A couple friends of ours — Audra Ann Furuichi and her husband Scott Yoshinaga — recently fired up a Kickstarter fund-raiser to help produce volume 6 of their delightful webcomic, nemu*nemu. Briefly, Kickstarter is a way for people to “crowd-fund” a project by pledging money, and in return you reap some of the rewards. There are different incentives depending on the tier of your monetary support, so a $1 pledge gets you a “thank you!” while a $500 pledge gets you a whole buttload of goodies. The particular tier we pledged netted us a hardcover edition of the new book, plus a trading card, peel-off sticker, a mention on the “Thank you!” page and a nice sketch on the front flyleaf.

They met their goal and the fruits of their labors arrived in the mail this weekend, and it’s exceptional. nemu*nemu — Bestest Friends Forever is a handsome, full-color tome with a spot UV-varnished cover. And there are all sorts of extras within its 168 pages, like a character guide, sketches and story notes. The book design (by Scott) is as top-notch as Audra’s cartooning and storytelling (truth be told, nemu*nemu a team effort).

Audra asked me which of her characters I’d like sketched, and I suggested she take a crack at one of mine. I kind of forgot all about that, until Audra the book arrived.

And I nearly died.

This is the most adorable rendition of Puppy and Yuri I’ve ever seen. No small detail missed Audra’s eye, from Puppy’s bangs and Yuri’s widow’s peak to their trademark earrings. When I envision how Audra would draw the rest of Cool Jerk (like maybe for a handful of strips, if the planets should align), I get swoony.

nemu*nemu — Bestest Friends Forever is a limited run of 100 hardcover copies, and I think they’re all spoken for. But they do have soft-cover copies (and previous volumes) here. Highly recommended!

(Thanks again, Audra & Scott!)