"Girl With No Name" sets Kickstarter records!

Last March, we launched a Kickstarter to manage the presales of Legion M’s very first comic book, Girl With No Name. Within 4 hours, we obliterated our goal of $6,000, and by the campaign’s end, we had raised more than $125,000 in sales of the comic book and merch!

Now, even a year later, our comic book still holds one of the most prestigious titles on Kickstarter — “Girl With No Name” is the most backed comic book of all time.

We couldn’t be more proud of The Girl, who achieved this great feat without the comic book being an existing property. Many have asked if its success was due more to the Legion coming out to support it, or if the comic book achieved this success on its own merits. The answer? Both!

The early rush from Legion M members and investors was critical in helping get the project get on the "Most Funded" and "Projects We Love" lists on Kickstarter. That got us exposure to the broader Kickstarter community. We were then able to do targeted marketing on social media to bring comic supporters in so they could discover Girl With No Name (and Legion M) for the very first time. We also pulled in some support from the audiences of the wonderful artists that did the artwork in the book.

Ultimately, roughly 22% of our backers found the comic book naturally through Kickstarter searches and the discover page. Another 37% of backers were not previous Legion M members but found the comic book through various advertising on Facebook. The remaining 41% came to the project through direct referral links, including some press coverage and Legion M's own email and web marketing.

We believe the model of leveraging early support from our existing community to gain exposure to a much broader community is extremely powerful, and can manifest in many ways (e,g, Kickstarter’s Most Funded, iTunes top 10 lists, opening weekend box office results, etc). Our goal is not simply to sell to our existing base -- it's to use our existing community as a LEVER that increases our odds of success with a global audience.

The fact that we were able to take a brand-new IP as a first-time comic book creator and have the most successful comic book Kickstarter of all time speaks volumes to the power of that model. So kudos to all of you!