Video Exclusive: Makers Help Cartoonist Keep His Kickstarter Promise to Literally Explode

It began as a joke.

Ryan North is a cartoonist. He writes Dinosaur Comics, a daily comic where the pictures never change. It’s 10 years old. North was running a Kickstarter for a book he’d written, a chooseable-path adventure book based on Hamlet. (A what? North explains: “‘Chooseable-path’ you may recognize as a trademark-skirting version of a phrase and book series you remember from childhood.  Remember?  Books in which… an adventure is chosen??”)

The base goal was for $20,000 to get the book printed, but as is increasingly common, North included stretch goals to help the project along. At $30,000 he’d hire nine artists to illustrate some of the deaths that occur in a few endings, and give everyone who backed the project an e-book. At $50,000 there would be an illustration for all 110 deaths. At $90,000 a whole new book based on the life of poor Yorick. As the number climbed, the rewards got bigger and weirder. There were new e-books and plush skulls and a stage performance where the internet votes on what happens next. At $225,000, North promised to send a total of 225 free books to schools and libraries. “Also I will… create a pizza that looks like Hamlet and… eat it?”

The $500,000 unlock said simply this: “I will literally explode (literally)”

The Kickstarter closed out at $580,905.

“Honestly when I made the promise, breaking $500,000 seemed really unlikely so I was willing to play fast and loose with what I would have to deliver,” says North, “Saying ‘I will literally explode’ seemed like a fun way to end the paragraph, you know?”