FREAKS’ SQUEELE: The Complete Chaos Curriculum

Status report and something new!
28 days ago – Fri, Mar 06, 2026 at 01:17:30 PM

Hey, everyone!

Just a quick update (as requested by a handful of backers) – things are rolling right along as scheduled. The books are printing and should exit the factory by the end of this month (March). They’ll then take the long trip across the ocean, and barring any unexpected delays, we should be ready to start fulfilling orders in June. We hope to have some advance samples of the finished books in the next few weeks, and we’ll be sure to post thorough previews and lots of photos once they’ve arrived. The extra bonus items will also be ready in the next several weeks, and we’ll post photos of those as well.

We plan to lock orders on Backerkit around March 20th, so please complete your surveys before then! If you need help accessing your survey, you can try logging directly into https://freaks-squeele.backerkit.com/ using your Kickstarter-associated email address. If that doesn’t work, or if the login process is confusing, please email [email protected] and they’ll help you out.

We also hope to have the digital files ready to send out sometime in April. We’re working with Florent now to get the KIM TRAUMA translation done. We’ll keep you all posted as that comes together.

We’ll then likely lock addresses once everything has reached our warehouse, expected by the first week of May. Please keep an eye out for updates about that as we get closer.

In the meantime, our friends at Magnetic Press are running a new campaign for WORLDS BETWEEN WORLDS: THE GRAPHIC NOVELS OF JONATHAN NKONDO, an excellent set of books by an amazing animation director and artist who has worked on awesome projects such as SCAVENGERS REIGN, LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS, LEAGUE OF LEGENDS, and most recently the new animated short film/music video “The Mountain, the Moon Cave, and the Sad God” by Gorillaz. 

Whether you’re a fan of Gorillaz or not, you can’t deny the charm of hand-made 2D animation. Jonathan’s creation of the “Moon Cave” sequence in the middle is a real standout, and his personal graphic novels are incredibly unique, showcasing the same depth and pacing as those animated projects. If you like SCAVENGERS REIGN, you'll love these graphic novels.

Thanks, everyone. We’ll be sure to post more progress pics as they become available!

Some survey notes
2 months ago – Wed, Jan 21, 2026 at 02:04:20 PM

Hi everyone!

Some additional questions have been raised that didn't come up during the "smoke test". We'll try to answer a couple of those questions here:

1. For those of you who haven't received your survey email invitations yet, it's possible you selected "Pay over time" on Kickstarter. Because of that payment plan, you will not receive your survey from Backerkit until the last payment has been confirmed as collected by Kickstarter. It looks like that final payment is scheduled for March 2nd, so you should probably get your survey links a couple of days after that. We won't be locking orders until the middle of March (aiming for the 20th), so you should still receive your survey before then, with a couple of weeks’ margin. We'll definitely let you know in an update around that time.
2. For those of you who pre-registered, you may have noticed your free print missing from your pledge. That was an oversight on our part, which has been corrected. If you did pre-register ahead of launch, you should now see that item added to your order (for free). If you believe you pre-registered, but don't see it, it might be that you pre-registered under a different email address than the one you pledged under on Kickstarter. If you think that might be the case, please message us here on Kickstarter, and we'll be happy to check for you.

In addition, we've fielded a few messages from backers abroad who were a bit taken aback by the shipping price for the boxed sets overseas. As a reminder: the Boxed Set is extremely heavy -- 16 lbs -- containing 8 books. That's over 1000 pages, plus the weight of the hardcovers and the box itself. The shipping calculator we used on Backerkit is built from the current courier rates, which we have no control over, unfortunately. International shipping (with tracking) is unfortunately expensive these days, and there's not much we can do to fight the tide of the global economy. The price range shown on the campaign page was explained as the estimated rate for a ~5lb package, or only 1-2 books. That compounds significantly when talking about 8 books of equal weight -- our options are limited as far as what we can do, but if you find cost-efficient alternatives, we'd be very interested in looking into them. We want to make things as affordable as possible for everyone (to the extent of our abilities)...!

