Books, merchandise, and other extras from the fantasy/comedy webcomic.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Let's Unite Around A New Page (campaign recs!)
over 4 years ago
– Mon, Sep 27, 2021 at 09:15:25 PM
Hey, Leif & Thorn readers, now that I have your attention...can I tell you about some of the other beautiful comics getting funded on Kickstarter?
Because, wow, there are a bunch this year. And if there's one thing you learn in webcomics, it's that we all do better when we take the time to lift each other up.
These are in order by campaign deadline -- soonest first:
When I Was Me: Moments of Gender Euphoria
"Gender euphoria" is the overwhelming feeling of joy a gender-non-conforming person feels when their gender is explored, validated, and celebrated. From being called the right name, to photoshoots with friends, to performing as a different gender in a play; gender euphoria is something that can result from an infinite number of experiences.With original poetry, 11 interior illustrations, and over 60 comics, this book is a wonderful reminder that the trans experience is full of beauty and happiness.
The only nonfiction rec on this list, a big colorful bundle of trans joy. Which we all need more of, especially if you've ever felt overwhelmed by "stories about bad things happening to trans people."
Plus it's edited by a team of 3 webcomic creators, so you know it's good.
Following the titular schmucks, Johnny and Lisa as they aimlessly attempt to find their way home after accidentally activating Benjamin Franklin's lost time machine. Navigating the streets of 19th century Philadelphia with nothing more than an old notebook and a lot of booze, the schmucks will need all the help they can get to make it back to the modern day!
I think you guys all know I'm a sucker for time travel, right? Sometimes that means "serious dramatic time travel with high stakes" (see: Madoka Magica), but I also love a good "temporal fish-out-of-water have wacky hijinks" (see: Bill & Ted). Which it sounds like this has in spades.
He’s made his nice and naughty lists and checked them twice, but Gil the Toymaker has a third list in hand - a list of souls to be harvested for Death, who’s on his yearly vacation. A six-issue miniseries telling the story of Gil the Toymaker, a holiday gift giver who agreed millennia ago to act as Death one night a year in exchange for his immortality.
I know it sounds early for a Christmas-themed campaign, but they need the head start to get the comics delivered before actual Christmas, which is a valid goal. Also, I mean. It's about Santa filling in for the Grim Reaper. If you have any amount of holiday-special nostalgia, how can you pass it up?
As far as I can remember, I’ve always been fascinated by mermaids. After exploring their underwater universe through the stories of my characters Loukaa, Anemone or Uma, here comes Elio, a young gay merman and I’m very excited to share his adventures with you !
...guys. Guys, it's a cross-cultural bilingual fantasy m/m romance. Not only does the art look beautiful, the plot is so far up my street it's basically parked in my driveway.
Also, count me impressed that they made the bold move of writing it bilingually -- the humans and mermaids have different languages, represented by French and English. (Or is it the other way around?) I'd love to say I'm going to use this as an opportunity to brush up on my French...but to be honest, I'm more likely to keep flipping to the back of the book for the translations.
Imagine your office, bitten by a radioactive spider. That’s The Hero Business, a comic chronicling the day-to-day adventures of an agency that caters exclusively to superheroes (and their super-egos). Because with great power comes great marketability. The final reports are in! Can the staff put a pin in their personal problems long enough to defeat the final boss?
One of those long-running webcomics, it's been going since 2010, and reading the archives is a deep dive into "what was comics fandom feeling snarky about throughout the decade?" A funny, affectionate parody.
I Have So Much And I'm Ready To Show You (the add-ons post)
over 4 years ago
– Fri, Sep 24, 2021 at 06:08:59 PM
Here it is, the last of the Frequently Anticipated Questions posts.
...Unless you folks start asking new ones that I didn't anticipate. In which case, maybe I'll come back and make a new one.
How do I get add-ons for my tier?
Click the "Back this project" button -- or, if you already backed, click the "Manage your pledge" button that replaced it.
After the "Reward" section, there's an "Add-ons" section, which will have all of them listed:
If you picked a digital-only tier, that list will be limited to digital-only add-ons.
If you picked a tier with a paperback in it -- or if you switch to one of those tiers later in the campaign -- you'll unlock the pins, mini-prints, and other physical add-ons.
What are my options for the "extra mini-print" and "extra ebook" add-ons?
The extra mini-prints ($2 each):
The Leif & Thorn ones are 6x4", the BICP one is 5x3".
I've been offering these designs for the last few years, and really planned for them to be all sold out by now...but I also planned on doing some convention appearances during 2020/2021, and, well, we know how that turned out.
So if you missed your chance to get them last year, good news, they're still around!
The extra ebooks ($5 each):
"Just the New Stuff" is for readers who bought the original 8-volume But I'm A Cat person ebook set, and want to see the exclusive extras from the Master's Edition without re-buying the whole main story.
