Hope you are all having a nice late summer and handling the heat as comfortably as possible. This past month has been INSANE for us -- so much going on... After the last update, we had San Diego Comic-Con (and the concurrent "Magnetic-Con'23" virtual booth campaign, then GenCon immediately after that, plus a new and exciting Kickstarter launch last week... I'm not entirely sure how we've done it without going crazy, but so far so good. Seven hours of sleep a night, a peaceful walk by the lake before dinner, and a supportive wife and cat to curl up with is just enough tonic to keep the pressure in check. 😊

All of that is concurrent with getting DRACULA/FRANKENSTEIN properly manufactured and delivered from the printer. In fact, the books and slipcases are done! We were hoping to have advance copies in hand so that we could share some photos in this update, but they may not arrive until next week. The bulk print run is complete, however, and the finished products have been transferred to the shipping company this past week. The current delivery estimate at our warehouse is the last week of September, so barring any unforeseen events in transit, we should still be on track to ship orders in October! 😃 

If you haven't completed your surveys yet (looking at roughly 60 of you), please do so before next Friday! At that point, we will press the "lock orders" button which will initiate a final notification from Backerkit and a 48-hour countdown for you to make any final changes to your order or payment method. Credit cards will be charged that following Monday, August 21st. If you need to make any changes after orders have been locked, we can certainly help you, but those changes will need to be made manually on our side.
 
Please note that you will still be able to update your address until we lock those down on the last Friday of September. This should allow you time to confirm your delivery address in case you anticipate relocating in October. We will, of course, remind you of this in an update when that time comes.

Also, as some of you have asked: Digital rewards are scheduled to be sent out the first week of September. 😎

We will share some advance photos of the books and slipcases as soon as those arrive (hopefully next week), but in the meantime, we wanted to share a link to our current project campaign currently running on Kickstarter (in case you haven't already seen it):

TEZUCOMI is a deluxe, two-volume tribute to Osamu Tezuka, widely considered the “Father of Manga and Anime” and described as "the Walt Disney of Japan." It is a premium set of new manga tales by some of Europe's top comic talent - 600 pages of extraordinary content paying tribute to Tezuka’s enormous body of influential work. The stories feature characters from Tezuka’s history, such as Astro Boy, Unico, Black Jack, Big X, Dororo, Songoku, Kimba, and many more. 18 stories by 20 amazing creators celebrating the broad dramatic spectrum of Tezuka's amazing oeuvre!

Contributing artists include Ken Niimura (I Kill Giants), Joe Kelly (Deadpool, X-Men), Juan Diaz Canales (Blacksad), Kenny Ruiz (Team Phoenix), Belen Ortega (The Millennium Saga), Victor Santos (Polar), Mathieu Bablet (Shangri-La), JD Morvan (Naja), Mig (Wakfu), David Lafuente (Ultimate Spider-man), Bertrand Gatignol (The Ogre Gods Saga), LuisNCT (Killadelphia), Elsa Brants (Save me, Pythia), Reno Lemaire (Dreamland), Brice Cossu (FRNCK), Sourya (Talli), and more.

This impressive collection is available in traditional manga-sized paperback (5.25x7.75") and premium gallery-sized hardcover (7.75x11"). We also have limited-edition slipcase sets of both formats and even an ultimate "Super-Fan Set" limited to only 250 copies!

The campaign has already unlocked SIX STRETCH GOALS, with a beautiful collectible enamel pin coming up at the next stretch goal level!

This is a very special project created in full cooperation with Tezuka Productions and we're excited to bring them to the fans this November!