(Kickstarter) Tanner Jones and the Quest for the Monkey Stone

So, I've already blamed my friend Mike for a lot of things.  Everytime I get an ounce of inspiration, a deluge of ideas, pictures, and follow-up shows up in my email from him.  When I announced that I would be working on Teddy Bear Pirates, another pack of pics showed up:

Working backwards from the artist's Deviant Art page, I discovered that not only does this guy, Travis Hanson, have a ton of cool art and a webcomic with updates on Monday and Tuesday, but the Teddy Bear pirates are part of a Kickstarter campaign, Tanner Jones and the Quest for the Monkey Stone. 

The preliminary pages of the the Kickstarter, his other work, particularly the ones with dinosaurs, and the fact that he already has four successful Kickstarters have given me an excitement about comics that I haven't had in well over five years.  His work evokes childhood imagination, adventure, and most of all, fun.  Even his webcomic, Bean, which I've only gotten through 21 of 571 episodes, appears a wee bit dark, but that sense of adventure and excitement is already ingrained in the first few panels.

I'm going out on a limb here, but the the first few pages remind me of a much more subdued version of a boy and his homicidal jungle cat.   I don't feel the manic tone of childhood adventure that most people would force feed Ritalin to.  Adventure doesn't need to be turned up to 11 every second (although it does sometimes), this feels more like the reality of my childhood daydreams. 

I'm going for the $45 plege level right now, since it will get most of the ad-ons from the stretch goals.  Even if it doesn't hit the $35,000 needed for the coloring books, he does have the coloring books on his website from his last Kickstarter, and Daddy wants some quality coloring time with daughters.