Tag Archives: spike trotman

NSFW Exclusive: Celebrate Valentine’s Day with Jonas Goonface’s raunchy and adorable Valentine Cards

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Spike Trotman’s Iron Circus Comic first project of 2025 is The Unsinkable Ship of Fools, a raunchy supernatural graphic novel by breakout artist Jonas Goonface, co-creator and artist of the brilliantly imaginative Godshaper. The Unsinkable Ship of Fools follows a mysterious magical train populated by a group of mangey misfits with no way to get off… well, off the train, anyway. Steeped in supernatural fantasy, mystery, suspense and romance, and written and illustrated by Goonface in his gritty, grotesque, and fabulously filthy art style, The Unsinkable Ship of Fools is available now on Kickstarter.

Freaks, geeks, or mangey misfits, no one is too strange for The Unsinkable Ship of Fools! With no boss to answer to, and no brakes to stop their course, creature comforts and carnal bliss are all that remain to the cast of colorful vagabonds aboard the train. Through a series of magical erotic encounters, this ragtag group of castoffs must find the answers to the mysteries of the raucous, anarchic locomotive: where is it going, who’s driving this thing, and, ultimately, who’s in charge of your fate?

Boasting 250 pages of full color supernatural erotica, this 6.625-inch by 10.185-inch rail-punk paperback offers unexpected and devious delights to enjoyers of all genres, including explicit sex scenes, feral fantasies, and truly unique characters with a plethora of body types, genders, orientations and ethnicities rarely featured in erotic works. The campaign will feature early bird tiers that feature free domestic and discounted international shipping for the first hour after launch, as well the option to add on other popular Iron Circus titles.

To celebrate the 2025 launch as well as Valentine’s Day enjoy these exclusive Valentine’s Cards by Goonface and make sure to back the graphic novel!

Exclusive Preview: Perfect Crime Party is 25 tales from over 40 creators

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Perfect Crime Party

Spike Trotman’s Iron Circus Comics has launched a BackerKit campaign to publish Perfect Crime Party, a full color 300+ page anthology containing 25 light-heart tales of criminal activity from over 40 incredible creators as well as a cover by Jeff Smith.

From club-style murder mysteries to anxious teens hijinx to acts of protest, Perfect Crime Party asks the immortal questions: What’s the perfect crime? And what do you think you could get away with?

The campaign will feature multiple tiers for backers, including a digital version of the book, a print version of the book featuring additional art, and a bundle featuring all of Iron Circus’s previous general anthologies, including Sleep of Reason, New World, Timrous Beastie, FTY Ya’ll, Failure to Launch, and the Eisner-award-winning You Died!

The campaign ends on September 27 at 11pm EDT.

Check out an exclusive preview from three of the stories below followed by a complete list of what’s inside the anthology!

Trevor n Derrick Le Debacle de Fromage by Matylda McCormack-Sharp –  A mouse is determined to get its favorite cheese all to itself. 

Racked by Chuck Harp, Luis Santamarina, and Rob Jones – When your crimes need art supplies, the answer is more crime

Smugglers Abroad by Michelle Gruppetta and Fleur Sciortino – A family tries to get the best chocolate over the border.

PERFECT CRIME PARTY has quite the wanted list in its line up:

