A 500+ page sci-fi hardcover by Iván Brandon & Nic Klein—rebuilt as a single designed object. Pledge early to be printed in the book.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
A brief but capitalized Thank You.
11 months ago
– Fri, May 16, 2025 at 05:21:07 AM
Yesterday our campaign ended, at something like 725% funded, with pledges in THIRTY ONE countries (!!!) and SO MUCH encouragement all over our socials, in our emails, here in the comments. We all took a minute behind the scenes to shake hands and catch our breath (in my case, to eat a tiny cup of gelato at a neighborhood spot I've been saving for this occasion.
(I'm in a tiny town in the south of Italy, writing another thing you will hopefully see eventually. But that's not a conversation for today)
Anyway, this morning we're nailing down the print run, discussing arrangements for book fulfillment in Europe to hopefully mitigate some of the shipping costs. (Note, I said hopefully, no promises, but we're sensitive to the issue and definitely trying to figure it out)
The point to this message is we're enormously grateful for what you've done for us, this book is our dream and we can't thank you enough for making it real.
On behalf of myself, of Nic, of Tom, thank you for everything.
-Iván Somewhere in Calabria
48 hours left — let 'er rip
11 months ago
– Tue, May 13, 2025 at 08:38:45 AM
DRIFTER was one of those rare projects where everything somehow aligned. Nic was like a nuclear reactor, at his blinding creative peak, and like 2 idiots, Tom Muller and I ran towards the crazy melting thing. I dunno if the gamma rays made us stronger, or if we all died in that blast.
If you’ve seen Tom’s now-iconic redesign work on the X-Men marks — this book is where that started. I was asked to put him in touch with Jonathan Hickman because of what he did on these books. About Drifter, Hickman said: “Before their untimely deaths, the great Ivan Brandon and Nic Klein produced one final, amazing comic.” (you can see my earlier confusion)
Drifter: Omnia is our monument to that time.
In the last month, we've used the success of the campaign to add all the book nerd perks we could think of, sewn binding, spot gloss, fluorescent ink, and now a custom bookmark by Tom. If we hit 75K, we unlock a final stretch goal — an exclusive mini-print, (mini-)printed for this campaign. (It's only mini so that it fits in the same box, and the book is HUGE, so it's not really that mini)
There are 48 hours left before we set the print run and shut the door on this thing. This book is heavier than it should be, weirder than it has any right to be, and more personal than we'd like to admit.
We hope to make a lot of books for you. Let's finish this one strong.
-Iván Drinking frozen coffee in the south of Italy
New Update – Add-ons, Bundles, and Friends in Space
11 months ago
– Tue, May 06, 2025 at 10:09:19 AM
By popular demand, we’ve added our first series THE ROMAN STARS to the campaign.
You can now back the original series in its own tier (if you missed it the first time around). You can grab the limited editions of Twilight + Dusk as add-ons.
Or you can go all in with the new LUX SUPERNOVA bundle — pairing Drifter: Omnia (LUX edition) with The Roman Stars limited editional IMPERIAL HCs plus our tote, because how else are you gonna carry them?
We also added the tote and ASCII bandana as add-ons. Basically, we’re going to need bigger shipping boxes.
While we’ve got your attention: Our lovely and talented friend Karl Kerschl is running his own campaign right now — DEATH TRANSIT MAGPIE. If you missed Death Transit Tanager, Karl describes this new chapter as Metroid meets Hellboy, and honestly… even if he couldn’t write, we’d buy it for the art alone. To your benefit and our slight dismay, he is one of the best writers in the medium, too.
We’re creeping toward our next stretch goal: fluorescent ink added to the cover. Tom Muller, our designer, has been waiting his whole life for this. Please help us help him. This is all he has.
In all seriousness — you’re making our dreams possible here, and we don’t take it lightly.
–Team Deathray
New Stretch goal unlocked: OBLIVION SUNS
12 months ago
– Wed, Apr 30, 2025 at 12:03:41 PM
I hope you guys like our space-emo stretch goal titles.
Ok so I'm a little out of pocket in Italy so the timing of this is weird, BUT: we recently hit another Stretch Goal and unlocked an arguably cooler one SO: here's where all that stands. We reached 400% (!!!) of our initial goal. Our goal was set pretty low because we wanted to make sure this book would exist no matter what happened. Then we figured if things went better than that baseline we'd put money back into the book and make it better.
Nic, Tom and I have been working together for well over 10 years but have not endeavored to make anything as crazy as this.
Here's what 40k brought us:
Every copy of Drifter: Omnia now features section-sewn binding with cambric reinforcement—designed to survive drift storms, time travel, and rereading.
YOU DID THAT.
If we get to 50k? We get something weird and fun that Tom has been asking me for for years. FLOURESCENT INK. The hardcovers and slipcover will include a 5th, flourescent, ink. This is a design nerd Voltron we're building, and y'all (youse?) are our ragtag group of pilots.
The closer we get to this book being tangible the more we freak out internally.
And externally. Nic is currently floating into space.
What a week it has been on Earth and on Ouro
12 months ago
– Tue, Apr 22, 2025 at 06:36:56 AM
Ok, going to do my best not to forget everything. DEEP BREATH.
We're at 285% funded. GASP. We have unlocked 2 stretch goals, an afterward by the creators and a spot gloss pattern on the hardcover editions. Hopefully we'll unlock our 3rd, because it's a PAPER UPGRADE to 150gsm matte gallery stock and I am that particular kind of nerd. The smell of it. The texture. This book won't do your taxes, mostly because there's a lot of chronal confusion on the surface of Ouro, but with this paper, this book becomes best friend material.
This'll probably help us get there: today we've added some new tiers.
We added 4 merch items: our befuddlingly successful socks, a new Roma T-shirt design, an ASCII bandana design and a tote bag illustrated by everyone's favorite boy, Chuck BB.
All of these are available as add-ons now, the new Roma Tee has a tier, too.
We decided to add the tote to our superbundle and then it of course became the SUPERNOVA bundle, for obvious reasons. Supernova adds both volumes of The Roman Stars so that you can get the whole Deathray back catalog in one swoop. For yourself, for friends, to reinforce your walls in case the zombies finally show up.
We have a lot more planned, and honestly, we're feeling a lot of emotions that you guys have made this book happen. It's probably the craziest, most beautiful book we've ever done, and we've been asked a lot for a hardcover, so we really wanted this to live up to what this means to us, and to those of you who've been with us all these years.
