After careful consideration and getting approval from the two most important people I have to clear decisions like this with (Margarita Mandoki McClain and Tracy Edmunds), I am going forward with Solution Squad Volume 2!
Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to back another Kickstarter so soon after I just did one. It’ll be well into next year by the time it’s ready, probably in the third quarter. My aim is to have it ready for the holidays in 2020.
I’m going to do something completely different this time around. Each of the stories (except one) will be 10-page stories like “The Candy Crimes of the Confectioneer,” each with a different artist, and will be released in single comic book format complete with lesson plans (and a related dice game) for a total of 24 pages. The comics will also include a download code for the digital presentation version of the story, in landscape orientation either for projection or tablet use. The download will also include the lesson plans.
At the same time, I will be re-releasing the Volume 1 Solution Squad stories the same way. Primer and The Trouble With Trains will likely be 48-page comics with lesson plans, Origins probably will be as well. Candy Crimes will be in the new standard 24-page format because it was the first 10-page story I did once I figured out that 24 pages was too long to present in one class period. Instead of running away from the math instruction aspect, I am going to embrace it! The stories themselves will be gathered for printing in hardcover and softcover form again, and when that product is ready, I will run another Kickstarter. Lesson plans will be sold separately.
The first story in Volume 2 that has been completed is “The Case of the Eight-Inch Action Figures,” with art by Serena Guerra. In this newest story, the Squad sets out to give gifts of action figures to every child in Crescent City. The problem is, they come back all the same size, instead of scaled to one another!
The Case of the Eight-Inch Action Figures
