About Project X
"Project-X" is the bagged and sealed version of the comic title "Thump'n Guts."
In 1993, Kevin Eastman and Simon Bisley, frustrated with the popularity of the variant market, and lack of popularity of the comics that they enjoyed, decided to create a "true collectible" comic. A "pre-bagged and pre marked-up" comic that would have three different covers, three different endings, include six different trading cards, and be limited to 100,000. In an effort to make it even more "collectible" they also decided to distribute cash within the sealed and bagged comics:
*We hammered out the story, and sold the entire package to publisher Denis Kitchen of Kitchen Sink Press, and scheduled it for release in June of 1993.
As press time closed in we added a "postcard statement" drawn by Mark Martin about what is collectible (rare hard to find items) and what isn't...as well as a poster, and the coolest idea yet - cash.
We took $3000 dollars of different sized notes and inserted them into a specific number of envelopes. The envelope contained the "postcard statement". We flew the stuffed envelopes and one of our guys up to the printer to randomly insert them as comics were being bagged.
We had orders for about 50,000 copies (a complete disaster in average 1993 sales figures, but a record number compared to what Kitchen Sink was used to) and we waited for it to bust wide open. You know - we were waiting for some lucky fan to find money, tell the newspapers, and we would be the heroes that saved the industry!
Whether the money ever made it into the press run, or if anyone that ever bought them never opened "the bag" they were "pre-bagged in" to keep them "mint" is unknown - the news never broke."
*Source: heavymetal.com