Book(?) Report: Sparkler, Year One

So, to start with, a little background.  Sparkler is a monthly electronic magazine, modeled after the massive Japanese manga monthlys (the most famous in the West being Shonen Jump) and aimed primarily at a female readership, though I think male readers would enjoy it, too.  I became aware of the magazine when I stumbled across their Kickstarter to support Year Five.  (I shudder to think how much of my money Kickstarter has redistributed at this point…)  I ended up backing it at a tier that not only gave me a subscription to Year Five, but also gave me all the back issues.

All twelve covers!

That was actually a mistake, I think; I should have gone with “read as ebooks” rather than “read as a magazine.”  Trying to remember all the ongoing plots is sort of frustrating, and I think I was probably losing a lot of details in my head in the meantime….

Anyway, so my overall review is “yeah, this is a very cool idea, and I think when I’ve read the other four years, I’ll definitely feel like it was worth my money…though I think I may download as many of the free-to-members ebooks as I can to catch up rather than just counting on the back issues.”  But I thought I’d give you some individual reviews of the titles that I’ve read enough of to have a good grip on.  (Like, see the really cool cover on Issue 12, there, with the gorgeous art?  I couldn’t possibly review that one, ’cause I’ve only read the one chapter.)

I’ll start with the one that finished first.

A Kickstarter Campaign in need of assistance

Unlike on my dolly blog, I have so far left this blog free of “hey, please help out this Kickstarter I’m backing,” because, well, a lot of reasons.  (Mostly because it’s easier to gauge the tastes of readers of a doll blog than of a…uh…whatever kind of blog this has become.)  However, that’s changing now, because I want to do all I can to help this Kickstarter campaign, and since I can’t afford to fund the whole thing myself, and I don’t use any of the more typical social media, all I can do is to plug it here.

The campaign is to fund the fifth year of a digital magazine called Sparkler, which features a variety of types of content, inspired by Japan’s mega-sized manga magazines, of which the most famous in the West is probably Shonen Jump.  The campaign describes its goal thusly:

Twelve more issues of women-oriented, LGBT+ friendly webcomics, light novels, and audio dramas in our digital magazine!

And that seems to sum it up pretty well.  (Of course it does.  Why else would they have picked it as their campaign header line?)

I’d never heard of Sparkler until I came across this campaign, but judging by the free download sampler of first chapters, it’s completely freakin’ awesome.  I ended up making a pretty hefty pledge in order to get all the back issues so I can catch up.  (Which will likely take absolutely forever, but…hey, it’s always good to have extra reading material, yeah?)  Of course, that means there’s not a lot of extra material I can add on to my pledge to help out further.

Anyway, despite that it’s aimed at women, I think a lot of this content would also interest men.  (Just as there are a lot of Shonen Jump properties that also have female fans.)  The genres run a complete gamut, from slice of life comedy to magical girl (and magical boy) to sci-fi to horror to fantasy adventure to revenge story to romance…and I probably left a lot of the genres out.  And the romance covers all the main bases:  straight, f/f and m/m.  (I don’t think it covers trans, but that’s about it.  But there are also a couple of Kickstarters for trans-focused comics going on right now.)

Please check out their campaign page, okay?  And/or send word of it to any friends/relatives/acquaintances/co-workers/total-strangers you’ve got who might be interested.  They have a long way to go and a short time in which to get there.

Sample issue cover. Image source Kickstarter. Click for link.