Spike Trotman and Iron Circus Comics are currently in the midest of their second-ever independent crowdfunding campaign for Letters for Lucardo: The Silent Lord, the third installment in the groundbreaking and popular LGBTQ erotica horror series from Finnish cartoonist Otava Heikkilä. The publisher has provided ComicBook with an exclusive look inside the graphic novel, which has about a week left in the crowdfunding campaign. You can see those pages below.
In this anticipated third graphic novel, the story takes a dark turn as aristocratic vampire Lucardo turns his terminally ill human lover Ed Fiedler over to the "god of all vampires" in a last-ditch effort to help him escape death. According to the announcement, The Silent Lord combines "elements of gothic horror, period romance, and ageless human questions about mortality and love."
The Letters for Lucardo series launched in 2017. The first two graphic novels are available on Amazon and ComiXology.
"The SIlent Lord, and Letters for Lucardo as a whole, is an absolute masterpiece," Iron Circus Publisher Spike Trotman said in a statement to ComicBook.com. "Not just as erotica, but as visual storytelling. I consider it one of Iron Circus' best contributions to the comics landscape."
"Letters for Lucardo is about love and natural desires in a supernatural setting, but it's also about queer coming-of-age experiences that may happen later in life, all the rebirths and shedding of old skins we go through as our identity and life circumstances evolve," said Otava Heikkilä. "The story is tender, but through it courses an unbroken link of generational trauma, as each member of the Night Court family attempts to find relief, empowerment, or control over their irreversible blood-oath to a cruel god-patriarch."
A crowdfunding early adopter, Iron Circus Comics pioneered the now widely-adopted bonus model in which creators share in the stretch goal profits. This incentive model completely reshaped the pay system of the small press, jump-starting the current renaissance of alt-comics anthologies. Iron Circus was also the first comics publisher of note to fully incorporate crowdfunding into its business model, inventing one of the single most effective uses of new media in comics publishing today. They recently launched their very first independent campaign for The Poorcraft Cookbook, which received over 700% funding, and have returned for a second success with Letters for Lucardo: The Silent Lord.
You can read the official synopsis for the project below.
When the vampire Lucardo, a royal member of the Court of Night, fell in love with a 61-year-old mortal named Edmund Fiedler, their passion grew legendary before Lucardo's practical father intervened. After a furious search, Lucardo finally reunited with his aging lover only to find him terminally ill with Shifter's Lung, filling his chest with blood and drowning him from the inside. But fiery Lucardo is having none of it; in a panic he goes against Ed's wishes, turning him over to the progenitor and god of his kind, the dreaded Silent Lord, in a last-ditch effort to help Ed escape death. Will Ed embrace this dark gift, living forever with his beloved? And what will it mean, surrendering himself to this uncaring, malevolent force that lives for nothing but tormenting those that call it "father?"
