The Avandrus Theory Kickstarter

Written By Manuel A. Carmona

   So... a while back I reached out to some colleagues to discuss the possibility of working together on a brand new project as a collective. This is the first time in the thirteen plus years (at the time) living in Virginia that I've actually gone out of my way to collaborate with local artists. Now you may be asking yourself "why now?". Why after so many years is he finally reaching out to other comic book creators in the area?" Well, I did this for a variety of reasons:
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1. I (like many comic book artists) tend to keep to myself and I'm trying to change that. Being a comic book artist is a lonely endeavor, you spend hours upon hours working on your books, you tend to become a hermit; especially if you do most of the work yourself. But in order to build community you need to socialize, create a network for yourself; at least that's what I'm hoping for.

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2. I've been meaning to work on a project with brand new characters and add it to the Public Domain. I know for a fact that thousands of artists would love to work on a project and be allowed to use Batman, Superman or Spider-Man but obviously can't. I also know there's thousands of characters in the Public Domain that can be used by anyone, although there's no way to know for certain which characters you can use on your own projects and how; even though they're in the Public Domain.
 
   So I thought to myself, why not come up with a new legend, a new story and new characters and allow anyone to use them? I reached out to my colleagues and to my surprise a few of them really liked the idea... so we went to work. We came up with a main character, a main villain, supporting cast and a fun concept that will allow for any artist to jump in at any time and not be jarring. I can't give you all the details at this moment but as soon as we have something more concrete we'll let you know, just know that we already started drawing pages, so this is coming sooner rather than later.

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3. Why add it to the Public Domain or Creative Grounds? Simple, I want these characters to live on forever, I want people years from now to be able to use our characters and come up with their own adventures; I want these characters to live on through the minds of generations to come. Maybe they'll be set in a parallel Universe, maybe on a different Planet; but all part of the same legend. And lastly and more importantly, it's not all about money for me. Money doesn't drive me; creating a legacy that will live on through the ages does; I'm sure my Avandrus Theory colleagues feel the same way.

   So, last month C.L. Zeno, Brian Lacy and myself launched our first Kickstarter together to produce the first issue of The Avandrus Theory. We set a goal of $2000.00 to cover printing and to our surprise the book was fully funded in less than 12 hours! By the end of the Kickstarter we had surpassed the $6,000.00 mark, more than tripling our original goal and allowing us to cover printing costs for issues #1 and #2. Humbled and grateful can't even come close to how we feel, ya'll really showed up for us and we've put our hearts and souls into this project; we hope you all enjoy what we've made for ya'll! From the minds of C.L. Zeno, Manuel A. Carmona and Brian Lacy comes... THE AVANDRUS THEORY!!!

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