Kickstarting Comics: ‘Meanwhile… A Comic Shop Anthology’ – Celebrating The Medium & The Shops With Brian Michael Bendis, Geoff Johns, Scott Snyder, Jock, & More!

Meanwhile… A Comic Shop Anthology – A Kickstarter to celebrate comic shops… with comics. A brilliant idea for one of the vital parts of the comic medium.

 

First of all, just to get this out of the way, this is Meanwhile, the US anthology one-off to support comic shops, has nothing to do with the Soaring Penguin anthology Meanwhile, the one featuring Strangehaven (this one I covered on its last Kickstarter).

Anyway, back to Meanwhile… A Comic Shop Anthology.

Edited by Kevin Sharp and Ryan Higgins, it’s all about celebrating the comics and the shops that sell them.

And if you’re reading this, if you’re reading comics, there’s a damn good chance that you love comic shops. I know I do. I worked part and full-time in Nostalgia & Comics in the UK (now Worlds Apart Birmingham) for the best part of 19 years after starting at age 16. So yes, I love comic shops, absolutely love them. Although having said that, I love comic shops that love comics, love the medium, want to expand the medium. I’m not at all keen on comic shops where 90% of the stock is toys and I’m definitely not keen on the old-fashioned, dark and dirty, awful customer service, nothing but spandex and superheroes. But that’s not a conversation for here.

 

So, where was I? Oh yes… Meanwhile… A Comic Shop Anthology.

Like I said, it’s edited by Kevin Sharp and Ryan Higgins and it’s all about celebrating the comics and the shops that sell them.

To do this, they’ve assembled an 80-page b&w and colour anthology of short comics and pinups by a group of comic creatives with stories focusing on their times as both comic creators and comic buyers, comic consumers.

Inside Meanwhile they’re talking of a genuinely diverse anthology containing various genres. They talk of  “superheroes, adventure, humor, horror, science fiction, manga, and some stories that defy easy categorization.”

Just a few of the writers and artists include Brian Michael Bendis, Bill Walko, Scott Kolins, Geoff Johns, Liana Kangas, Leonie O’Moore, Christian Ward, Scott Snyder, Jock, Jenn St-Onge, and Lucy Sullivan. And that’s a wide and varied list of creators, from all parts of comics – just as any good anthology, any good comic shop should have.

Here’s the pitch from the Kickstarter… it’s a good one…

‘The squeak of the spinner rack. The flip-flip-flip of fingers going through back issue bins. Expensive vintage books suspended inside their clear prisons. Wednesday Warriors gathered at the monolithic wall of new releases. A child’s excited query of “Can we please get this?” A debate at the front counter about who’s stronger, who’s faster.

Maybe there are T-shirts and toys and other collectibles; maybe this space is so filled by comics — in bins, boxes, stacks — that there aren’t three feet of room to spare for anything else. Maybe that wide-eyed new customer doesn’t buy anything today, but just wanders, remembering, for a few minutes, the joy of when they used to read those things.

These aisles contain magic.

Welcome to Meanwhile… A Comic Shop Anthology.’

Meanwhile… A Comic Shop Anthology is available in digital and physical copies with a choice of two covers that you’ve seen already by Veronica Fish and Alison Sampson.

As for what’s inside, here’s a sampling of it all…