Broken Frontier

Broken Frontier's own T Campbell has started a fundraiser over on his Penny & Aggie webcomic site to benefit his artistic collaborator Gisèle Lagacé. The money raised will be used to allow her to work as a cartoonist full-time. Below's an excerpt from the full announcement. Click  here for more info and to donate.

This is T. I have a problem.

My problem is that my good friend and collaborator Gisèle Lagacé needs your help.

Since her return to cartooning, Gisèle has worked like a woman possessed on Penny and Aggie. The typical strip takes four hours, and somehow she's been able to do extras like book design, the Burgerzone preview, her current pic on Comixpedia, and our upcoming guest run on Sluggy Freelance. This is on top of a full-time graphic design job that sometimes goes into overtime. Plus sketches for donors. Plus site design odds and ends. All told, I think she's working about sixty hours a week.

She's been at her graphic design job ten years last month.

Gisèle wants nothing more on Earth than to be a full-time cartoonist. I want that for her. But she's nervous. She has house payments to worry about.

Gisèle and I hate having to post "filler." We try our best to make it enjoyable filler, but it's still filler. While we're grateful to R.K. Milholland, Starline Hodge and Amy Mebberson for their help, we know you'd prefer not to go for weeks without Gisèle's work. We know you'd like the comic to come out more often, especially during longer storylines like "Dinner For Six." We want to have time to follow through on the merchandise ideas we were toying around with in "Tees and Cues." We have lots more ideas like Burgerzone that we want to have time to try.

A work ethic like the one she's developed should be rewarded. Look at how far her art has come in the last three years. This woman deserves to be all that she can be.

Look at that art! Look at it!

So for the first time in my life, I'm organizing a donation drive. The goal: to allow Gisèle to quit safely.

All money we earn from this drive will fund our future comics projects. But we'll make particular milestones worth your while. In fact, this will mean more extra content per donation dollar than ever before:

$5,000: Gift card PDFs (with passwords) for all donors. Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas, guy's birthday, gal's birthday, anniversary. For the special occasions that just sneak up on you.
$10,000: Gisèle and I work with others to finish the unfinished conclusion to Cool Cat Studio.
$15,000: Donors get access to a special page with 10 printable pieces of Gisèle artwork, based on the requests of the top 10 donors, who'll receive originals.
$20,000: Gisèle and I work with musicians (Gisèle used to be a musician, in case you didn't know) to produce a nine-song set based on Penny and Aggie, available in mp3, free for a limited time, sent to all donors.
$25,000: Jason Waltrip and I start presenting Fans: The Survivors, a 160-page, paperback-format webcomic featuring characters from my first series in an all-new suspenseful tale that's been nagging at me for months. (Jason needs a page rate, so a portion of this money will go straight to him.)
$30,000: Gisèle quits. Penny and Aggie moves to five days a week.
$35,000: Penny and Aggie starts running "fanstuff weekends:" bonus material from Gisèle and me and/or P&A fans, every Saturday…
$40,000: …and Sunday, with one bonus guaranteed to be by me and Gisèle each week.
Any donation-funded projects above this will be decided upon in the forums.

I've always known that the people who make comics are nothing without our readers. Today is just one more proof of that.

Help me help Gisèle, guys. I am your servant.