Inspired by young-adult graphic novels like Runways, Amulet, and Zita the Space Girl, American Genuises introduces a class of gifted teenagers who are pursued by the Monkey King... a supernatural prisoner who has been searching for geniuses to help him stage a daring jail break.

If you're here, you're probably a fan of our prior film and television productions: The Gamers, JourneyQuest, Strowlers, Demon Hunters, Dark Dungeons, Attacking the Darkness, and many, many more. You already know that we can tell amazing stories.

But every story is different, so we're giving everyone who visits this campaign early access to the American Geniuses Prologue and Sketchbook.

If you fall in love with the story that we're telling, we encourage you to join our community as a backer!

Sure, we're offering normal rewards like a collectible edition of our finished first issue, but the most important thing is that after the campaign is fulfilled, backers will keep receiving new pages from future issues as we create them. (That's a lot of pages!) We'll let you in on the complete process, two or three years before we start sharing the finished story with the public. Concept art, storyboards, script pages, color flats: it's the entire package.

Every pledge will help us tell the story a little bit faster. More importantly, everyone who pledges becomes part of an exclusive Discord community. You'll get to experience the story, page-by-page, as we create it. If it's your passion, you can even help us fact check all of science, math, programming, engineering, cryptography, history, costuming, navigation, and (of course) circus acrobatics!

In addition to the first issue, the complete script is also already finished. We know exactly what story we want to tell, we've guided it through more than ten rewrites (in the same process we used to develop every movie and tv show at DG and ZOE), and we've polished it until it shines.

This campaign isn't about the money, it's about the community.

When you pledge, you join a small, exclusive group that gets to experience the excitement of new pages landing, of sharing your thoughts and theories, and even helping us shape the details that bring the world of American Geniuses to life.

We want this campaign to be accessible to anyone, so we're providing access to the first issue for only $5.

We also know that some people—by people we mean us, but maybe also you—care deeply about getting important details right. This story is dense with math, science, game strategy, cryptography, history, costuming, and so much more. We want your expertise. In return, we'll give you all the rewards!

Whatever level you back at, we'll give you exclusive access to our working Discord server, where you can experience the story with us as it unfolds!

Plus, if you pledge to Sombulus, our cross-collab campaign, we'll add an exclusive Embroidered Amulet Patch to your rewards!

Because we want to help Natalie devote more of her paying-the-rent hours to creating incredible art for this project, our add-ons are all about sponsoring more art!

If you choose to sponsor a panel, a page, a two-page spread, or even an entire issue, we'll thank you with a gorgeous signed print of what you helped us create and will credit you as that art's sponsor in that issue.

We get final choice on which page and panel you sponsor (just in case everyone wants pages 23-24), but will do our best to let you choose.

From 1999 through 2021, I developed and produced dozens of beloved films and television shows for Dead Gentlemen Productions and Zombie Orpheus Entertainment (ZOE), collaborating with world-class storytellers, directors, actors, and crews. You can watch most of them for free at www.ZombieOrpheus.com!

As many of you know, I retired as ZOE's CEO in 2021 due to a major health crisis. I'm very happy to share with you that not only have I finally recovered, but I'm now working with ZOE to launch a new story that I'm incredibly passionate about: American Geniuses.

Back in 2005, after several years leading our development team to adapt the ambitious The Gamers: Dorkness Rising story to a size that could fit our budget, I dreamed of writing a movie that we could never afford to produce. Something epic, that couldn't be filmed for less than $100 million dollars. Something where practical considerations were secondary to pure imagination.

That's when I started writing a screenplay about a group of gifted high school students. Swept out to sea on a floating ice cream parlor, they are captured by a mysterious alien who needs geniuses to help him stage a daring prison break. Complications (and hilarity) ensue.

While I was recovering from 2021's health crisis, I returned to the world of American Geniuses, brought on co-writer Michelle Nessk, and we heroically turned this massive, $100-million-dollar screenplay into an affordable graphic novel. Then, after an extensive worldwide search, we recruited the brilliant oil painter Natalie Pujols to illustrate the story.

I love this story so much that I've been self-funding the graphic novel, taking the time to get every detail right and to make every panel gorgeous. On an artist and musician's salary, this would take a long time. Or I thought it would, until I showed our progress to Rennie, ZOE's current CEO.

That's why ZOE has launched this tiny crowdfunding campaign:  to help us tell the story.

