worker. The artist acts as a de facto ‘endorser’ of the work,” Lim explained.
Asked if Lim had ever been attacked by conservatives for drawing Bernie-themed covers, he laughed. “In seven years not once has a conservative contacted me to shame me for my work or blacklist me for the clients that I had.” Lim’s major work includes Star Wars Adventures, Back to the Future, Street Fighter X G.I. Joe, TMNT and much more. He worked for seven years as a merchandising artist with properties that included Marvel, Lucasfilm, Valve, and Nickelodeon.
PJ Media reached out to Vox Day for his opinion of Lim’s blacklisting from Mount Olympus. “The fact that a comics publisher, of any political stripe, would refuse to utilize the work of an accomplished illustrator like Timothy Lim simply because he worked with someone else they don’t like is absurd, but more importantly, it is proof that they are less interested in producing quality content than they are in pursuing approval from social justice warriors.”
Day released Lim’s cover work for Alt★Hero to PJ Media saying, “We love Mr. Lim’s work. He absolutely nailed the essence of Dynamique’s character with the way he shows her sitting there so calmly despite all the devastation behind her.”
And so much for the false Narrative that Avalon writer Chuck Dixon wouldn’t speak out about the ludicrous behavior of the SJWs in comics or his involvement with the Alt★Hero campaign:
Chuck Dixon, the Batman writer most known for co-creating the popular villain Bane and the man Bleeding Cool called “the most prolific comic book writer of all time,” has also been attacked for signing on with Alt★Hero. PJ Media spoke to Dixon about it. “A couple fellow travelers called me out on Facebook when the news came out that I’d be contributing to the Alt★Hero project. They had the echo chamber on their pages with all the usual assumptions and name calling,” he said. A quick search on Twitter showed multiple sources calling Dixon a “Nazi.”
“I’ve experienced a steep drop in assignments since 2000. Primarily from the two largest comics publishers [Marvel and DC Comics]. The reason for this can only be my politics and a change in editorship at those companies,” he said…. Dixon has heard disturbing things from his former employers. “The editor-in-chief at one company proudly tells people that I will never work there again as long as he’s in charge,” he said. “A friend of people high up in both companies suggested that I apologize for my political beliefs in order to get assignments again. That’s never going to happen,” he promised.
Definitely read the whole thing.
UPDATE: on a not-unrelated note, the reason Freestartr was temporarily down was that it was the target of a DDOS attack, presumably from SJWs attempting to interfere with the Alt★Hero campaign. If they’re this desperate to shut it down, perhaps it is worth supporting even if you’re not into comics.
Thanks to the enthusiasm of the Alt★Hero backers, we’ve just passed Stretch Goal #9 at 540 percent of the original objective, thereby committing us to providing a site dedicated to the series. This is a very positive sign as we enter the final stretch. There is strong interest in the role-playing game, so I’m confident that we’ll hit #10 without too much trouble. I suspect #11 is likely to prove a little ambitious, which is absolutely fine with me as we already have a considerable amount of work in front of us.
Fortunately, we have already brought two more experienced lead illustrators onto the team. As you can see, we’re now working with Timothy Lim, and although we lost Jinjerzilla as a lead illustrator, since he did not have sufficient time to take on the responsibility of illustrating full volumes, we were fortunate in being able to replace him with a longtime veteran of two major comics publishers who will be announced in the near future.
If you’re at all interested in role-playing games, I would strongly encourage you to back the RPG rulebook, as I think there is a very good chance that the system we are designing is not only going to be the best one for superheroes yet created, but will provide mechanics that translate effectively to science fiction, fantasy, and even military role-playing. What we’re doing here is more than creating a comics line, as we are building a strong foundation from which future offensives in the cultural war in comics, SF/F, and gaming can be launched.