THIS MODERN WORLD

Let me be clear that copies of 25 Years of Tomorrow WILL NOT BE HERE IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS. (Update: it looks like we’ll have books into our warehouse in late January, and the team at Make That Thing will start shipping them out as soon as possible after that.)

But if you want to pre-order a copy as a gift, I’ve made up a little gift certificate that you can wrap and put under the tree as a placeholder! Just follow these simple instructions:

1. Click the thumbnail below.

2. Download and print.

3. Place in a small box and wrap festively!

The numbers are a little fuzzy, as we try to figure out how many books to set aside for lost/damaged copies, how many to set aside for backers who want additional sets, and so on — but it looks like we’re only going to have a couple hundred remaining out of the print run, so if you’re interested in this, don’t wait too long!

I’ve been deep in book production since the end of the Kickstarter, and clearly haven’t been updating the blog. Just wanted to post a quick reminder that even if you missed the KS, you can still pre-order a copy of the book here. (Backers will have a chance to order extra copies when we send out the checkout note, which will happen closer to the moment that we have books in hand.) (Also, just FYI: the final slipcover design looks nothing like the early mockup.)

I’ve got production samples in hands of various elements of the book, including a mockup of the slipcover complete with two 500 page volumes of blank pages. I’m torn between wanting to share photos of everything and wanting to play it close to the vest, so that the whole package is a surprise for backers.

I believe that we’re on schedule to ship books in January as promised. It’s unfortunate that we won’t have them in time for Christmas, but I do plan to post a downloadable certificate you can print and put under the tree as a placeholder, if you want to pre-order a set of the books as a gift for someone.

…ADDING: quantities are limited! Most of our print run was pre-sold through the Kickstarter, and we’ve sold a couple hundred more after the fact. There’s a decent possibility that we’ll sell out this run before Christmas, so if you’re interested, don’t wait too long!

If you missed the big Kickstarter, you can still pre-order the book here. The number of pre-orders we get in the next few weeks will be a big factor in determining how many extra books over the Kickstarter totals we order from the printer, so definitely don’t assume it will always be available down the road—if you’re interested, you should get your order in now.

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.

Some initial thoughts on this long journey, as the Kickstarter campaign heads into the final few days..

It was October 2013, and I was a guest speaker on The Nation’s yearly fundraising/seminar cruise, which that year went up the Eastern coastline and had a stop in Quebec City. I disembarked with my wife and kid and we spent the day wandering around, at one point stopping in a bookstore where I saw Taschen’s two volume Mid-Century Advertising set — a beautifully produced, 700 page, two volume hardcover set, in a slipcase.

So fast forward to early 2014. I’ve spent many idle hours browsing through the Taschen books, which have become a permanent fixture on my desk. And at some point this idea starts to creep into my mind: wouldn’t it be cool to do something like that for This Modern World? Something like the Complete Far Side, or the Complete Calvin & Hobbes? I started working on the strip in the late 80s, but 1990 was the moment that it started to gain any traction, so that’s what I’ve always considered the starting point—which makes 2015 the 25th anniversary. And I always said, if I was going to go through all the work involved in a Kickstarter, I was gonna do it for something big.

Continue reading “Home stretch”