Beginnings and endings / liminal spaces / human moments. Our Winter 2024 season collects three works in translation, a hardcover collection, and a work of comics poetry.

Five beautiful books; five new artists. Join us and help make our upcoming season a success.

About the Project

FIeldmouse Press is a nonprofit comics publisher based in the sunny hills of Grass Valley, California. This is our fourth Crowdfundr project, this time to support the publication of our Winter 2024 season. We've lined up five amazing books for this campaign.

The goal of this project is to defray the printing costs of this season. We've carefully budgeted printing costs, design costs, and accounted for hidden variables and potential additional fees (like recent paper price increases). We've got everything ready to go, but we need your help to make these books a reality!

We are fully dedicated to publishing these books, and one of the titles in this campaign, We Will No Longer Have to Cover Each Other's Wounds, was already successfully funded through a Kickstarter campaign earlier this year. Presales for this season of books will help support our future publishing mission and keep Fieldmouse on its current trajectory. 

About Fieldmouse Press

Fieldmouse Press is a nonprofit publisher of comics and literature, based in Grass Valley, California. Founded in 2019, Fieldmouse Press is committed to expanding the reach and appreciation of the comics arts. This is us at SPX 2022! You can see Daniel (left) and Alex (right), our President and our Publisher (respectively), along with our first season of books. We founded Fieldmouse Press because we love comics, and wanted to give back to our community.

Picture Credit: MariNaomi @ CAKE 2023

Since 2021, Fieldmouse Press has published 10 new comics from indie and alt comics legends like Ariel Bordeaux and MariNaomi, as well as new and upcoming artists like Phoebe Mol and Noëlle Kröger. Here's another picture from CAKE 2023 - at this show, we had the U.S. debut of MariNaomi's I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME. Mari (left) was a featured guest! 2023 has been a great year so far, and we're excited to move into 2024 with this new season of books.

What's in Our Winter 2024 Season?

Warnebi by Wiebke Bolduan, trans. by Natalye Childress - 88 page softcover graphic novella; perfect-bound, full color throughout

Tourists wonder, "Why is the Warnebi lagoon pink?" Anders, who works at the Warnebi gift shop, wonders, "What am I doing with my life?" Warnebi is a laconic story about the nagging sense of insecurity we all face, the desire to change for the better, and the indecision of how to make that change. Wiebke Bolduan's dry humor and gentle pacing make this a story that unveils more of itself with each read.

Winner of the GINCO 2022 Award in Germany, Warnebi is our second translated book from German, and the debut work of Wiebke Bolduan.

““An understated comic about mental health whose subtlety and nuance only deepen its impact. But make no mistake: while deeply empathetic to ‘the struggle,’ Bolduan finds just the right dosage of humor in even the gloomiest aspects of everyday life. Fair warning: you will want to own at least five plush Warnis when you’re done with this book.”

— Noëlle Kröger, author of Good Person Trouble

Feather by Tyler Cohen - 24 pg, full-color saddle-stitched comic

A lyrical and poetic exercise in wordless storytelling, Tyler Cohen’s Feather explores the things we make and the things we leave behind.

“Tyler Cohen’s Feather shook me, leaving me feeling like I had just witnessed an unsettling dream. She creates an atmosphere that is equal parts love, beauty, and terror. This book is beautiful and strange, uncanny.”

— Leela Corman, author of Victory Parade, You Are Not A Guest, and Unterzakhn

“Such a heartfelt, poignant comic about connecting threads, breaking free and letting go. Quiet, thoughtful, intricate, and colorful — I love getting lost in Tyler’s world. .”

— Rina Ayuyang, author of The Man in the McIntosh Suit and Blame This on the Boogie

Not Today: Undoing Home Repairs by Ana Margarida Matos, Trans. Victor Martins - 120 pg, perfect-bound softcover with lay-flat binding

Caught in the COVID pandemic lockdowns, Not Today: Undoing Home Repairs is a daily record between January 16 and June 26, 2021. The author starts a lockdown diary with the premise that she will never lose track of time again. As time moves on, she beings documenting anything and everything that happens in the day, from little things like her dinner menu to catastrophic things like the COVID-19 case load. As the lockdown stretches on, the swirl of Margarida’s thoughts become claustrophobic and labyrinthine. A dense and beautiful debut work that questions what is, and what is to come.

