Band of Bards is proud to announce their first Kickstarter of 2023, Amongst the Stars, a romance in space anthology that will bring you to gladiatorial arenas, space stations, hair salons, and alien planets. You’ll meet mercenaries, assassins, astronauts, and unknowable beings. And you’ll watch them all fall in love….in space.
This anthology is curated by Elyse Russell & C. J. Hudson, along with assistant editor K.R. Cullen. Composed of 14 stories centered in a mash up of sci-fi and romance, Amongst the Stars promises to deliver pleasure on a cosmic level. Inside these pages you’ll find works from Caroline Leigh Layne (Money Shot), Jenny Odio (Tales from the Pandemic), Brent Fisher (Extra Pages Press), Fell Hound (Commander Rao), Paul Carroll (Limit Break Comics), Nahuel F.A.(Negative Space Comics), Travis B. Hill (TechnoKnights), Damien Becton (Worlds Away), Ben Humeniuk (Bro-D Can’t Be Broken), Lindz McLeod (The Dark Side of Purity), and many more wonderful indie comics creators.
Amongst the Stars features covers from Rio Burton, Caroline Leigh Layne, Mariateresa Susca, and a very special cosplay pin-up cover from legendary cosplay model Ani-Mia!
“ATS encompasses the driving force we all felt to create opportunity for indie comics creators. It’s become our opportunity to highlight talent and give time and dedication to some of the very best this expressive medium has to offer. We didn’t want to make the process too cumbersome or restrictive, but we still wanted to provide direction, and we felt genre was the best way to do that. Ultimately we we decided on two genres for creators to adhere their stories to: romance and sci-fi. Romance because it hasn’t had its moment in the sun with respect to anthology or even monthly releases for quite some time. And sci-fi because it’s fucking cool, and anything and everything is possible.” – C.J. Hudson, curator & Bard
“Elyse and C.J. are powerhouse creators. When they pitched the idea for Amongst the Stars to us we knew it would be a banger. Chris and I have been excited for this campaign and could not be more thrilled to be publishing Amongst the Stars.” – Tim Stolinski, Band of Bards co-founder
Amongst the Stars launches on Kickstarter on February 14th and ends on March 17th. You can see a preview of Amongst the Stars at Band of Bards’ page on GlobalComix, and don’t forget to follow the campaign!
Band of Bards is an independent publisher of comics and graphic novels formed in March of 2021 by Timothy Stolinski and Chris Benamati. Based in Buffalo, NY we are committed to publishing stories with a focus on Representation, Inclusion, and Diversity. We support creator-owned IP and intend to foster community, and change through intentional publishing.