GAY SUPERHERO GRAPHIC NOVEL THAT RAISED OVER $133,000 NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER
Superhero. Supervillain. It’s complicated.
[January 25, 2016] The Young Protectors: Engaging the Enemy is a multi-chapter superhero comic featuring a young gay hero facing off against an older gayvillain with the help of a diverse and resourceful team of super-powered friends. The comic was originally released on the web, and its author, Alex Woolfson, launched a Kickstarter project to raise $14,000 to bring the first volume of the story to print — at the end of the project’s 30-day run, Woolfson had raised $133,640.56. Now members of the general public can pre-order the graphic novel for themselves, along with other Kickstarter rewards including five packs of trading cards, a special character-based “Spooky Cap”, and over forty-one full-color 11″ x 14″ prints featuring the heroes and villains of The Young Protectors in thrilling action and sexy romantic scenes.
The graphic novel itself is a 160-page, full-color trade paperback printed on premium glossy paper. The summary on the back of the book reads: “Kyle—a closeted, teen superhero who can control fire—has finally summoned up the courage to enter a local gay bar. It’s his very first step towards accepting himself. Unfortunately for him, his very next step out of the bar places him face-to-face with The Annihilator, the most dangerous supervillain in the world. And the price that The Annihilator demands to keep Kyle’s secret will lead Kyle down a path fraught with danger, adventure and unexpected romance. It’s a path that will force Kyle to question what it really means to be a hero and will ultimately thrust him and his young teammates into an epic conflict against vastly superior foes.”
The trade paperback is available for $20.00, and there are still copies available that have been signed by author Alex Woolfson and both of the book’s artists, Adam DeKraker (pencils) and Veronica Gandini (colors).
Five sets of Trading Cards (45 cards in all) were also created for this project, and every card features unique full-color pin-up art and reveals intriguing information about each of the characters of The Young Protectors Volume One. (There’s even a pack of 18+ Cards featuring fully nude art.)
The cards themselves are all 2.5″ x 3.5″ full-color cards, printed on premium, glossy, thick stock, and each pack is wrapped in printed foil packaging, just like traditional pro comics trading cards.
Readers can also get can get an authentic and official Spooky Baseball Cap, created specifically to match the cap that fan-favorite, magic-using superhero Spooky Jones wears in the comic.
And finally, there are three separate packs of 11″ x 14″ prints—a “Main Print Pack”, a “SFW Print Pack”, and “NSFW Print Pack”, forty-one prints in all. The Main Print Pack shows off the characters in heroic action scenes, and the NSFW Print Pack includes thirteen unique prints that feature the adult heroes and villains of The Young Protectors in nude poses and pairings.
Woolfson will be shipping all these rewards to his Kickstarter backers in February and March, and is using BackerKit to allow the general public to participate in that big shipping push. BackerKit is the best-in-class service that provides a secure, online pre-order store for successful crowdfunding creators. Readers who are interested in the book or any of the other rewards can pre-order them here.
Credit cards will not be charged until shortly before the orders ship and you can change your order or shipping address up until Woolfson locks down the Backerkit page on February 15th. International orders are accepted.
For those interested in saving money on shipping, Woolfson has created this short (under 5 min) walkthrough video.
The Young Protectors is still available to read online for free as a webcomic and currently has over 350 pages posted. Interested readers can begin here.
Alex Woolfson lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and The Young Protectors Volume One is his second graphic novel. Woolfson’s first graphic novel, the gay sci-fi thriller Artifice, was a Lambda Literary Award finalist in 2014 and has earned over one hundred 5-star reviews on Amazon.