"Claiming to be a diary, Not Today: Undoing Home Repairs easily reads like an essay on that category of space-time to which physicists devote their thoughts, here declined in its many everyday variations, confirming that in every existence there are as many quantum bends and black holes as there are in the universe that we don't know how to comprehend."

— 5-star review by Sara Figueiredo Costa in Jornal Expresso

Complete and Utter Malarkey by November Garcia - 312 pg, full color hardback

Best known for her critically acclaimed autobio comics (Malarkey, Foggy Notions, Rookie Moves), November Garcia is an Ignatz Award-nominated cartoonist, originally from the Philippines. Her work appears in The New Yorker, and has also been featured in PEN America, SOLRAD, The Stranger, Popula, and MoMA Magazine, among others.

“There's a high voltage, electric current running through these panels. Every frame is brimming over with sharp, intelligent humor. You'll find no filler or duds in this book, just exceptional storytelling and skilled draftsmanship, realized with an eye for design. Garcia depicts herself-indulgence, pathos, and decadence with exacting, rigorous self-discipline. That is confessional comics at its finest. I feel bad for her weepy ex."

— Gabrielle Bell, author of Everything is Flammable

“Hilarious, honest, cringey, and so much fun."

— Gina Wynbrant, author of Someone Please Have Sex With Me

We Will No Longer Have to Cover Each Other's Wounds by Siyuan Wen - 128 pg, perfect-bound softcover

Estranged from his mother after a frightening incident in childhood, Wayde now struggles to come to terms with her death.  We Will No Longer Have to Cover Each Other's Wounds  is a masterful examination of broken relationships, generational trauma, and the need for connection.  Already funded through Kickstarter, we're offering a special discount to backers who support this campaign!

“Through a striking constellation of memories, Siyuan Wen draws us into the bleak lives of a mother and child as death both separates and weaves them together anew. An intimate, visually-stunning masterpiece. Siyuan Wen is a virtuoso of the medium.”

— Sloan Leong, author of Prism Stalker, A Map to the Sun, and Graveneye

Backing the Project

Backing a Crowdfundr campaign is a little different than other crowdfunding platforms you might be used to. Click the perk you're interested on the right hand side of the page, and add it to your cart. You'll check out after selecting the perks you want, and money will be collected immediately. You can add multiple perks to your cart before checkout, so if you want multiple books but not the whole season, (or if you want multiple copies of the same book), you can do that before checkout. Shipping and fulfillment costs are applied during check-out when you support the project.

One of our goals when publishing comics is to make sure our artists are treated equitably, so we've already paid our artists advances on royalties and offer an artist-centered royalty for all of our books.

Funding Goal

Our funding goal is $12,500 USD. These funds will be used to directly pay for printing and transportation of the books back to our warehouse, as well as for processing fees and additional unforeseen expenses. Here is the breakdown of our costs:

We're offering a variety of packages to help fund this print run, but we need your help to make this season a reality. 

Risks

Fieldmouse Press has successfully funded and fulfilled multiple campaigns through Kickstarter and Crowdfundr, so we have the experience of crowdfunding under our belts. We are working with the amazing folks at White Squirrel Distribution to help make sure that packages get out quickly and efficiently. We were able to complete our campaign for our previous season on time and with no damaged items on returns.  We have done all the pre-work to make sure that this campaign with be successful.

However, risks remain, especially with transportation and the uncertainty of the COVID pandemic. Books may be damaged on transit or may not be printed to specifications. We are working with a Chinese printer for this season in order to reduce total costs, but that increases the risks inherent in overseas shipping. As we experienced with MariNaomi's I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME, customs holds and delays in port can happen, and we've baked in extra time to have books to you.

We expect to be able to start shipping books in March 2024, but have given ourselves until April 2024 to completely fulfill this campaign.  We promise to keep our supporters up to date with any news, including delays and uncertainties, as we work through the campaign process.