Tom Tomorrow’s omnibus book tops $310,000 on Kickstarter

To celebrate 25 years of his satirical political cartoon “This Modern World,� artist Tom Tomorrow created a Kickstarter campaign to publish an omnibus edition of his work in two volumes. Thirty days later, the campaign concluded with donations of $310,357 -- exceeding its goal of $87,000 by more than $220,000.

“I am astonished,� Tomorrow wrote in the campaign’s last update. “I could not have imagined a better outcome to this campaign, and I thank all of you sincerely for this extraordinary show of support.�

2,499 donors will get a copy of the print edition of “25 Years of Tomorrow,� which will be about 1,000 pages long and weigh 15 pounds. 468 donors opted to get the DRM-free e-book instead. Contributors to the campaign gave anywhere from $1 to $10,000.

As in most successful Kickstarters, donors were given incentives for larger contributions. In this case, Tomorrow’s friends sweetened the pot for him. Several of the highest-ticket incentives were associated with the band Pearl Jam, including the top reward, a signed Eddie Vedder guitar. Tomorrow designed the cover of Pearl Jam’s 2009 record “Backspacer.�

Tomorrow writes, “Right before we launched, I said to a friend — okay fine, I said to Eddie Vedder —’I feel like I’m about to take a stage dive, and I don’t know if the audience is there to catch me or not.’ Well, you were.�

Tomorrow’s “This Modern World� cartoon, known for political and cultural satire, is published in about 80 newspapers across the U.S., and every week at Daily Kos. Tomorrow was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in editorial cartooning.

Tomorrow’s success on Kickstarter proves once again that literary projects can use the crowdfunding tool to reach a devoted audience. In 2014, one of the site’s best-funded projects was LeVar Burton’s Reading Rainbow, the television-show-turned-app, which received more than $5 million from more than 105,000 contributors.

When Tomorrow’s Kickstarter campaign started bringing in more money than originally hoped for, Tomorrow added a number of stretch goals. The first were enhancements to the book itself: 3-D lenticular covers, printed endpapers, and expanding the page count to include his children’s book. After that, Tomorrow added a serious commitment: If they reached $250,000, he’d get a tattoo of his visor-wearing character Sparky the Penguin. He’s now researching tattoo artists.

In the final hours, a matching pledge from filmmaker Michael Moore helped push Tomorrow’s Kickstarter campaign above $300,000. Achieving that goal means the cartoonist will be able to throw a book release party at the historic Mark Twain House in Hartford, Conn.

Book news and more; I’m @paperhaus on Twitter