The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

(Promo from Lil in Space, the potential second O’Connell/Elwick Lil picture book)

More new comics news from Paul O’Connell (creator of the much linked Muppet Wicker Man and the great Charlie Parker Handyman with Lawrence Elwick) – he’s looking at getting another of his and Elwick’s strips into print:

“A while ago a US production company approached illustrator Lawrence Elwick and myself, expressing an interest in producing a series of books featuring a character we had developed called ‘Lil’ – a little girl who never speaks but goes on some very cool adventures, and we’ve just launched a Kickstarter campaign to try and generate funding for the project.

If you’re not familiar with Kickstarter, it’s one of a new breed of indie funding initiatives where people are asked to pledge a token of financial support to an arts project in exchange for a ‘reward’.

For instance, with our project, if you pledge $10 (about £6.50) you’ll get copies of the first two Lil books which will be 5.75″ inch square, full colour, heavy stock board books.”

The “Lil” page on Kickstarter is currently registering a respectable $1000, but the books need $6000 for guaranteed publication. It’s rather a strange model for publication perhaps, and certainly isn’t that far away from some Victorian style rich sponsor but it’s also very similar to many other fan-driven models we’ve seen in the last few years in the creative industries, especially the music industry.

What really counts in all this is that the creators are satisfied with this and that the books in question are worthy of printing – Well, looking at the images on the World Of Lil website and reading the blurb : “‘Lil in Space’ reveals the truth that NASA did not want you to know! That the missing link between monkeys and men in the race into space was actually a very determined little girl with a stoic smile and matching hand-luggage!” definitely made me want to see more. It looks rather lovely.

(Art by Lawrence Elwick from Circus Lil, the proposed second Lil book)

More on O’Connell at “The Sound of Drowning”, whilst Elwick’s work can be seen at his blog.