The ebook version of the Master's Edition is adifferent add-on ($20). Even in the digital version, I'm not selling those separately! Look for the whole set as a separate entry in the add-ons list.
I want the new But I'm A Cat Person: Master's Edition box set, and I didn't manage to grab one in the original campaign. Can I get that as an add-on here?
The ebook set: yes! (It's listed separately from the "single extra ebook" add-on.)
The paperback/hardcover sets: unfortunately, not yet.
I still have some work to do on fulfilling the current BICP orders, and I think it's only fair to take care of those before I start taking new ones.
It's making steady progress, though -- so maybe this will change before the end of the campaign? Stay tuned.
What's this Nice Fun Token add-on? I don't get it.
It's a parody of a big cryptocurrency fad.
If you don't want to read a long explanation: just think of it as "become the sponsor of a strip," but rebranded so it sounds trendier.
if you haven't heard of the original concept (consider yourself lucky), here's the basic idea:
You know how dollar bills have serial numbers printed on them? Well, imagine a $1 bill where the serial number was the exact geographic coordinates of the Brooklyn Bridge. If you owned that bill, wouldn't it basically be the same as you owning the Brooklyn Bridge? Gosh, think what an amazing and worthwhile investment it would be if you bought that bridge...in the form of paying me thousands of dollars to buy that $1 bill.
Now switch that to, it's a Bitcoin token, and the ID number includes the exact URL where I uploaded a copy of Nyan Cat.
Wouldn't that basically mean you own Nyan Cat? Amazing, right? Now this single Bitcoin is worth thousands of times as much as a regular Bitcoin!
...Don't stop and think about it too hard, or you might miss this amazing opportunity. You'll have plenty of time for second-guessing AFTER you give me thousands of dollars.
Also: the process of making/trading these tokens burns more fossil fuels every year than a lot of small countries.
That's what NFTs are.
(The acronym is for "Non-Fungible Token." Fungible just means interchangeable with something else -- like how any $1 bill is worth the same as any other $1 bill. But the Brooklyn Bridge $1 bill isn't fungible, because if you exchange it for any old bill that has a different number, then gosh, you won't "own the Brooklyn Bridge" anymore.)
So in this add-on, I borrowed the phrase "Nice Fun Token" from another webcomic creator. The URLs you get to "own" are Leif & Thorn strips. And I don't do it with cryptocurrency, or recording your "ownership" in the blockchain, or colossal environmental damage.
I just put it all in a Google spreadsheet.
When will I find out if I get to prompt you one of the Early Bird sketches?
I probably won't ask you for the prompt until after the campaign is over, because backers are always allowed to increase/decrease their pledges before the final deadline --
But there's a way you can check in the meantime:
Visit your Backed Projects page, and click the blue "+" sign next to Leif & Thorn Volume 4. It'll show a bunch of details, including "Backer number" at the very bottom.
If your number is between 1 and 17, and your pledge is $25 or more (and stays that way until the end of the campaign), you're one of the 15 people who get a prompt!
(Backers with numbers 1-17 at the $5 level: if you switch to a higher tier before the campaign is over, I'll offer you an extra sketch prompt too, without disqualifying anyone else. Seems like a dick move to do it any other way.)
I Cross The Oceans, I Fly On The Skyline (the shipping FAQ)
over 4 years ago
– Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 03:39:58 PM
Frequently Anticipated Questions, part 2! Postage & packing edition. (If your question isn't here already, don't hesitate to ask.)
Gonna try a different format, let's see how this looks...
Kickstarter didn't ask for my address, how will you know where to ship Leif & Thorn Volume 4?
Kickstarter doesn't ask about that until the campaign is over. (This is so I don't get duplicate/contradicting information from people who change their pledges while it's is live.)
After the funds are transferred, I'll send surveys to all backers to collect the information I need, including shipping addresses for everyone who got a paperback (or several).
Can I recycle the envelope you send my book in?
Please do!
I'm using EcoEnclose padded mailers, which are 100% paper product. You can reuse them the next time you have send mail to someone else, or put them directly in the recycling.
(If you get a multi-book order, it'll be coming in a regular cardboard sleeve/box. Please recycle that too.)
Why is shipping outside the US so expensive?
Standard answer: Unfortunately, I'm not enough of a big deal to use a multinational fulfillment service (which would print hundreds of books in different regions, for cheaper shipping to countries all around the world).
No, this is just going to be me, in my living room, packing each volume by hand. Until Leif & Thorn gets a few hundred times more popular, this is the best I can do.
At least Kickstarter backers are used to "your book might arrive a few months behind schedule, that's totally normal and nothing to worry about, the important part is it arrived." Anyone with customers who expect Guaranteed 2-Day Shipping No Extra Charge must be tearing their hair out right now.
So, yeah, it's a mess.
