I am astonished. I could not have imagined a better outcome to this campaign, and I thank all of you sincerely for this extraordinary show of support. Right before we launched, I said to a friend — okay fine, I said to Eddie Vedder —”I feel like I’m about to take a stage dive, and I don’t know if the audience is there to catch me or not.”
Well, you were.
Many, many thanks to the Make That Thing team — Holly Rowland, Sara McHenry, David Malki, Eliza Rose and last but decidedly not least, my patient and meticulous production artist Christopher Kallini. I literally could not have done this without them.
Thanks also to everyone who donated rewards to help get the campaign off the ground: all the guys in Pearl Jam, of course (with special gratitude to Ed, who really went above and beyond on this thing), Bill Griffith, John Sayles and Maggie Renzi, Daniel Handler, and Andy Fischer. And special thanks to Jacques Lamarre at the Twain House for agreeing to host the book launch event.
And to Michael Moore, who came in at the six-hour mark with a matching-dollar donation to push the campaign over $300K—can’t express what an amazing surprise that was.
And the fine people at Kickstarter, who were kind enough to feature my campaign on their front page for a couple of weeks.
A special shoutout to John Scalzi, Gil Roth, Dave Gilson, John Fugelsang, Matt Ramos, Judd Apatow, Kelly Carlin, Greg Pak, Matt Bors, Seth Green, Peter Sagal, Duncan Black, Steve Silberman, Umair Haque, Richard Kadrey, Michele Catalano, Heidi MacDonald, John Dankosky, Gerard Way, Markos Moulitsas, Nicole Sandler, and everyone else who went out of their way to help me boost signal and get the word out over the course of the campaign. And apologies to everyone I’m forgetting, it’s been a long, mostly sleep-deprived month!
Most of all, thanks to all of you who pledged to this Kickstarter and not only helped me realize the dream of publishing these books, but pushed it so far beyond that initial goal that this campaign became a life-changing moment, not to mention a huge statement about the popularity of alt-weekly cartooning in an era of apparent decline and editorial indifference. The enthusiasm of your response means the world.
ADDING: If you’re just finding out about the KS, as some people apparently are—the campaign is over but we will be offering books for sale by pre-order, starting next week. I’ll post a link here as soon as the page is set up.