4. John Campbell's Sad Pictures For Children (Goal: $8,000/Pledged: $51,615)
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/73258510/sad-pictures-for-children/ Nothing that happened
during this Kickstarter to publish a second collection of the Pictures for Sad Children webcomic (not a typo: the title words were reshuffled for Volume 2) was particularly questionable. What stung was what happened
after. Despite receiving funding far in excess of his original goal, Campbell apparently didn't have enough, when all was said and done, to ship every book. Struggling with depression, financial pressure, and what seems likely to be further mental illness, Campbell revolted against not only the expectations of him, but his own career and capitalism itself. He destroyed a reported 127 books in a bonfire, which he filmed. He posted the video along with a
screed titled "IT'S OVER" and subtitled "AFFLUENT PEOPLE: PLEASE DEFEND YOUR DESIRE FOR AFFLUENCE AND PARTICIPATION IN CAPITALISM,"
in which he promised to burn another book for every email he received about books not yet shipped. https://d2pq0u4uni88oo.cloudfront.net/assets/001/685/173/b2a5646f1d80c722560f500470386fcc_h264_high.mp4 Campbell's fan Max Temkin contacted Campbell and took the situation in hand as well as one could,
reportedly sending copies to all the empty-handed backers still responding to messages from the Kickstarter, some months after Campbell's meltdown. But Campbell deleted his entire body of cartooning work from the Web and has not been seen in cartooning circles since. Sadder still, actions like this have a chilling effect on other crowdfunded projects and webcomics in particular. While the market seems to have weathered this one, an action like this serves as a reminder that a Kickstarter is a promise, and promises can be broken.