This week sees the midway point of the Kickstarter campaign for Space Bunny #1 & #2. When this was announced during last month’s Warp Vector Direct, a lot of people heard the news and all asked one question: what the hell is Space Bunny? Since this is another one of those weird indie comics I love - and co-created - I am here to answer that question.
In June 2022, I travelled all the way from Pittsburgh to Atlanta to set up in the artist alley at RangerStop, a pop culture fan convention with an emphasis on Power Rangers. Why spend two days driving to a convention focused on a fandom I hadn’t really engaged with in ages? Simple: I wasn’t going alone.
Meeting me there was Markk JC, a former VR Troopers podcaster and illustrator who used to be pretty big in the online tokusatsu scene. In previous years, we had talked here and there about random things like Pudgy Pig and the episode of Digimon where Kari gets possessed.
Then, in 2020, we made a short comic together. It was about vampires. The following year, we made another short comic together. It was about robots. The following year, in 2022, we made another comic together. It was about teenagers with attitude.
Everyone always asks how collaborators started working together. Sometimes it’s as simple as, “I saw their work and asked if they wanted to make a comic together.” Markk and I have a bit more of a fun story.
Way back in 2019, Markk was running a Kickstarter campaign for a tokusatsu-inspired card game they were making. One of the ideas they had tossed about was making a tie-in comic to go with the game. I thought that was such a cool idea.
I sent them a DM on the website formerly and currently known as Twitter to ask, “Have you written that comic yet.”
They replied, “No, I should probably get on that though.”
So I replied, “Can I write it?”
Markk didn’t ask to see my previous credits or my portfolio or examples of my work - and that’s a good thing because none of that existed at the time. I’ve wanted to make comics since I was a kid, had seriously been pursuing it since 2017, but hadn’t actually made one yet. Until now.
Markk replied, “Yeah, that would actually be a big help. One less thing for me to do.”
I did it. I got my first real comics gig by simply asking if I could have it.
Things got a bit crazy for Markk by the end of 2019 and then they got crazy for everyone the following year. Ultimately, that comic never got made. The script sat around until early 2022 when Markk decided to come all the way from the UK to Atlanta for a tokusatsu convention. We knew what we had to do.
RangerStop was a lot of fun. By this point Markk and I had made a few shorts together, but had never even been on the same continent at the same time. It was also only my second ever time selling at a convention. There were Power Rangers fans and cosplayers - not to mention actors - all over the place. Until there weren’t.
As with many three-day conventions, Sunday slowed to a crawl. Everyone with a weekend pass was just milling about because they did everything they wanted to do on Saturday. Nobody new was coming in. At the exact last hour, Markk and I had an idea:
“Let’s make a comic entirely in one hour.” We knew it would be chaotic, sloppy, rushed, and probably awful. And we knew we had to do it.
Markk grabbed their pen - a black Stabilo Premium Fibre-Tip Pen 68 - and said, “Gimme a title.”
Without missing a beat, I said: “Dinosaur Time Wizard.”
They started drawing what would become the cover while I started texting them the script. Pretty soon they were drawing page 1while was writing page 2. By the end of the hour, we had made a comic.
The Dinosaur Time Wizard is a mysterious, anthropomorphic t-rex in a wizard hat with a clock around his neck. It’s not clear where he came from or what his deal is, but he has a job: stop the apocalypse. But first, he sends another talking dinosaur to deliver a package to the breakout star of this ten-page short.
Existing entirely on a single page, Space Bunny was described in the script as basically being Sandy Cheeks from SpongeBob if she was a rabbit. They ordered a magic salad next year. That’s it. That's 100% of the facts surrounding this character, if you can even call them a character. During the brief amount of time we spent making this, we didn't even bother to come up with Space Bunny's gender.
Three months later, for the first time in over three years, I got a job. I began working in an after school program with kids between the ages of five and twelve. Every day they played with toys and games, but as a comics person there was one area I always gravitated toward.
Whenever I could, I sat down at the table with the paper and pencils and crayons and drew with the kids. They were all so impressed that I made comics. But here’s the thing: I can’t exactly “draw" in the traditional sense. So I just kept drawing the same thing over and over again.
Eventually, kids started to notice. And they had questions.
Who is that? Where do they live? How did they get there? What do they eat? If they are neither a boy or a girl, then where do they go to the bathroom?
