Kickstarter pioneer Iron Circus Comics breaks from crowdfunder giant to mount first indie campaign

polygon.com:

After 12 years of success on the platform, Iron Circus Comics is conducting its first crowdfunding campaign without Kickstarter. The effort will raise publishing funds for The Poorcraft Cookbook, a comic guide to eating frugally and healthily without skimping on flavor.

In the alt-comics world, Iron Circus, founded by cartoonist and publisher Spike Trotman, is synonymous with massively successful Kickstarter campaigns that often use the platform’s characteristic “stretch goals” for larger paydays for creators, rather than extra goodies for backers. The publisher has raised a total of over two million dollars through the crowdfunding service, for graphic novels like As the Crow Flies, anthologies like FTL, Y’all!, and print editions of webcomics like The Complete Girls with Slingshots — not to mention the Smut Peddler series of anthologized erotica and one-of-Polygon’s-best-comics-of-2017 Yes, Roya!.

Now, after more than a decade of blowout successes on Kickstarter, Trotman will oversee Iron Circus’ first independently run crowdfunding campaign, hosted on IronCircus.com.

“The last two years have been eye-opening for me as a publisher,” Trotman says in an official news release. “And, after a dozen years of corporate crowdfunding, it was time to bring Iron Circus’s DIY attitude to all aspects of our crowdfunding campaigns. The bottom line is there’s never been a better time to launch the first ever independently run Iron Circus Comics’ campaign. I don’t have to worry about being surprised by an announcement or a corporate initiative and we can be directly in touch with backers.”

Trotman has been open about her opposition to Kickstarter’s commitment to a blockchain protocol, which the company announced in December of