First, we've got to give a big congrats to Corin Howell, who completed the first arc of her creator-owned series Lilith in July. What an achievement! Issue #5 is being printed and shipped to us as we speak, and the standard trade paperback and your BackerKit exclusive trade editions are headed to print next 💪 This has been an incredibly challenging year to make comics, and we're so grateful for the amazing team of Corin and Warnia and Jim and for all of the backers who have supported their work on Lilith for navigating through it with us.
Final fulfillment schedule
Now that we're in the final push of book creation, here is our schedule for the rest of fulfillment:
Lilith Issue #5 DIGITAL rewards will be sent out early. We'll be sending our links to you the week of August 18th at the latest.
Rewards containing ONLY Lilith ISSUES (ie, rewards that do not include the trade book) will be sent out week of August 18th.
We are going to get all of the limited BackerKit BOOK editions sent out early/ as soon as they hit our warehouses, which will be in late September if we have no unforeseen delays from the printer side. We are intending to send backers their books before the standard trade edition is released in shops on October 15. NOTE: If your book was bundled with any issues, you will receive those all in one package shipping in late September.
Sketchbooks, posters, pins, and other add-on rewards will be going out by September as well. We have identified a potential delay with the signed sketchbooks, but will keep those backers apprised if this affects the September ship date.
The hand-drawn sketch covers and remarque covers are in progress right now with Corin since she has finally wrapped work on the comic itself. We're hoping to have those ready for late September fulfillment too, and will let you know if we anticipate any changes there.
We'll post another update once Issue #5 materials have been released to everyone via email. Thank you for your patience during the production of the first arc, and we look forward to finally getting all of your rewards to you!
Work on Lilith is proceeding steadily, and we're preparing on our end to send out reward shipments! In the next few days, we'll be locking your orders, locking your addresses, and we will be collecting any remaining shipping charges for your orders. We'll also send an email reminder, as promised, to our subscription backers who we contacted previously about discounted bundled shipping.
Here are some additional updates from us about the final few issues and timing of Lilith rewards:
Lilith single Issue #4 is printing, and physical/ digital copies will be sent to backers in the next few days.
Lilith single Issue #5 will be released in July.
The Complete Volume 1 Backerkit editions of Lilith are expected to ship sometime in July through August.
All other final rewards (additional issues, remarques, apparel, trading cards, etc) will be shipping this summer as well--some items, like the leggings, will ship separately and may arrive to backers before then. One note: due to the delay caused by the issues mentioned in previous updates, we also delayed our printing of the calendar. This calendar will now be releasing as a 2026 calendar.
If you anticipate moving or needing to update your mailing address in our shipment window (between now and July) please reach out to [email protected] for help.
Despite our best efforts, Lilith #3's physical release is delayed due to our printer unfortunately misprinting this entire run 👿 Here's a video update from Corin herself, explaining the extent of the misprint, which we only found out about once copies began to arrive to our warehouses.
Obviously, this unexpected error was NOT on our bingo card for Lilith #3, and although the printer is redoing the print job for us now, there will be a delay for the release of the physical issue. But because we don't want to leave backers hanging, please keep an eye out for an email about the digital release to tide you over while we get this problem sorted.
We've got some updates to share with you all--don't worry, nothing too scary (we'll save that for the comics).
The News
With blessings from Corin, we've updated our release schedule for Lilith Arc 1. Issue #3 will release next month in March (3/26 for shops--a week early on 3/19 for BackerKit backers), Issue #4 will release in April (again, a week early for backers), and Issue #5 will be on sale in early June (late May for backers), with the BackerKit and Standard trade paperback editions shipping in July (as soon as they hit our warehouse for backers).
The Why
The comics market has been wonky lately, to say the least. Vault saw the writing on the wall and decided to slow our release schedule across the board near the end of 2024 to protect our creators from potentially unrecoverable losses. In January, Diamond Comic Distributors, the largest distributor of single-issue comics in the US, indeed did declare bankruptcy after months of instability and damage, so it seems that pausing was the correct call. Now that we've had time to assess the new landscape and re-solicit the series completely, we're finally able to proceed with completing Lilith's first arc as Corin intended.
What This Means for Backers
We've made no changes to the Lilith campaign except for the adjusted timing of our printing, distribution, and fulfillment. No other action is needed from you--all covers and rewards will still be shipping once we've got them printed and ready-to-ship in a package suitable for your tier. We completely understand that this unavoidable industry-wide upheaval and delay might have affected Lilith backers negatively--we'll be making some additional digital covers and rewards available as a thank you for your patience during this tumultuous time--but we're happy to assist with refunds if these adjustments have caused a hardship. Thanks for bearing with us as we've pivoted!
"But What About--?"
If you have any further questions about this update or about your rewards or tier, please write to us at [email protected] with your question, and we'll be happy to assist.
In the meantime, we will be releasing copies of Lilith Issue #3 to all backers in mid-March, so please keep an eye out for that.
We thank you again for bearing with us through one of the most, uh, dynamic periods in recent comics memory, and as always, we appreciate you for backing Lilith.
Team Lilith continues to surge forward! Corin has been kicking ass; balancing a vigorous production timeline with fulfillment for new items being produced for this campaign. Here's your December update on releases and other news (plus, check out the exclusive content section for some special behind-the-scenes art).
LILITH ISSUE #2 RELEASE
The Lilith Issue #2 PDF has been emailed to backers in the digital issue release tiers as of last week (or, check the same Box link that we sent for digital Issue #1... it's in there!).
You may have noticed that Issue #2 came out a bit later than expected. This is due to some printer issues that have unfortunately affected Vault's recent releases, including Lilith. That said, we wanted to make sure that backers got to read the new issue two weeks before the general release date of 12/18, next Wednesday. All backers who subscribed to physically mailed issues will receive theirs in the mail next week for the general release.
And, since we get this question a lot, the Lilith Volume 1 BackerKit-exclusive book PDF is a compilation of the first 5 issues, and will be available after the conclusion of this arc (Issue #5). We'll let you know as soon as the BackerKit-exclusive trade edition is ready to go, both physically and digitally.
SURVEYS RELEASE ON 12/16
Now that we've got a handle on the new estimated release dates, we will be send out surveys to collect your addresses! We plan to do this on Monday, December 16, with a random number backers receiving theirs early as part of a smoke test.
This survey will collect your address and any shipping costs for your tier. You can change your address any time between now and fulfillment for your tier. Since this project will require several rounds of shipping, we'll send a reminder before we lock addresses, which will give you another 48 hours to update before we send your rewards.
WE'RE NOT CHARGING YOU YET!
Please note that we will NOT yet be charging cards for shipping on most tiers. We will be shipping to reward tiers based on availability of your items. Since not all issues are printed/ released yet, shipping is expected to take place over several months. The two tiers that will be shipping soon are 1) physical subscription issues (already underway) and 2) the calendar-only tiers.
To avoid confusion, we'll reach out to you via your provided email before charging cards for your specific reward tier.
SHIPPING REMINDER
As mentioned in the campaign, to ensure that we're shipping to you at the lowest possible price, we'll be bundling all orders based on when they're all ready to ship together, unless otherwise communicated.
There are also some global shipping situations in development, including an ongoing Canadian postal strike. For any backers affected, we'll be shipping to you as soon as we're able to. If you have any questions or other concerns about your order, please reach out to us at [email protected].
And, in case we don't update again this year, hope you all have a great Winter holiday season.