Pretty soon, I had accidentally fully developed an entire character who has only ever appeared on one page of someone else’s comic. It was so weird. Space Bunny was a comic book character without a comic book. The kids and I were all on the same page: that had to change.
For the next year and a half, Markk and I worked hard on creating an entire graphic novel all about Space Bunny. We planned to have around 80 pages explaining how they ended up on prehistoric Earth, why they love salad so much, and more.
Then life happened. We did some other jobs, worked on some side projects, and just did other things for a while. Then, we made a difficult decision.
It was almost the end of 2023, we both had some big cons coming up, and we both wanted something new on the tables and the Space Bunny graphic novel wasn't going to be done in time. Instead of starting an entirely brand new book, we decided to work with what we had. The first 3 chapters of Space Bunny were done, so we decided to write a new 4th chapter that wraps the story up and call it “issue one."
Space Bunny was now an ongoing series. The long term plan was to turn the rest of the graphic novel script into the second and third issue and then combine them into a first volume trade paperback before going back to the full graphic novel plan and jumping straight to Volume Two.
When the first issue of Space Bunny begins, our titular hero is floating in the vast ocean of outer space - and they can’t find their salad. Before they can start planning dinner, they are alerted by C.H.I.P. - the ship’s onboard computer robot - that the carrot-shaped ship is low on fuel.
The only place they can hope to land is the uncharted Planet Zero. All either of them know is that there is a source of fuel somewhere on the planet. When they arrive, they find out they will have to wait a few million years for the fuel to be created from the planet’s dominant species: dinosaurs.
Thus begins an adventure as Space Bunny adjusts to life on prehistoric Earth. The first issue features four short stories about Space Bunny’s first days on Planet Zero featuring some of Markk’s best illustration work and answering as many questions as the kids from work have asked over the years.
Upon release, Space Bunny #1 became an instant hit at conventions and sold over a hundred copies in its first year alone. It’s always the best seller at cons. Everyone who has read it tells us how much they love it. And this time, they all have the same question: When is the next one coming out?
The next two chapters of the original planned Space Bunny graphic novel were a two-parter that could easily be converted into the second issue. We were really excited for this story too because it featured a kaiju and - more interestingly - the return of the Dinosaur Time Wizard. But here is where a new problem came in.
All of the kids comics Markk and I make together - released under the Comix Clubhouse label - are sold for $5. Space Bunny was planned to be the same, but nothing ever goes exactly as planned.
Due to its longer length, Space Bunny #1 cost significantly more to print than other books. This meant we would be selling it at a loss with the standard $5 price tag. Okay, so we sell it for $6. That’s fine.
I have never wanted to do that, however. A standard $5 across the board means we can easily tell customers, “Everything is $5." Plus it makes for easier math when I’m calculating sales and such. But I knew we had to do it. Space Bunny was gonna be a $6 book.
Then the printers screwed up and we got an extra 100 copies for free. I knew I could either give away a bunch of copies to kid at work or send them out to moms on Instagram or I could lower the price. We chose the option with easier math.
This led to a new, long term problem. If Space Bunny #1 costs $5 now, it has to cost $5 forever or at least until the economy happens to us. Initially, we planned to make the later issues have fewer pages, but that didn’t fix the problem with the first issue. Unless the printer screws up again, subsequent printings would still cost more, necessitating the higher price.
Sooner or later I was going to run out of all two-hundred copies of my one-hundred copy order of Space Bunny #1. Sooner or later I would need to order copies of Space Bunny #2. I didn’t want to raise the price, but someone had to pay for the books. We’ve always self-funded printing our books. But if we wanted to break even - let alone turn a profit - Markk and I realized there was only one thing we could do.
Our story began during a Kickstarter, so too should it end during a Kickstarter. Or… not end but… continue.
Anyway, yeah. The Kickstarter for Space Bunny #2 is currently LIVE!! It includes Space Bunny #1, meaning old fans can just grab the first issue while allowing new readers a chance to grab both. Markk and I really hate social media marketing so we’d really appreciate it if you could give us any support you can.
Backing the Kickstarter is obviously the best way to show your support, but sharing the link to the campaign - or even this article - also helps a lot. We really want to print more copies of Space Bunny #1, finish making Space Bunny #2, and - if there’s any leftover - ultimately we want to make Space Bunny #3.
But we need your help. And your money. Click here to back Space Bunny #1 & #2 on Kickstarter today!!
