Good Omens graphic novel easily sets crowd-funding record on Kickstarter

The second season of Good Omens recently wrapped on Amazon Prime Video, and fans are hungry for more. We’re not sure if we’re going to get a third season — creator Neil Gaiman is hopeful but realistic — but we’re hoping for the best.

But we’ll be getting more Good Omens content one way or another. Gaiman, who wrote the original Good Omens book alongside the late Terry Pratchett, has promised to write what would be season 3 as a book if Amazon doesn’t do the right thing and renew the show. Also, illustrator Colleen Doran is working on Good Omens: The Official (and Ineffable) Graphic Novel.

Doran is working with the full blessing of Gaiman and of Terry Pratchett’s estate. They’re raising money for the project on Kickstarter, where they’ve raised…over $2 million?! And the original goal was just $31,841?! And there are still 10 days left to go?!

Good Omens graphic novel crushes crowd-funding record on Kickstarter

So yeah, the Good Omens Kickstarter has absolutely demolished expectations. According to Bleeding Cool, it’s easily set the crowd-funding record for a graphic novel on Kickstarter.

Writing on Facebook, Gaiman explained why they went the Kickstarter route in the first place. “Publishers were disappointingly uninterested in doing this, and definitely not interested in making the beautiful book the way we wanted it done, or paying Colleen to work on it for the two years it would take her to draw and paint and create it. We liked the control we get over the finished product by doing it ourselves, through Kickstarter. The support and enthusiasm we’ve seen has demonstrated to us that our instincts were correct.”

Yes, very much so! Those publishers must be kicking themselves right about now.

Good Omens graphic novel “will not be 100% accurate to the novel”

Also writing on Facebook, Colleen Doran provided more info on the book. “Yes, it’s an adaptation of the novel,” she wrote. “No, it will not be 100% accurate to the novel because it would be impossible to fit 400 pages of text into a 200-page graphic novel.”

"This is an adaptation, not a slavish text to visual transliteration because if it were there would be a lot of scenes where body language would be reduced to someone raising his hands while in conversation and doing almost nothing else. This is not a criticism, this is just saying that the novel has scenes where someone stands and talks or sits and talks, and it is more interesting in a comic to add movement. Comics are not movies. This is a static medium. Visual interest is made from movement and I’m adding it. Instead of having people sit as written, at times I have them stand up and walk around.”I add things not explicit in the text, but implied by the text, such as angelic lore, i.e. angels are beings of fire. The text also explicitly states that demons and angels don’t really look very different, so when I make Crowley’s wings white, I know someone will freak out. We had the same issues with the name Galaad in CHIVALRY. Galaad is the original spelling of the name Galahad, and I don’t think I’ve ever been more pecked at in my life than from the complaints about how Neil Gaiman and I could not possibly know anything about King Arthur if we didn’t know that Galahad was spelled with an H.Nothing I do doesn’t get reviewed by the bosses at The Terry Pratchett Estate and Neil Gaiman. There are things I wanted to do that they took out. I throw things out there and if the answer is no, I am 100% fine with that. I’ve redone things because I found one tiny line 50 pages away from the original scene that made me rethink how I did something.My primary obligation is to Neil and the Terry Pratchett Estate, and I will do whatever I have to to make them happy. And I sincerely hope you will like it too."

To be clear, this is a graphic novel adaptation of the original Good Omens book from 1990, where Aziraphale and Crowley team up to prevent the apocalypse. Everything that’s happened in season 2 goes beyond the books.

The estimated delivery date for Good Omens: the Official (and Ineffable) Graphic Novel is July of 2024.

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