SHI: GATECRASHER KICKSTARTER IS NOW OPEN TO LATE PLEDGES!

As the first 30 pages of Shi: Gatecrasher are now in the color phase (with another ten complete and formatted to be sent), Crusade Comics has opened up the Kickstarter campaign to Late Pledges, offering fans a last chance to grab some very special rewards before the campaign closes. Shi: Gatecrasher! is a 56-page, full-color, original graphic novel featuring Coffin Comics’ Lady Death, Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo and the world’s greatest public domain heroes.

GATECRASHER’S CROWDFUNDING TOTALS APPROACH $210,000.00!

For the first time ever, a Crusade Comics’ Kickstarter has cracked the illustrious, six-figure threshold as Shi: Gatecrasher currently tops $104,000.00.Alongside platform, Indiegogo, the Long Island-based publisher’s 10th crowdfunding dual-beneficiary campaign totals are now just $208.00 shy of $210,000.00 making Gatecrasher Crusade’s fastest-paced and seventh-straight original Shi graphic novel to top six-figures.

“We did it!” Exclaimed Shi-creator Billy Tucci. “Thanks to you, Shi: Gatecrasher is total gasoline and Deborah and I want to start by thanking Shi: Gatecrasher’s team of creatives, J.C. Vaughn,Steven Peros, Leandro Oliveira, Brian Miller, Kristy Miller, Mindy Lopkin, Nile Scala, Stan Sakai, Tom Gaadt, Rob Liefeld, Brian Pulido, Irene Strychalski, Wes Hartman and Brian Blevins for all their wonderful contributions to this incredibly fun project.”

Tucci continued, “Thank you Kickstarter, but most importantly, thanks to all our wonderful backers for your faith and support in funding Shi: Gatecrasher.This fellowship has brought us all together and we are humbled by your faith, championing, and support. We are all #TeamShi!”

In Gatecrasher, Ana Ishikawa, (allied with RAN, Shi-creator Billy Tucci’s original concept for SHI) finds herself trapped within comic book time and must battle through a cartoonist’s history to find her way back to her daughter, Hotaru.

Starting in 1928, Shi: Gatecrasher takes the reader on an amazing adventure across comics’ incredible decades, trends, and genres. A funny book fantasy that sees Ana and Ran encountering war, westerns, horror, apes, nazis, space vixens, superheroes, romance, robots, dinosaurs, crime, and you guessed it, zombie bad girls!

Based on the Story by Tucci, scripter J.C. Vaughn and editor Steven Peros, Gatecrasher is illustrated by Tucci, Leandro Oliveira, Fred Benes and Brian Miller with lettering by Mindy Lopkin. Gatecrasher is literally the “destroy all monsters” of comic book character collision!

Gatecrasher features several striking variant covers by comic book greats, Art Thibert, Renie Strychalski and Tucci.

And as a bonus, four-color legends also join #TeamShi with multi-Eisner award winner, Stan Sakai and superstar Rob Liefeld lending their extraordinary talents as they cover Shi for the very first time!

About Billy Tucci

Inkpot Award recipient Billy Tucci is a cartoonist best known for his modern-day samurai saga Shi. Through his company, Crusade Fine Arts, Shi has been printed in five languages and sold more than 3 million comic books. The graduate of New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology contributed to the Eisner Award Winning, Comics For Ukraine: Sun Flower Seeds and Love Is Love. Billy has also earned the prestigious Diamond Comics Gem Award and his DC Comics’ graphic novel, Sgt. Rock: The Lost Battalion, was awarded the Military Writers Society of America Gold Medal. The Lost Battalion featured the real-life 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which was comprised of Japanese American soldiers. His earnest retelling of the Christmas story in A Child Is Born has quietly turned into an international blockbuster, winning the Christian Small Publisher Book of the Year Award.  Billy’s critically acclaimed Miss Fury: Joy Division saw the return of the Golden Age Icon for Dynamite Comics. His Crusade Comics has recently released a series of new Shi graphic novels, Return of the Warrior, Haikyo, and Sakura. Crusade as also released the collected editions, Shi: Omnibus Vol. Senryaku Omnibus, Shi: Way of the Warrior Original Art Edition via Kickstarter and Indiegogo uniting backers from over fifty countries and bringing Crusade Comics’ crowdfunding campaign totals to over $1,750,000.00.