Rafer Roberts raising funds for Plastic Farm collection at Kickstarter

Writer/artist Rafer Roberts is raising funds for the newest collection of “Plastic Farm” comics via Kickstarter.

Here’s how he describes his project:

Written and (mostly) drawn by Rafer Roberts, Plastic Farm follows the life of a man named Chester and his slow descent into complete insanity and chronicles how that madness reshapes the world around him. Chester has had a rough childhood, has a magic cowboy that rides a dinosaur living inside of his head, and is now, late in life, sitting in a nameless airport bar during a blizzard telling his life story to a group of people who really couldn’t care less.

There has already been one 350-page collection of PLASTIC FARM titled SOWING SEEDS ON FERTILE SOIL which contained issues #1-12, and a (currently out-of-print) 120-page original graphic novel PLASTIC FARM: FERTILIZER. This new book, SEASONS OF GROWTH IN THE FIELDS OF DESPAIR, is 224 pages and collects issues #13-21 and a bunch of bonus material. (Yeah, that’s over 600 pages of comics.)

I’m looking forward to seeing more comics from Roberts, and wish him well on his project, that so far has raised $1,546 of his $2,000 goal.

I talked to Roberts way back in 2005 about “Plastic Farm.”  That interview is reprinted below.

- Matt Price

Unusual characters abound in ‘Plastic Farm’
By Matthew Price
Staff Writer
Friday, March 4, 2005

There’s a harvest of unusual characters and a bounty of bizarre twists in Rafer Roberts’ “Plastic Farm.”

“Plastic Farm” is a challenging, self-published comic with eight issues released to date.

“Plastic Farm” is the story of a man named Chester, his slow descent into insanity and how that insanity is infecting the world around him.

Roberts says that doesn’t explain the complexity of “Plastic Farm,” however.

“Reading ‘Plastic Farm’ is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle that you lost the box to while sitting in the middle of a rave, but once you’re done, you get a cake,” Roberts said in an e-mail interview.

One of Roberts’ most compelling characters is the Kamikaze Kid, a magic cowboy who rides a dinosaur and lives inside Chester’s head.

“I started drawing comics in elementary school, and during that time, I created a character called the Kamikaze Kid. The Kid of those days bears very little resemblance to the Kid of today, but the basic concept of that character stuck with me, and eventually a version of the character made it into ‘Plastic Farm,’” Roberts said.