Press Release
The second volume of the highly acclaimed sci-fi comic Runners is now a graphic novel campaign on Kickstarter.com. Originally posting the action comedy about alien smugglers online as a free webcomic at www.runnersuniverse.com, creator Sean Wang now hopes to raise funding to print the new story, Runners: The Big Snow Job, as a full color graphic novel.
“The first book, Runners: Bad Goods, was black-and white,” says Wang, “so it was a bit more affordable to print when it came out. But for the second volume, I wanted to print the book in color, just as it appeared online. Since color printing can be pretty expensive for a self publisher like myself, I thought Kickstarter would be a great idea to help get the book into people’s hands.”
Runners: The Big Snow Job will be a 168-page, full color graphic novel that finds reluctant smuggler Roka Nostaco and his alien crew working a seemingly trivial job on a frozen planet that turns out to be more than they bargained for as they deal with a hostile native population, a band of mercenaries, a mob power play, and a series of treacherous double-crosses. In addition to the complete story that originally posted online, the book will also include an all-new, 6-page epilogue, 10 pages of sketchbook concepts, and a gallery of pinups from such comic artists as David Petersen (MouseGuard), Tim Seeley (Hack/Slash), Khoi Pham (Avengers, X-Men), and Shawn McManus (Fables: Cinderella).
“I’m especially excited about the Kickstarter campaign,” continues Wang, “because I have a lot of very cool reward incentives for project backers, including character cards, prints, a 64-page expanded sketchbook, and even some of the original cover art! I’ll also be offering custom inked illustrations of series characters. So I think Runners fans, both new and old, will really get a lot of great stuff out of the campaign!”
Runners: The Big Snow Job is now on Kickstarter.com and runs through March 28, 2013:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/621975803/runners-the-big-snow-job-graphic-novel
The complete Runners series can be read online at: www.runnersuniverse.com.
About Sean Wang
Writer and artist Sean Wang has worked in comics since 1996 on books like The Tick and Arthur for New England Comics and Meltdown for Image Comics. Sean’s self-published sci-fi adventure comic Runners is available online as a free webcomic at www.runnersuniverse.com and is also available in graphic novel form. The first volume, Runners: Bad Goods, is available now, and the second volume, Runners: The Big Snow Job, is due Spring 2013.
3 Comments
Gonna have to order on of those. Runners is terrific!
This was actually solicited several years back and I preordered it. Unfortunately, the solicitation was subsequently cancelled, I assume because not enough people ordered it? Anyway, this sounds like a great way to get the 2nd tpb into people’s hands. Vol. 1 was terrific.
Sorry your pre-order was cancelled way back when. At the time, the series was going to be published by Archaia, but then they hit a little company snag and went through that bit of reorganization. Around the time of that production hiatus, I was also thinking about going the webcomic route, so we amicably decided to part ways. So that would be the reason. But I’m psyched to see that Archaia has rebounded and is putting out such awesome books again!