START HERE: Welcome to Exploding Giraffe

The NSFW work of graphic novelists Brian K. Vaughan & Niko Henrichon

Brian K. Vaughan

Jan 14, 2022

147

Hey, your old pal BKV here.

Way back in 2004, editor Will Dennis at the late great Vertigo Comics introduced me to the extraordinary work of artist Niko Henrichon, and together we went on to create an original graphic novel called Pride of Baghdad, maybe the work of mine of which I’m most proud.

Still, I have to accept that our anthropomorphic tale of noncombatants amidst an invasion is likely best remembered, at least by the internet, for a single moment that inspires a thousand “WTF?!” responses whenever it’s posted.

Apologies for this out of context animal death (and for the shitty war my country started):

In honor of that dearly departed ruminant, Niko and I are proud to bring you Exploding Giraffe, the online home for all of our future collaborations.

For the last fifteen years or so, Niko and I have been eager to collaborate on another story, one even more ambitious in scope and subject matter than Pride. The idea that excited us most is a graphic novel called Spectators, a planned 300-plus page self-contained epic about…well, a lot of things, but at its core, it’s a story about sex and violence, and why so many of us spend so much of our lives watching both.

I’m not going to lie, it’s going to be fucking graphic, in every sense of the word (please don’t subscribe, Mom). And beyond the nudity and bloodshed, our story will eventually touch on a lot of other potentially incendiary subjects.

In order to make this project a reality, Niko and I needed partners who were fearless enough to give us complete creative freedom, and who could also provide a crowd-funding element to could help support the years of hard work (for Niko, at least, who will be drawing AND coloring every page) it will take to complete what we hope will be our best book yet.

Enter our new friends at Substack. Thanks to them (and potentially readers like you), I’m excited to share that Niko and I are finally hard at work on our dream project, and you won’t have to wait years to check it out. Nope, you can start reading Spectators at the end of this very message, with a few new pages to follow every single Monday.

And what’s even cooler is, you get to watch us create this new work in real time for FREE.

That’s right, just hit the subscribe button, and it won’t cost you a penny to have Niko’s gorgeously explicit artwork (lettered by Saga’s own Fonografiks!) delivered straight from his drawing board to your inbox every week for at least the next year. Again, the actual comics portion of our Substack will ALWAYS be 100% free to subscribers. How cool is that?

But maybe you’d like to go deeper…?

If so, we invite you to join us in The Tower (what the San Diego Zoo just taught me that a group of giraffes is called!), a paid tier at seven bucks a month, or just $69 for the whole year. And because those of you who contribute make all of this possible, everyone who signs up at that annual level will be automatically entered in a monthly drawing to win a page of Niko’s breathtaking original art from Spectators.

Regardless of which tier you select, ALL paid subscribers will have access to the following exclusives:

A private forum to interact directly with Niko and me (and with the rest of your fellow Tower members), where we look forward to fostering the kind of positive, thoughtful, comics-loving community like the good ol’ “BKV Cabal” message board.
A backstage pass to the ongoing creation of Spectators, as well as a behind-the-scenes look at our other past, present and future work in comics.
Process videos from Niko’s studio, where you aspiring artists can watch and hopefully even learn from one of our medium’s finest.
Classified Memos from the Desk of BKV, where I’ll be talking about everything from “secret” Hollywood stuff to my newfound addiction to original comic art to what the hell was up with that Taco Bell commercial?
Exclusive access to Mature Readers, a new podcast-type thing where you’ll be able to listen to my nasally Cleveland accent converse with some of my favorite creators about comics made for adult audiences.

But if you’re lucky enough to be flush at the moment and would like to do even more to directly support the eventual completion of Spectators (and potentially even more new comics from us), we’d be honored if you’d consider subscribing as a Founder.

UPDATE: BKV here, and I’m afraid we’ve discontinued this Founder tier as of August, 2022, but we’ll let you know if/when we decide to introduce a new one. Thanks so much to the many, MANY of you who supported us at this level, and we’re working hard to get any remaining Founders your one-of-a-kind rewards soon!

For $250 (plus shipping anywhere in the world), you’ll get everything listed above PLUS we’ll mail you a very special Exploding Giraffe Prize Package containing:

A limited edition, signed script to Saga #1, the first and only time my complete 44-page script to that issue will ever be available anywhere.
An original, one-of-a-kind sketch card hand drawn by the great Niko Henrichon.
Plus, one signed, bagged-and-boarded comic from my personal collection, the only place you’ll be able to get an autograph from my reclusive ass this year. Sorry I can’t take requests for specific titles or issues, and I have no idea what “grade” my old comps are in if you care about that kind of nonsense, but I’ll be randomly tossing some especially cool comics into these prize packages, including my last few copies of Y the Last Man #1 and at least one ultra-rare, ridiculously valuable variant of Saga #1.

For now, Niko and I are pleased to leave you with the first several pages of our new story (which you can read directly in this email/post, or download and own in the reading format of your choice). I love that we get to share this without revealing anything about the plot, who the protagonists might be, or even what genre Spectators is, so we hope every page will feel like a surprise.

And again, we can’t stress enough that this graphic novel will be decidedly NSFW, so if fictional depictions of real human sexuality and/or brutality aren’t for you, please visit any of our more family-friendly colleagues here at Substack instead.

For the rest of you lovely Giraffes, thanks so much for subscribing, and we’ll see you for our next dispatch in a few short days.