Iron Circus Comics — the award-winning, critically-acclaimed comic book publisher, known for having raised nearly 5 million dollars via crowdfunding (and its smut) — recently launched its latest crowdfunding campaign: Mel Gillman‘s dark sapphic fairytale, The Goblin Throne.

The campaign just launched on Kickstarter, and runs until June 30, 2026.

Gillman, a nonbinary cartoonist, illustrator, colored pencil artist, and current Chair of the Comics Program at California College of the Arts, is best known for their middle-grade and young adult graphic novels exploring queer identity, gender, community, and belonging. They are best known for their original graphic novels, including Other Ever Afters, Stage Dreams, and their most recent OGN published with Iron Circus, As the Crow Flies, which won the Stonewall Honor Book Award by the American Library Association in 2018. In addition, their work has won an Excellence in Graphic Literature Award and a Society of Illustrators Gold Medal, and been nominated for an Eisner, an Ignatz, a Slate Cartoonist Studio Prize, a Prism Award, and several Autostraddle Comics and Sequential Art Awards.

In addition to their original works, they have written and illustrated stories for numerous licensed children’s comic series, including Steven Universe, Adventure Time, Care Bears, and Penguin Workshop’s Who Was? graphic novel line.

The Goblin Throne

The Goblin Throne is a 140-page, full color, 6″ x 9″ hardcover graphic novel, intended for adult audiences. It tells the story of a young woman who makes a bargain with the Goblin Queen for peace and safety, fully believing she’s prepared to pay any price. But when the true cost of her bargain is revealed, she breaks her promise and flees, only to discover the Queen will always find you. Years later, this childhood bargain will haunt her.

The Goblin Throne appears to be Gillman’s darkest and most mature original graphic novel to date, leaning heavily into horror and folklore while retaining their interest in character-driven storytelling and queer themes.

“The Goblin Throne is my best, nastiest horror-romance comic yet,” said Gillman. “It’s a squarely adult story about craven lesbian desire and heartbreak, told in the style of ancient fairy tales — specifically the old, weird, and violent ones. I could not be more thrilled to be working on this book with Iron Circus Comics, which has never shied away from unleashing messy, complex, and challenging queer adult comics onto the world!”

“We’re sick of stories about some dude stalking yet another princess,” said Iron Circus Publisher C. Spike Trotman. “We want a story about a hot, one-eyed Goblin Queen scouring the earth for the woman that stole her heart and broke a promise. And that’s exactly what The Goblin Throne delivers […] Gillman sucks you into a world of passion, blood, and betrayal, rendered in their peerless colored pencil illustrations. If you like the aesthetic of Over the Garden Wall and the quiet horror of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the fanciful and sinister world of The Goblin Throne is for you.”

Today, Prism Comics is excited to share with our readers an exclusive excerpt from Gillman’s new original graphic novel. Check it out below:

The Goblin Throne by Mel Gillman is currently live on Kickstarter. Click HERE to back it now!