On any other day, Wondermark’s ninth anniversary or my delight at seeing the expanding white zone/shrinking grey zone over to the right of today’s xkcd might have been top item of discussion, but instead we have to go back to the Kickstarter well again.

• Yeah, yeah, new Kickstarters, funding achieved in less than 22 hours with a month to go, the usual. Except there’s something quite novel about the Kickstarter for Smut Peddler (which has been A Thing for about 18 months now), and it’s a lede that’s halfway buried:
  

  This pre-order event will determine the bonuses of SP’s authors. They’ve already been paid for their contributions, but the more money this Kickstarter makes, the more money they get. [emphasis original]

  Actually, make that a couple of novel things: first, that the artists have been paid; second that they’ve been paid up front, before a single book is sold; third, that they will be paid more based on how successful the Kickstart is.

  If the Kickstarter reaches $20,000, each contributor/team gets an extra $50.00.
  If the Kickstarter reaches $25,000, each contributor/team gets an extra $100.00. [emphasis original]

  … and so on. Every US$5000 raised increases the payments to the creators by fifty bucks, on up to infinity. If Smut Peddler breaks into the ranks of the most successful comics projects (call it 50 large), each creator is looking at the original pay scale (US$50/page, per the original call for submissions) possibly doubling or tripling. And since these pre-ordered copies are being fulfilled against a known, public total pledge amount, there’s no need to delve into elaborate accounting or wonder exactly how royalties are being calculated¹.

  Also, it’s full of naked people gettin’ it on.

• At the opposite end of the spectrum, Tiny Kitten Teeth. Not to imply that Becky Dreistadt hasn’t ever drawn people gettin’ it on², it’s just not what one associates with her bright, colorful, sunny-dispositioned style. For those that want to see more of that style, TKT are heading down the print version route, with a handsome hardcover in the works featuring with big pages to suit the detail in the original watercolor/gouache pages.

  In addition to the book itself, Dreistadt (and partner/writing collaborator Frank Gibson) are offering patches, pins, prints, paintings, the usual enticements and holy crap original pages:

  Measuring in at 11×16 inches, few people outside of our close friends have ever seen original pages until now. You will be the only person other than us to own one. We don’t envision selling a page again for quite some time. These pages take days to complete and we are yet to part with one since we started, over 3 years ago!

  Translation: it would be only slightly trickier to get your hands on an original BONE or Calvin and Hobbes page than an original Tiny Kitten Teeth page. I think that the description is meant to convey that only one TKT page is up for grabs, but right now the Kickstarter doesn’t show it as a limited reward, so maybe more than one are available? One way to find out, my friends, and it’s gonna cost you US$1250 (which is entirely reasonable, given that is it certain that Becky Dreistadt will be listed in the annals of animation next to Mary Blair, Frank ‘n’ Ollie, Chuck Jones, Eric Goldberg, Andreas Deja, Richard Williams, and other giants of the field)³.

  Or, actually, I could pretend I’m some kind of journalist and just ask Frank and Becky about their intent, and it turns out it was intended as a limited reward, one person only, and now shows as such on the campaign page. Race for the prize begins: now.

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¹ Not that SP honcho Spike would try to screw the contributors to this publishing venture; I bring it up only to contrast with the traditional publisher/creator relationship, where the right to examine books and determine whether or not the degree to which you were getting screwed was seen as a major concession on the part of publishers/producers/studios/labels/etc.

² Or is incapable of doing so; after all, she’s a cartoonist, and the first place slow-time-at-the-con-table jam sketches go is to the naughty side of the equation.

³ Look ’em up, you should already know their names and significance if you’re the sort of person that hangs out here.