For the philanthropic artist side of you, here's something worth spending your hard-earned blood money on.

Tony Harris, the Eisner Awards-winning artist who brought you DC comics’ Starman with James Robinson, and Ex Machina with Brian K. Vaughan, has turned to Kickstarter, the website that allows creative types to raise money by direct appeal to a community of supporters, for his next big project.

Roundeye: For Love, a 96-page graphic novel, is a medieval fantasy with a most unique protagonist.
Before we go on to the project, perhaps it will be better if you can look at the delightful art that have been rendered thus far:








Here's the synopsis from Harris's Kickstarter page:

A mysterious , hulking white man known only as ROUNDEYE stumbles out of the jungle, and into the arms of a woman(Tulip) who is forbidden to all who know her. She is the wife of Roundeyes soon to be Master, Yoshitsuni, a fierce Samurai, who controls the region with an Iron fist and little mercy. Their cursed love affair produces a child that damns them both to fates they can't possibly imagine, ripping them apart and flinging their helpless souls to the farthest corners of the planet.

ROUNDEYE is left for dead, and his Tulip banished to a Brothel by her vengeful husband.

Yoshi, praying in his temple is approached by a Shinto underworld demon who offers him "SIGHT". An ability to "see" his opponents every move in battle before they make it, transforming Yoshi into an invincible and horrible man. His price? He must blind himself in return for the Dragons Claw, which contains it's eye, protected inside it's balled up fist. Yoshi, blinded, and able to see clearer than ever before amasses a blind Army of Samurai that ride the land wielding the Dragons Claw as their standard, unstoppable, and terrible.

ROUNDEYE is found by a retired swordsmith on the verge of death and nurses the Hulk back to health at the cost of his arm, which the Smith has replaced with an artificial limb. He gifts ROUNDEYE the last sword he created before retiring, and sends ROUNDEYE on a path to regain a love lost, twisting and turning on a blood-soaked road to the ultimate battle against Yoshitsunis unstoppable army, with the hope of reuniting with his Tulip.

While the protagonist does remind one of some Toshirō Mifune goodness...
.. there is no doubt that you can expect this to be one lavishly illustrated work.

Originally raised for $60,000 to create the graphic novel, Harris has since restarted the project for $20,000 instead. Here's his justification:

A 96 page graphic novel Written, Pencilled, Inked and colored by Tony Harris. The $20,000.00 to be raised is for a page rate to produce all the art, cover production costs, and keep my children in PB&J samiches!!! The publisher is Desperado/IDW and it will be serialized in their new, NOT YET ANNOUNCED ANTHOLOGY!!!.

Consider this: Kickstarter takes a percentage of all monies recieved. They also charge for all the credit card processing fees. The money goal set here reflects those things, my page rate for penciling, inking and coloring 96 pages of art, which is a Herculean task to be sure. Then there are administration fees for publishing, and promotional items to be generated and paid for. This project will likely be taken to , IDW, and they will handle printing, and distribution, and a certain amount of advertising costs ( which can be MASSIVE). These are all big reasons why I decided to post ROUNDEYE: AFor Love here on Kickstarter. To reach as large an audience as possible. And the salary/page rate mentioned will likely be over 1-2 years, which doesn't amount to a whole lot. But this is the ONLY way to produce an extremely high quality product that will be competitive in the Comics market. I sincerely hope this makes everything I am trying to achieve here totally transparent. Cheers!

The video of the project followed by some of the rough sketches that Harris has done for the title.