A Kickstarter is underway for the first issue of Killtopia, a cyberpunk action comic by Card Shark Comics founder and Bust and Vessels writer Dave Cook.
Set in a futuristic Japanese megacity, a techno-organic virus spread by homicidal robots has ravaged humanity. The origin point has become terraformed into an alien jungle where histrionic mercenaries hunt down the offending machines, and once a year engage in a televised free-for-all battle royale to slaughter each other for huge prize money and audience gratification. Amidst the carnage, a series of chance circumstances cause a tech nerd, a narcissistic warrior and a sentient machine to end up on the run with the goal of curing the plague, while every opportunistic psychopath that this dystopian nightmare can dream up tries to hunt them down.
Principally inspired by Cook’s love of video games, the story will combine satirical humour and brutal violence that also draws inspiration from a wealth of movies and manga. The first five pages can be read here, so you can judge for yourself what the comic will shape up to be. We’ve previously given positive reviews to Bust’s first three issues and the two issues of Vessels, so it’s not unreasonable to expect Killtopia’s end result to achieve similar quality.
As well as digital and physical editions of the full-colour 44-page comic, campaign rewards include art prints, stickers, T-shirts, copies of Card Shark’s previous titles, signed scripts, branded flash drives and custom portraits. The campaign achieved its funding in less than 24 hours and in the intervening time has more than doubled it, launching far into stretch goal territory. The extras afforded by them are art prints by Gary Erskine (Roller Grrls) and Tom Foster (Judge Dredd, Storm Warning); postcards featuring artwork from the comic repurposed as retro gaming box designs; and a soundtrack for the comic specially commissioned from composer Suz Gibson. A fifth and final stretch goal is scheduled to be revealed on Friday evening.
The campaign still has over a fortnight to run, and full details can be read on its Kickstarter page.
