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Arcana Studio has launched a revolutionary new campaign through Kickstarter, the world's largest funding platform for creative projects. The Vancouver-based studio is actually suspending its traditional distribution of the title, despite its very successful pre-orders and its incredibly well-received Free Comic Book Day performance, to distribute the next arc through Kickstarter instead.
“After witnessing for myself the huge number of people who turned out on Free Comic Book Day for our project,” says Arcana founder Sean Patrick O’Reilly,“we realized that there was a strong desire for this project, even more than our already great pre-orders had indicated, so we immediately rethought how we were going to get it into people’s hands. Kickstarter seemed to be the perfect outlet for that.”
Created by O'Reilly (“Clockwork Girl”,“Pixies”) and Erik W Hendrix (“Deadly Harvest”,“The Evil Tree”), with art from Yannis Roumboulias (“Deadly Harvest”) and colors from Chandran (“Intrinsic”),“The Steam Engines of Oz” follows young Victoria Wright, who works beneath the Emerald City, making sure the vast machines below the city keep running. She finds out, however, that her actions, which seem so small, actually have much larger implications. Along the way, we find out what happened to some of the beloved characters from “The Wizard of Oz” and other stories set in the Land of Oz, as well as meeting new characters.
“We’re crafting the story in such a way that fans of the issues will receive the Kickstarter novel and continue their journey or new fans can jump on directly with the Kickstarter content,” says co-creator Hendrix. “Seeing how excited people were for our book on Free Comic Book Day, SteamPunk events, and other, traditionally non-comic locations, we knew there had to be a different way to get our book out there to people who already knew about it, and others who just don’t have access to a local store.”
The story that begins in the Free Comic Book Day issue will continue through the already solicited issues 1-3, but then the journey will pick up in the Kickstarter Original Graphic Novel, available exclusively first to those who support and back the project through Arcana’s Kickstarter campaign.
O’Reilly and Hendrix reach out to fans of comic books, steam punk or the wonderful world of Oz,“We could have easily continued this in a more traditional way in print (and we may eventually solicit the OGN to stores) because the sales were certainly there to justify it, but we wanted to really do it in a new and exciting way, a way that allows us to place it directly in the hands of the people who want it most.”
Arcana is offering a wide variety of awards to backers ranging from digital downloads of the comic to original art from the artist or even space at the Arcana booth at San Diego Comic Con. Please visit the link below for all the details and to support Arcana’s efforts.
If you’d like more information about the “Steam Engines of Oz” Kickstarter Project, or to schedule an interview with Sean or Erik please email kickstarter[.]arcana.com.
About Arcana
Arcana (arcana.com) owns one of the world's largest libraries of graphic novels and comics, with over 250 original intellectual properties, hundreds of graphic novels and a treasure trove of thousands of characters. Arcana’s high quality branded entertainment is filled with characters and stories that transcend gender age, cultural and geographic boundaries. Arcana is also producing feature films such as The Clockwork Girl and Pixies and episodic television series including Kagagi: The Raven. Taking a transmedia approach to brand building and intellectual properties, Arcana’s stories can live successfully on traditional and new media platforms. Arcana Studio Inc. remains independent of major entertainment studio affiliation.
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kickstarter[.]arcana.com 
