Canadian cartoonist Troy Little burst onto the scene about 10 years back with his series Chiarscuro, a one-man-band type effort heavily inspired by the self publishing efforts of fellow Canadian cartoonist Dave Sim, creator of Cerebus. While that series did fade away after 7 or 8 issues, it was eventually completed and collected by… IDW of all places. I’ve mentioned it here before, but IDW have quietly been publishing a series of creator owned graphic novels, often in hardcover. They’ve done maybe a half-dozen of them now, with some of the nicest production values in comics… And almost all of them have flown under the radar of most folks I’ve talked to, which is a shame.
IDW was also the home of Little’s next project, a ‘quirky’ graphic novel called Angora Napkin. Not quite for kids but not quite for adults, heavily influenced by the animation of Tex Avery and John K., it was released in the same month as probably 300 other graphic novels (and probably 20 of them were from IDW) and that’s the way it goes sometimes. But now? Now the core concept behind the graphic novel is an animated series.
Actually, it’s a pilot for an animated series that might run on Teletoon, Canada’s answer to The Cartoon Network. Hell, it might eventually run on Cartoon Network too.
IF you check it out, and like it, and vote for it. How? Well first head over to the Teletoon website and view the complete pilot: http://www.teletoon.com/teletoon3/detour.php?language=En&func=php|/misc/detourPilotProject/pilotProject.php|0.
Then follow the instructions there to vote for Angora Napkin (click the little thumbs-up next to their name)… or any of the other series that catch your fancy of course. Commenting probably couldn’t hurt either. Do this and you can help make the dreams of a small-town Canadian cartoonist a reality!
The Angora Napkin graphic novel is in better comic stores everywhere now, courtesy of Troy Little and IDW.
– Chris
Wow, this is truly encouraging! I hope this post will encourage self-published authors to continue with their writing, no matter what the challenges are. It’s very overwhelming that the animated film was inspired by self-publishing. I’ll bookmark this.
this actually shows how broken our current system is. I bought the first book and really, really liked it. In fact, I think I remember pre-ordering the book or purchasing something from him when he was producing it as a form of encouragement for self-publishing. I would definitely be interested in his followup work, but I missed it in Previews. I do check the IDW section, and usually look at the non-licensed books (as you reference, there’s some really nice stuff hidden in there at times). But I didn’t catch that this was by Troy. I didn’t remember his name well enough, quite frankly. I’ve got it ordered now, but only because a good retailer made me aware of its very existence. And I’m the target audience, folks.
as a follow-up, I found my copy of Chiaroscuro on one of my bookshelves – I actually have a signed and numbered copy from the self-published version that Troy used to find a publisher, along with a very nice note thanking me for taking a chance by ordering the book from him. So I am very much the target audience for his followup works.
i took the time to start re-reading Chiaroscuro, and it’s as good as I remember – I’m looking to order Angora Napkin now, but it will probably be Amazon, as i don’t have a local shop and my mailorder companies don’t make it easy to order backstock.