By Zack Quaintance — The Poorcraft Cookbook is now in the final days of its crowdfunding campaign (which you can find here). Published by Iron Circus Comics, the book has already raised 6X its goal in pre-orders. This, of course, is fairly common for Iron Circus, one of the heavyweights of crowdfunded comics. What makes this particular campaign unique is that rather than using a third-party crowdfunding platform, Iron Circus is hosting this one on its own.

This potentially groundbreaking move aside, The Poorcraft Cookbook will almost certainly be a great read, continuing the series of comics guides for living well on a budget (to be reductive). This latest entry in the series is illustrated by Nero Villagallos O’Reilly, whom you may know from his other work here. Today we are honored to have a quick conversation with O’Reilly, in advance of the campaign wrapping up two days from today.

Check out our Q&A below!

INTERVIEW: Nero Villagallos O’Reilly

ZACK QUAINTANCE: What was it like for you stepping in to illustrate the latest Poorcraft book?

NERO VILLAGALLOS O’REILLY: I don’t know if I’d phrase it as “stepping in”- each of the books so far has had a different team of people behind it. It is pretty funny thinking about how the original book was one of the first books I backed on Kickstarter, and now the one I’ve written and illustrated is their first project off of that platform.

ZACK: What is your own relationship to cooking like? Is that a hobby you practice, and if so, to what extent?

NERO: It was originally exclusively something I did out of necessity, but as I’ve learned more it’s become more of a hobby as well over time.

ZACK: How does illustrating a cookbook differ (if at all) from the other comics storytelling you've done

NERO: My usual comic work is pretty dialogue/text light, so balancing the fine line between showing and telling (especially in the recipes section) was a fun challenge!

ZACK: Iron Circus has such a great history of leading the crowdfunding comics movement, how meaningful is it to be working on their first campaign they're crowdfunding independent of someone else's platform?

NERO: As someone who’s been a part of previous anthologies ICC has funded on KS, it’s exciting to be a part of them flying solo! It’s nice to see fans enthused about this book having no issue with adapting to the new format and website.

ZACK: Finally, do you have a favorite recipe in the book? And if so, can you tease it a bit here?

NERO: It’s impossible to pick just one- they’re all pretty useful! But if I had to narrow it down: the fridge pickles recipe near the end gets pretty frequent use here at home. It’s rare for me to not have at least two jars of something pickling at any time.

Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He has written about comics for The Beat and NPR Books, among others. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.