Yesterday the
Kickstarter campaign for Topps upcoming Mars Attacks: Occupation ended not only
topping their initial goal of $50,000 but actually topping all of their stretch
goals, finally closing out at $198,002 in pledges.
The way that Topps went about it is pretty interesting, it gave them the ability to help fund a project through the collectors but additionally they were able to add on to the initial set through the stretch goals, some which are quite cool like Dinosaur Attack Vs Mars Attacks, metal cards, additional cards and (my favorite) adding Martian sand and T-Rex fossil dust in to the ink used for the woodcut cards.
While this is all interesting what I want to talk about today is the artist Jason Crosby. Crosby is still kind of new in the world of trading cards, though still quite accomplished in his short time, having done sketch cards for Breygent, Upper Deck and Topps over the last couple of years. He has now worked as a base card illustrator for Topps with the last two Star Wars Illustrated releases (New Hope & Empire Strikes Back) plus the two recent Mars Attacks releases Invasion and Occupation.
What I love about his work is that he is does a variety
of styles and he likes to work a sports theme in to some of the cards. He did
it with the recent Star Wars Illustrated: Empire Strikes Back sketch cards and Topps is
giving him a complete subset in the Mars Attacks release. Here are the cards
that he has posted so far but one of the stretch goals was to increase the size
of the sports subset.
Last year he worked on a personal project when he put
together a dual-autograph Freddy vs. Jason booklet card. I think this card is
so awesome, I wish it would have been packed out.