  • Bluedolph the Dead Nose Reindeer by Tayson Martindale – Someone has murdered one of Santa’s Reindeer and there is only one detective who can find out which perp belongs on the naughty list!
  • By The Horns by Malcolm Derikx & Brenna Baines – Teens in ancient Greece plan to save their favorite bull for a sacrificial alter.
  • Darling Doesn’t Know by John Konrad – Two celebrities think murder is an easier solution to their problems than divorce.
  • Grand Theft Octo by Kate Ashwin & Claude TC – This set of thieves is gonna rob the most expensive casino in the galaxy!
  • Joke Theft by Henry Barajas & Kit Mills – A joke thief makes the perfect set.
  • Play It Again by Tango, Amy Chase, Xenon Honchar, & Noah Stephens – A vampire wants to recover memorabilia of his old band for a music collection.
  • Polyphonic Funk: My Outlaw Melody by David Brothers & Alissa Sallah – A delinquent plans a car heist with the help of her dead father’s ghost.
  • Prym and Burn by Mariah McCourt & Jules Rivera – Without easy access to divorce, women in Victorian London need to find other ways to free themselves from abusive husbands.
  • Psikotika Will Strike At Midnight by Illuminated – A detective tries their best to stop a grand theft they were warned was coming.
  • Racked by Chuck Harp, Luis Santamarina, & Rob Jones – When your crimes need art supplies, the answer is more crime. 
  • Reap What You Sow by Ale Green & Fanny Rodriguez – Gorilla gardening is the best solution to beautify the neighborhood and help native plants.
  • Sideswiped by Chris Sebela & Kendall Goode – A sap finds out his first date was a set up.
  • Sincerely A Lady by Molly Muldoon & Caitlin Like – A new wardrobe reveals a history of sneaking, spying, and gossip.
  • Smugglers Abroad by Michelle Gruppetta & Fleur Sciortino – A family tries to get the best chocolate over the border.
  • Spirit Duplicator by Rodrigo Vargas & Coni Yovaniniz – Fraud and theft are the only ways to stop this card-playing bully.
  • The Cloud Thief by Erin Roseberry – A witch needs to steal some clouds to make it rain.
  • The Crime Beat by Van Jensen & Neal Obermeyer – An underpaid journalist takes revenge on their boss.
  • The Good Word by Bevan Thomas & Reetta Linjama – A snake oil salesman meets his match in a small town.
  • The Heist by Amy Chu & Anderson Cabral – In a world where paper is rarer than gold, a thief must break into the most heavily guarded building in town: the library.
  • The Ninth Life of Tabitha Tuxedo by James F Wright & Jackie Crofts – Tabitha Tuxedo conducts an elaborate jailbreak for their partner in crime.
  • The Plague of the Living Rest Benches by Nathaniel Wilson – Scientist and unethical experiments have led to the sidewalks of the world being deadly. 
  • The Swinevald Pearl by Ben Coleman & Cat Farris – All the security in the world won’t stop this otter from getting his pearl. 
  • The Twenty-One Foot Rule by Nick Mamatas & Jules Valera –  A fake and deadly duel turns out to be not so fake after all. 
  • Trevor n Derrick Le Debacle de Fromage by Matylda McCormack-Sharp –  A mouse is determined to get its favorite cheese all to itself. 
  • Written Off by Ryan Estrada & Axur Eneas – A movie crew aims to steal the rights back from the corporation that is ruining their movie. 

Exclusive: What’s the perfect crime? And what do you think you could get away with? Find out in Perfect Crime Party

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Perfect Crime Party

Spike Trotman’s Iron Circus Comics is launching a BackerKit campaign to publish Perfect Crime Party, a full color 300+ page anthology containing 25 light-heart tales of criminal activity from over 40 incredible creators as well as a cover by Jeff Smith. From club-style murder mysteries to anxious teens hijinx to acts of protest, Perfect Crime Party asks the immortal questions: What’s the perfect crime? And what do you think you could get away with?

The campaign will feature multiple tiers for backers, including a digital version of the book, a print version of the book featuring additional art, and a bundle featuring all of Iron Circus’s previous general anthologies, including Sleep of Reason, New World, Timrous Beastie, FTY Ya’ll, Failure to Launch, and the Eisner-award-winning You Died!

The anthology features Smugglers Abroad by Michelle Gruppetta and Fleur Sciortino. In it, a family tries to get the best chocolate over the border. 

‘Smugglers Abroad’ is a zany, heart-warming short comic that showcases the lengths a husband will go, to be able to provide his wife with her favourite treats. This short comic is based in  Malta, during the 1980s, a turbulent time when the island was facing harsh restrictions on food importation to boost local products. The government’s strict import laws, which forbade everything from chocolate to toothpaste to pasta, drove people to “acquire” higher quality products through other means; mainly by smuggling them into Malta via Sicily. Those who travelled were inevitably tasked by their friends and family to return with the coveted loot, and most prized among them was definitely chocolate. While this may seem silly to us now, it definitely turned a lot of Maltese people to a ‘life of crime.’

– Michelle Gruppetta

In Racked by Chuck Harp, Luis Santamarina, and Rob Jones, when your crimes need art supplies, the answer is more crime.

Ultimately, ‘Racked’ is a story about determination. A cross-generational struggle to follow our ambitions in the face of fear. This isn’t a crime showcasing evil, but presenting the desperate. Sure, this is a tale of thieving kids painting trains, but it also speaks to the pursuit that starves artists and baffles families.”

– Chuck Harp

As an artist, I believe that “Racked” offers me the opportunities to embark on an immersive urban adventure and push beyond my usual comfort zone, which typically lies within the realm of fantasy.”

– Luis Santamarina

Racked gave me the chance to work on a more fun, grounded and down to Earth comic than I sometimes get to, and it’s a fun story of working together.

