21-Day Campaign Featuring Coffin Comics’ Lady Death and the World’s Greatest Heroes Opens to Record Numbers!
FIRST STRETCH GOAL ANNOUNCED: BOOK TO BE EXPANED FROM 48 TO 56 PAGES!
Crusade Comics’ 10th Indiegogo, Shi: Gatecrasher’s opening weekend launch was by far the indie publishers biggest campaign to date, garnering total returns just shy of $50,000.00 and nearing 1,000% of its flexible funding goal. The 48-page, full-color, original graphic novel, which launched Friday, November 15, 2024, on crowdfunding platform, Indiegogo.
“These astonishing numbers totally took us by surprise!” Stated Shi-creator Billy Tucci. “Deborah [Tucci, Crusade’s Executive Director] and I are incredibly humbled by all the support we’ve received and cannot wait to share , Shi: Gatecrasher with all our fans!”
Tucci also announced the Indiegogo’s first free Stretch Goal Award for all fans who backed one of the campaign’s physical perks, to expand Gatecrasher from its original 48-page format to an additional 56-pages which will include an exclusive cover gallery by contributor’s Rob Liefeld, Stan Sakai, Irene Chen Strychalski, Art Thibert and Billy Tucci.
In Shi: Gatecrasher, we find Ana Ishikawa, (allied with RAN, Shi-creator Billy Tucci’s ORIGINAL concept for SHI) trapped within comic book time where she must battle through a cartoonist’s history of four-color imagery to find her way back home.
Starting in 1938, Shi: Gatecrasher takes the reader on an amazing adventure across comics’ incredible decades, trends, and genres. A gripping, funny book fantasy that sees Ana and Ran encountering war, westerns, horror, apes, nazis, space vixens, superheroes, romance, robots, dinosaurs, commies, cartoons, crime, bad girls, zombies and even the seduction of the innocent!
Along the way the pair will stand side by side with the world’s greatest indie and public domain heroes before coming face to face with Brian Pulido’s iconic LADY DEATH!
Based on the Story by writer J.C. Vaughn and Tucci, and illustrated by Tucci, Leandro Oliveira, Hi-Fi Colour Design, with lettering by Mindy Lopkin, Shi: Gatecrasher is literally the “destroy all monsters” of comic book character collision!
Crusade is also preparing a myriad of unique perks and stretch goal rewards. The campaign will boast many specials, prints, original art and limited variant covers by Tucci along with comic book greats, Stan Sakai, Renie Strychalski, Art Thibert and superstar Rob Liefeld.
Just 19 days of the 21-day Shi: Gatecrasher Indiegogo remain. The campaign’s funding page closes on that platform on December 5, 2024 where the limited edition perks offered will be closed. The campaign will continue in a limited capacity on Indiegogo’s “Indemand” store-mode.
Shi: Gatecrasher will also be launching on crowdfunding platform Kickstarter with its own exclusive campaign on January 9, 2025.
Lady Death and related logos, characters, and distinctive likeness is a registered trademark of Lady Death, LLC. Used with permission.
About Billy Tucci
Inkpot Award recipient Billy Tucci is a cartoonist best known for his modern-day samurai saga Shi. Through his company, Crusade Fine Arts, Shi has been printed in five languages and sold more than 3 million comic books. The graduate of New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology contributed to the Eisner Award Winning, Comics for Ukraine: Sunflower Seeds and Love Is Love. Billy has also earned the prestigious Diamond Comics Gem Award and his DC Comics’ graphic novel, Sgt. Rock: The Lost Battalion, was awarded the Military Writers Society of America Gold Medal. The Lost Battalion featured the real-life 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which was comprised of Japanese American soldiers. His earnest retelling of the Christmas story in A Child Is Born has quietly turned into an international blockbuster, winning the Christian Small Publisher Book of the Year Award. Billy’s critically acclaimed Miss Fury: Joy Division saw the return of the Golden Age Icon for Dynamite Comics. His Crusade Comics has recently released a series of new Shi graphic novels, Return of the Warrior, Haikyo, and Sakura. Crusade as also released the collected editions Shi: Omnibus Vol. 1, Shi: Senryaku Omnibus, Shi: Way of the Warrior Original Art Edition via Kickstarter and Indiegogo uniting backers from over fifty countries and bringing Crusade Comics’ crowdfunding campaign totals to over $1,500,000.00.