After a month-long campaign on Kickstarter, Kevin Eastman’s graphic novel Drawing Blood has been fully funded. In the end, this crowdfunding enterprise managed to raise a total of $106,176, which will be more than enough to complete the book. The original goal was for $75,000, but it was surpassed by over $30,000 by the time the campaign was over. This is big news, because it means they reached their stretch goal for this project and will now also be able to fund an additional comic book.
For those who aren’t aware, Drawing Blood is a semi-autobiographical tale about a comic artist named Shane Bookman who creates an incredibly popular series entitled Radically Rearranged Ronin Ragdolls. Roughly fifteen years after the franchise takes off, Bookman finds himself tapped out creatively and in financial trouble with the wrong people. This graphic novel will tell his story, and according to Eastman, he may have come up with the idea from various tales he either heard or lived during his career.
The stretch goal for this Kickstarter was an additional comic book featuring the origin story of the Radically Rearranged Ronin Ragdolls. Everyone who pledged more than $10 will receive a copy of this comic which will be drawn by Troy Little with layouts by Kevin Eastman. Considering that the title of this comic is clearly a reference to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it’ll be interesting to see what these artists come up with. I wouldn’t put it past Eastman to sneak in a few visual nods to the TMNT, and that might just make this a desirable collectible for some fans.
Unfortunately, now that the campaign is over, you can no longer pledge to receive either Drawing Blood or Radically Rearranged Ronin Ragdolls. Although we can probably expect them to release their graphic novel to the public, the related comic book might remain a Kickstarter exclusive. We’ll have to wait and see what actually happens, but at the very least it’s nice to see that this project has been fully funded.