If you have any other questions, please feel free to message us here on Kickstarter, and we'll reply as quickly as we can.

Thanks, everyone!

Surveys are go! And Boxed Set Footlocker pix!
2 months ago – Mon, Jan 19, 2026 at 04:17:20 PM

Hi everyone!

As promised, the rest of the surveys have been sent. Check your inbox at the email address corresponding to your Kickstarter account and look for a message from Backerkit on behalf of Label 619-Magnetic Press. We'll leave the Pledge Manager open until sometime in March, at which point we should be ready to start wrapping things up and locking orders. Things are rolling along -- it has been a lot of work designing and finishing EIGHT BOOKS AND AN AWESOME BOXED SET!

Speaking of Boxed Set, the factory has completed their prototype dummy, and it is soooo cool...!

Here's a preview vid we got from the factory recently:

...and then we received that same prototype dummy filled with blank dummies of the actual books inside this past weekend! Check out this brief unboxing, showing the cardboard mailer and styrofoam padding each Box will come in...

The cardboard mailer will have some printing on it, too, but that wasn't ready for these pix yet...

The glow-in-the-dark elements are really cool too -- here are a few rough pix after some light-charging:

(Kinda hard to charge/appreciate in the day, but trust us -- it's glowy!)

The faux-metallic edges look SO COOL... It's amazing what you can achieve with spot UV gloss and some creativity...! 😎

You may have wondered what that plastic baggie was in the unboxing video -- each Boxed Set will include a set of sticky-dots you can use to affix your bookplate wherever you'd like. The bookplates will come packaged separately, since we have to get them signed. We're printing the m now and hope to have them in-hand within the week (so that we can bring them with us to France next week for Florent to sign!)

FYI: These things are HEFTY.

Some of you have asked what they weigh (in regards to shipping costs, particularly overseas) -- they weigh in at 16 pounds each! That's over 7 Kilos!  That's quite a load, especially by international courier... If you think about it, though, with 1080 pages of content in 8 hardcover volumes, this thing is practically a brick of solid paper.

That's all for now, but we'll try to collect or post some fun stuff while we're visiting Florent next week!

Thanks, Everyone!

Smoke Test Surveys have been sent!
3 months ago – Fri, Jan 16, 2026 at 03:26:53 PM

Hi everyone!

~5% of you may have received an email from Backerkit today with your survey link -- congratulations! You're part of the randomly selected "smoke test"! Be on the lookout for an email from Backerkit on behalf of Label 619-Magnetic Press.

The smoke test is a randomly selected ~5% of the surveys sent ahead of the others so that we can test for any hidden bugs in the pledge manager that should be fixed before the rest of the surveys are sent. You randomly selected 71 are the guinea pigs. 🙂 If you have any issues or questions, or if anything doesn't look right, message us here on Kickstarter or email [email protected] and let us know so we can fix it quickly.

The smoke test phase usually takes about 24-48 hours, or until ~75% of those surveys are completed. Assuming we set everything up right, we should get the rest of the survey links sent by Monday.

If you have any questions or haven't received your links by early next week, let us know, and we'll help you out!

Thanks, everyone! We received an early printed build of the slipcase from the printer, and it looks great! We're taking some photos now and will post them in an update very soon!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
3 months ago – Fri, Jan 02, 2026 at 05:09:46 PM

Wow. What a finish. Thanks to you, this has been our best campaign ever. And we're so excited to get all of this stuff in your hands! We finished the exclusive Art Book layout this afternoon, so everything will be coming together as quickly as possible.

We'll start building the Pledge Manager next week and get the survey invitations out to you as soon as possible. It might take two weeks (based on their recommendations, allowing them time to collect all pledges), but we'll keep you well-informed along the way.

For now, however, we have the first weekend of 2026 to enjoy! Then it's back to work!

THANK YOU!

You made this something special. :)