What is KC anyway
That depends on what kind of information you’re after! If you’re a new reader looking to get into it, I’d highly recommend hopping over to the About Page on the comic’s main website. You can probably find anything you need to about the comic over there, or just jump in and start reading it!
If you’re interested in what Kidd Commander is as far as, like, my own intentions or how it exists in the real world, here’s some more context.
Weird stories for weird people
I am a very angry person because I love humans and the world we live in very much, and
Kidd Commander is my attempt to express that loudly and unapologetically.
I have an easier time communicating through stories and allegory, ideally when those things are big and loud, which means I work and think mostly in cartoons. Even as an adult I gravitate towards saturated, stylized work that has grand ideas, illustrated through complex and intense narratives. My problem is, I function this way because I am autistic, mentally ill, queer, and fairly traumatized, and let me tell you: it is difficult to find characters and themes that resonate with me at all, let alone in fun colors. My taste exists in the tiny overlap of adamantly humanist and optimistic concepts presented through intense, often violent narratives, told through a medium that is self-aware and aesthetically pleasing to look at. Even if I can find any of that, there almost definitely aren’t any queer people in.
If you want something done, you gotta do it yourself.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t other people doing this sort of thing! At least in pieces. If you’re looking for comp titles, I’m often compared to Discworld and Pratchett’s particular flavor of angry humanism that seems lighthearted on the surface and gets more intense as you dig down, Gerard Way’s delightfully bizarre run of Doom Patrol, and One Piece If It Was Queer. In fact, I like to simplify Kidd Commander’s genre pitch to “queer shounen”, but not everybody knows what shounen is or understands what makes a narrative “queer” beyond the characters’ identities. The long definition is: this story is about characters who society deems monstrous or undesirable, a bunch of people who should have died a long time ago for various reasons beyond their control, who held on by embracing the things that make them monstrous. They have been left no other options, so they will fight back to live better or die trying. These concepts are expressed by over-the-top, dramatic storylines that do things like turn the concept of transness into machinery, mental illness into ghosts and demonic possession, and the despair inherent to religion into time loops. While it does get dark, the story is also fiercely hopeful: at its core, the story’s forward momentum is fueled by its protagonist’s furious love of herself and the people around her. This is a power fantasy for the lonely and disenfranchised, where the abstract concepts that plague us in the real world are turned into things that can be punched.
KC is character driven before anything else, and it revels in the relationships between its characters. I am trying to write relationships with the intensity I always wish I could find in other media; there is little distinction between platonic and romantic feelings between the ensemble cast. If you’ve been disappointed by other stories’ lack of “filler episodes,” that don’t make time to explore the effects of the events on the characters or how they relate to each other, this is for you.
I talk about it some on my bio page, but another issue I have with finding stories is that most of us fringe folk are struggling financially, and even when things that would speak to us exist they’re inaccessible. It’s important to me that anyone who wants to read KC can do that, so as long as I’m able, the main comic will always be free to read on its own website. This does mean it lives and dies by its fandom, so if you can’t afford to support it, please consider sharing it or sharing your enthusiasm out loud where folks can see it! I am only able to do any of this because so many other people have helped it find its audience. Fanwork and word of mouth are more powerful than you’d think. In fact…
How does this thing stay alive?
This story is completely crowdfunded! It seems counterintuitive to give things away for free and expect to be paid for it, but despite its small size, the KC reader community is ridiculously enthusiastic and supportive. My income is mainly composed of small monthly donations between 5 and 10 dollars, in addition to online shop sales and whatever artist alley appearances I can snag. It’s not a lavish lifestyle by any means, but so far I’ve always been able to Make The Next Thing, which is more than I could ever ask for.
All that optimism aside, the reality catching up with me is that Kidd Commander The Comic is almost certainly too long for me to hope to finish on my own. I still believe the comic format is the ideal way for it to exist, but I’d rather it exist imperfectly than not at all, so I’m working on telling the entire thing again in novels. I talk more about those on the prose page! For now we’re staying the course as long as I can: as things are, I think I can get the comic through arc five, and we can re-evaluate then.
My lofty goal is to make enough money each month to afford to hire art assistance and keep the comic going alongside the novels. We might reach that goal in two arcs’ time, we might not! But the time will pass anyway, and I don’t want to spend it doing anything else, so I will keep working as long as y’all let me. If you think you’d like to help support this thing (and get some rewards for it, even!), my ko-fi page is the main place I’m crowdfunding right now. There are other options though! I break down the different platforms and my
financial goals on this page of the main site.
As always, thank you so much for reading. This thing means more to me than anything in the world, and I am thankful beyond words that it means anything to other people too. See you in the comments!