The only real thing people like you and me can do is, get our shots and wear our masks. Maybe then, by the time we get to the Volume 5 campaign, prices will stop being pandemic-quarantine-nightmare-awful and go back to normal international-postage-awful.
If I'm outside the US and I already ordered the But I'm A Cat Person omnibus, can you mail that in the same box as my Leif & Thorn order, to save on shipping fees/boxes/trips to the customs office? Or will you run out of storage if you have to hold onto the BICP books for that long?
I have plenty of space for book boxes, no worries there!
And for non-US backers who have both BICP and Leif & Thorn on preorder -- yes, I'll definitely reach out to you and offer to ship them together.
(Unless a specific order falls into some really weird edge case with package sizes and pricing...but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.)
Unfortunately, I can't predict the savings on any specific order right now, so I can't build upfront discounts into the Leif & Thorn Volume 4 campaign.
But when I get to the point of actually packing the boxes, I'll run the numbers. If the difference in postage for any individual backer turns out big enough, I'll offer to do something with the savings. Figure out partial refunds for people who need them, convert the $$ into extra add-ons for people who want them -- that kind of thing.
Are you sure you can ship Leif & Thorn Volume 4 to my non-US country at all? We keep having trade blocks, and new taxes, and quarantines, and, and, and...
Things are pretty miserable, huh?
Still, all the international backers on previous Leif & Thorn campaigns have gotten their books. And I have no intention of breaking that streak now.
Don't worry about price hikes. I look up the exact postage to individual countries (using https://postcalc.usps.com/) before I start any Kickstarter campaign. On top of that, the budget includes an "emergency cushion" for unplanned costs, including any Surprise New Shipping Fees.
If we get to the point when the books are ready to send, and shipping from my country to yours is just flat-out suspended for some reason...or if there's a short-term emergency where the lower shipping rates aren't available (like we have between the US and Australia as I write this)...
Well, I'll get in touch with the affected backers, and figure out what works for each of you.
Best case scenario, it could be as simple as "I hang onto the package until services get un-suspended, put it in the mail a few weeks later, and from there it arrives just fine." (Knock wood. Knock all the wood.)
Tell Me Once, Tell Me Twice (the FAQ post)
over 4 years ago
– Wed, Sep 22, 2021 at 11:04:56 PM
In case you missed it, I uploaded a set of answers to the campaign FAQ page.
These are really Frequently Anticipated Questions, since you folks are a pretty quiet bunch...if you do have a question that isn't on the list yet, please comment here and ask!
Here's the first part of the list, covering General Questions. I'll do a couple posts later that dive deeper into Shipping Questions and Add-On Questions.
The main track is from the Youtube Audio Library, a great resource for royalty-free music:
Video Link: https://youtu.be/fyebhdpHk68
Free Download: http://bit.ly/2jAdeHb
Artist: Francis Preve
Track: Plaidness
With a short interlude from the public-domain classical piece that is (in a different arrangement) the theme of Eurovision:
Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbbWZPlQW_8
Artist: Marc-Antoine Charpentier
Track: Te Deum - Prelude
Q. Can the books really be this cheap? A lot of Marvel and DC books will only have, like, 138 pages for the same price. And those are big-time publishers!
Okay, confession time: I do need to start charging more soon.
In fact, if you check the year-round Leif & Thorn store, you'll see that the books there have already been raised to $25 each.
But I didn't want to spring a price change on Kickstarter backers without warning! Not when you've been so loyal and supportive over the years.
So: this campaign will be the very last place you can get Leif & Thorn books for $20 each. Don't miss your chance to stock up.
I've Been Waiting For This Night
over 4 years ago
– Mon, Sep 20, 2021 at 09:20:38 PM
(Can I find a Eurovision-themed title for every update in this campaign? We'll find out.)
So, uh, wow. The extra prep and early promotion I've been doing for Leif & Thorn Volume 4 has paid off -- 24 hours from launch and we're 57% funded.
Also, got that Project We Love badge from Kickstarter right out of the gate.
Welcome, everyone! Thank you for the support. Tell your friends! Let's keep this momentum rolling.
Look at this beautiful progress bar. (Adorned with Kale, doing his best impression of TIX from Eurovision 2021.)
Special shoutout to the Canadian, European, and Australian backers. A good chunk of this goal is just "the cost of shipping books to your countries," and I appreciate everyone of you for putting up with it.
In case you missed it -- another chunk of the main goal, and the reason why it's extra-large this year, is "the cost of a whole new print run of Volume 2."
Behold, the Shelf of Backlist:
I have more copies of Volumes 1 and 3, stashed in boxes under a bed. (The narrow space left above them is my cat's favorite sleepin' space.)
But for Volume 2, this is basically all that's left.
It's...it's almost like these books are popular or something, you know?
And even with all that -- I'm doing a slightly shorter campaign this year. Just 25 days left to secure your copy of Volume 4: Blazing Stars. Pass it on.