If you're a fan of my twenty years of creative leadership at Dead Gentlemen and Zombie Orpheus, if you're committed to getting the science part of science fiction right, if you love the game of Go, the story of China's Monkey King, films like E.T and The Goonies, and especially if (like me) you're exploring all of the ways that neurodiversity affects your life, this campaign is your invitation to join us on a new adventure.

Ben Dobyns

We're handling everything for this campaign right here on BackerKit! You'll only need one account, the same one you use when you pledge. (Okay, you'll also need a Discord account if you want real-time access to new pages. So a max of two accounts.)

When the campaign ends we'll get to work on preparing backer surveys. They'll be simple to fill out. If you're receiving any physical products, you'll add your address and pay then for any shipping or taxes that are due. (We can't waive VAT, sorry!)

Shipping is pretty expensive these days, but thanks to the intimate scale of this campaign, we'll be able to lower costs significantly by shipping ourselves from the ZOE warehouse, rather than paying $4.50+ for handling charges elsewhere.

We expect to ship physical rewards in the first half of 2025. It will probably be even sooner, but we've done enough crowdfunding campaigns over the last fifteen years to know that it's important to add lots of buffer in our time estimates!

As for digital rewards, like all of the pages beyond our completed first issue? That timeline depends on how much we raise here. Right now we're creating around six pages a month. That means it will take us another 1-3 years to complete the story. Even if we raise enough to help Natalie devote more time to this project, it's still not going to be fast. This is a labor of love and we're committed to doing it right, not cutting corners, and not rushing the job.

We're confident in our plan to deliver the core rewards for this campaign. With decades of experience fulfilling crowdfunding campaigns, we know how to source manufacturing quotes, handle surveys, pack products for safe delivery, and deal with any problems that arise during shipping.  

However, there's always the chance that we won't be able to complete our long-term goal of telling the complete story. Three years is a long time! If someone gets sick, if Ben can no longer fund new pages, or if a broader regional or global crisis interrupts our lives, we may have to stop production. In that eventuality, we'll provide the complete script to every backer, so that you can learn how the story ends, and we'll release the full script under Creative Commons or SCULA, so that anyone is free to complete it. 

Ben Dobyns (they/them) is a non-binary performer and media producer living on the unceded land of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Nations in Burnaby, Metro Vancouver, Canada.

They are best known for founding Zombie Orpheus Entertainment, producing award-winning television shows like Strowlers, The Gamers, and JourneyQuest, performing as a jazz pianist and pipe organist on three continents, creating board, card, and live action roleplaying games, and for raising millions of dollars on Kickstarter for clients in the entertainment and tech categories. 

Creator of the Fan Supported, Creator Distributed business model, for which Ben was recognized by the Seattle Mayor's In Good Company award, and developer of the Shared Cinematic Universe License Agreement (SCULA), Ben has been celebrated for their contributions to film, television, and gaming by Al Gore, as a Gen Con Industry Guest of Honor, and as a speaker at film and television festivals across North America.

Michelle Nessk is an Award Winning writer and filmmaker based out in the Pacific Northwest. Their most recently published story "Proud Mary" is part of the celebrated anthology series 'Rock n Roll Nightmares: Parallel Lines' which held the number one spot on New Releases in Popular Music Books on Amazon. When not making art Michelle lives a reclusive life with their family and their cat.

Natalie Pujols is a first-generation Dominican artist born and raised in New York City, where she finds inspiration in the diverse faces and stories that surround her daily. Working in both traditional and digital mediums, Natalie is passionate about capturing the human experience in all its complexity. Natalie enjoys bringing people’s stories to life through her art, approaching each project with a deep sense of curiosity and a desire to celebrate the diverse voices that shape our interconnected world. 

Natalie’s work has been showcased in exhibitions throughout the United States, including prominent museums and galleries like The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and is held in private collections worldwide. She has collaborated on notable projects with various organizations, producers, and writers, including Kim Kardashian’s The Justice Project, the film Fire Island, and an illustrated children’s book.

📚 Welcome to Booktopia — a celebration of creativity and collaboration from a vibrant collective of writers, authors and artists collectively running crowdfunding projects from September 5th - September 26th.

🔥 Limited Cross-Collaboration Freebies — All 50+ Booktopia creators have paired up with a fellow participant to create two unique and limited freebies together. If BOTH projects successfully fund, backers who support BOTH will get the TWO [2] cross-collab freebies listed on their campaign page, one will ship from each creator. The more pairs of Booktopia creators you support, the more freebies you will earn ✨

These backer-exclusive embroidered patches feature important magical items from the worlds of Sombulus and American Geniuses.