– Rob Jones

‘Le Debacle de Fromage’ is by Matylda McCormack-Sharp:

My story features two characters I have been drawing since I was 11; unlikely friends, Trevor (the elephant) and Derrick (the mouse). In ‘Le Debacle de Fromage!’ we see the pair navigate the highs and lows of living with roommates, and what happens when the most heinous crime is committed… cheese theft…

Perfect Crime Party launches soon, so don’t miss out by signing up now.

Exclusive Preview: S.E. Case’s Acclaimed Webcomic Hit Series Rigsby WI Heads To Iron Circus Books

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Spike Trotman’s Iron Circus Comics has launched a BackerKit campaign to publish the first ever, highly anticipated print edition of the cartoonist S.E. Case’s webcomic hit series Rigsby WI. The funny, naturalistic graphic novel series chronicles the lives of a group of average teenagers in a small city in Northern Wisconsin. It’s a series about growing up and the things that shape us, including relationships, poverty, race and sexuality, and how we choose to present ourselves to our friends, family, and the rest of the world. The BackerKit for the first book, a 120 page graphic novel titled Rigsby WI: Foothold is now live.

Sometimes as a teen in a small town, you can feel trapped — trapped enough to want to gnaw off your own leg to escape. Bethany has gotten some much needed stability in Rigsby, WI — she’s away from her oppressively disapproving mother, and the other local teens Jeordie, Erik, and Anna have welcomed her in — and together the four of them know how to escape from the world that is closing in on them. While Case’s vibrant art and naturalistic writing doesn’t shy away from the rougher experiences and feelings of teens, it also covers the truly important topics like, “is Phish a good band?”, “is the neck the dong of the torso?” and “Ernest Hemingway: Was he a piece of shit?” Nostalgic, sweet, bitter and funny all at once, Rigsby WI feels like a teenage afternoon spent with friends, with all the pathos, boredom and absurdity inherent therein. 

We have an exclusive look and you can support the graphic novel now!

Rigsby WI

Exclusive: Get a look at Wine Ghost Goes to Hell’s Bookplate and a look inside the graphic novel

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Spike Trotman’s Iron Circus Comics is crowdfunding Wine Ghost Goes to Hell, the irreverent, sassy, and sexy graphic novel debut from cartoonist Sage Coffey. Best known for their work in The New Yorker, The Nib, The Washington Post and on the GLAAD 2021 nominated video game BUGSNAX, Sage Coffey is a trans nonbinary cartoonist living in Chicago, IL. Their full color graphic novel debut is a supernatural romp, featuring a slice of glamor and disaster, and  the prelaunch page is now live on BackerKit.

When Wine Ghost was alive, she was an alcohol-soaked train wreck. Now that she’s dead… Well, not all that much has changed. When an old friend from her living days unexpectedly dies, Wine Ghost is faced with a lot more responsibility than she bargained for. She learned the ropes to hell a long time ago but it’s his first rodeo. And, boy, howdy, it’s a wild one. 

We’ve got an exclusive look at the bookplate from the supernatural romp:

Wine Ghost Goes to Hell bookplate

Wine Ghost Goes to Hell will feature pink dyed page edges, and the BackerKit campaign will feature rewards and stretch goals, including glow-in-the-dark Wine Ghost vinyl figures. Support it now and check out the preview below!

Spike Trotman Launches an Independent Crowdfunding Campaign for The Poorcraft Cookbook

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In 2009, Spike Trotman launched a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter for Iron Circus Comics’ Poorcraft graphic novel. Over the course of the next twelve years, Spike Trotman and Iron Circus Comics have completely transformed the indie publishing landscape, crowdfunding nearly 2.5 million dollars over the course of more than 30 projects. Now Trotman is poised to shake up the publishing industry again with the launch of Iron Circus Comics’ first-ever completely independently run crowdfunding campaign, which will be hosted on the Iron Circus Comics’ website.

Now funding on the Iron Circus Comics’ website, The Poorcraft Cookbook is a 200+ page masterpiece of recipes, techniques, and buying tips from the cartoonist Nero Villagallos O’Reilly. The all new book features amazing appetizers, entertaining entrees, dazzling desserts, and creative cocktails, all of which are curated for those living frugally. 

A crowdfunding early adopter, Iron Circus Comics pioneered the now widely-adopted bonus model in which creators share in the stretch goal profits. This incentive model completely reshaped the pay system of the small press, jump-starting the current renaissance of alt-comics anthologies. Iron Circus was also the first comics publisher of note to fully incorporate crowdfunding into its business model, inventing one of the single most effective uses of new media in comics publishing today.

