Theater Hopper Kickstarter Makes 80% of Its Goal in One Day

Tom Brazelton's Theater Hopper, ComicBook.com's pick for the best webcomic of 2012, took to Kickstarter today in the hopes of raising enough up-front revenue to get digital graphic novels made via Graphicly, and after its first day of fundraising is nearly 80% (79.333% as of this writing) funded. Brazelton, who narrowly accomplished his previous Kickstarter attempt back in 2010, took to the site to provide backers with an update and share his exuberance over what appears to be a much easier road to success this time around.

Three years ago, I launched my first Kickstarter campaign - a fundraiser for Theater Hopper: Year Three. The goal was $3,500. The campaign generated a little bit more than that - we ended up just short of $4,000. Still, there were days during that campaign that I didn't think we were going to make it. There were times when I felt like I was clawing and scraping for every last pledge. There were some VERY generous people that helped to put that campaign over the top, but I'll admit there was a time when I made peace with the idea that a third book wasn't going to happen and that I was going to get out of the publishing game. Fast forward to today, and you guys have exceeded my wildest expectations. I'm trying to figure out what's different. Probably the biggest difference is that Kickstarter was still in its salad days in 2009. Only a couple of other web comic artists were using it to fund their projects. In fact, I remember being taken to task for diminishing the art form because I was likened to a bum with his hat in his hand. I was told plainly that if my comic wasn't popular enough to generate the up-front costs through traffic and advertising, then there clearly wasn't demand for my product. I think history has proven those assumptions to be false and I can't tell you how gratifying it is to see the value others place in a crowd sourcing platform like this. I think people "get" Kickstarter a little better these days. They understand more what artists are trying to do with the limited resources they have and they want to be a part of something bigger. I think that's exceptionally cool.

His experience is a pretty common one, of course, and while the conversation over crowdfunding has involved, the Kickstarter campaign for The Goon showed us that the conversation hasn't yet let up, when it comes to more popular, widely known and financially stable creators choosing to crowdfund their projects. You can check out Brazelton's video below or click on the link above for more information on the Theater Hopper ebook Kickstarter campaign.