Iron Circus Kickstarts Webcomic Lackadaisy into an Original Animated Short

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Iron Circus Comics Publisher Spike Trotman, cartoonist Tracy Butler, and director Fable Siegel are partnering for an ambitious multimedia crowdfunding campaign to adapt Butler’s webcomic phenomenon Lackadaisy into an original animated short, along with a new collection of art and never before published mini-comics, The Lackadaisy Essentials.

The 32-day campaign is the first ever multimedia undertaking for Iron Circus Comics. The trailblazing comics publisher that has funded more
than 20 graphic novels and raised close to $1.5 million in funding on Kickstarter.

Set in St. Louis, Missouri during the days of Prohibition, Tracy Butler’s Eisner Award-nominated webcomic Lackadaisy features the Lackadaisy, a speakeasy tucked away in a cave beneath the Little Daisy Cafe, where flashing the club symbol from a deck of cards grants every cat in-the-know access to more moonshine than they could ever drink. The joint’s packed full of tough dames, crooked cops, rum-runners, and wide-eyed ingenues. And they are, literally, all cool cats. The jazzy, sepia-toned crime story features action and adventure, comedy and crime, and a colorful cast of cats, including the Lackadaisy proprietors Atlas and Mitzi May, rumrunner Rocky Rickaby, and the sharp-tongued heiress to the quickly-dwindling Lackadaisy fortune, Ivy Pepper.

As the creator of the comic, Tracy will play a role as co-director on the animated short, overseeing art direction. Voice actors include:

  • Michael Kovach  (@kovox) as Rocky Rickaby! 
  •  Belsheber Rusape (@BelRusapeVO) as Calvin “Freckle” McMurray! 
  •  Lisa Reimold (@lisareimold)  as Ivy Pepper! 
  •  Ashe Wagner (@TheQueenViking)  as Mitzi May! 
  • and SungWon Cho (@ProZD) as Mordecai Heller! 

Pledges for Lackadaisy range from The Lackadaisy Essentials eBook to The Complete Lackadaisy Goodie Bag (featuring the Lackadaisy Essentials art book, volumes one and two of the Lackadaisy comic collections in ebook form, a digital wallpaper set, the completed film as an HD digital download, and a download of the soundtrack and storyboards). Lackadaisy even includes a pledge level to receive an Associate Producer credit on the Lackadaisy Animated Short.

If funded through Kickstarter, pledges will be delivered to backers this fall. Lackadaisy is live as of March 16, 2020 and runs for 32 days.

Around the Tubes

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It’s new comic book day! What’s everyone excited for? What do you plan on getting? Sound off in the comments below! While you await for your comic stores to open, here’s some comic news from around the web.

Newsarama – Venom Begins Production – Cool?

The Beat – Spike Trotman’s Iron Circus Comics has raised $1 million on Kickstarter..and to celebrate they’re having a sale – Awesome! Congrats to Spike and crew!

Fresh Romance Announces New Creative Teams, Stories, and two new Kickstarter Stretch Goals

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Fresh RomanceRosy Press publisher Janelle Asselin has announced the new creative teams and stories for upcoming issues of Fresh Romance, the digital romance comics magazine that is currently being funded via a now-live Kickstarter campaign. Upcoming stories will include:

  • A sexy and surprising fantasy tale written by Marguerite Bennett.
  • The first ever collaboration of writer Marcy Cook and Maya Kern, in which a couple wins, then loses, a heart-shaped helium balloon which they follow through the fair.
  • A romantic comedy about one woman’s deep, abiding love… for a Game Master by Jen Van Meter and Kyle Latino with Marissa Louise.
  • A fantasy story from the publisher of the Smut Peddler anthology, Spike Trotman, about a woman in a tower who romanticizes a man she sees from above everyday.

Asselin’s new imprint Rosy Press will debut Fresh Romance in May 2015. The first issue of the monthly anthology features sundry stories ranging from a clandestine, queer high school love affair to an impeccably researched and illustrated Regency-era romance.

Rosy Press has also announced two significant, newsworthy stretch goals:

  • A Kevin Wada cover for issue 5, plus a digital wallpaper pack of all the covers for all backers will be added if the Kickstarter campaign raises $42,500.
  • A 10-page comic written by bestselling writer Gail Simone and illustrated by Rafaela Herrera will be available exclusively for all backers who are one-year subscribers, if the Kickstarter campaign raises $47,500.

Aimed at attracting a diverse readership, Fresh Romance content will be available in a variety of digital formats: via ComiXology or as a PDF, CBR, or ePub file, and will always be DRM-free.