Horizon - A long way to fall

Horizon - A long way to fall is a new project created by Andrew Wildman, an artist who'll be known to many of you for his work on various comics over the years from Thundercats to Transformers and the strip Frontier: The Weird Wild West for The DFC. He's also worked outside of comics, in character and environment design and animated movie production for the TV and games industries. He also founded the charity Draw the World Together to raise funds to enable education possibilities for street children around the world and co-owns Wildfur Productions with Simon Furman.

Having always worked as an artist, Andrew is now expanding his own horizons to draw and write his own graphic novel. Horizon - A long way to fall is described as "a graphic novel about love and loss, fear and freedom, a toy rabbit, and VERY big robots".

The main character is Ali, a 15 year old girl. As the website explains: "An age in-between. An age where she isn't a child or an adult. An age of confusion. Bullied at school and after a row with her mother that she cant even remember the reason for she sits in her room. Alone. With that dark tension boiling in her gut again. Why is it like this? Why don’t they ever listen?
The tears dry in her eyes and she grabs hold of the only thing she cares for from 'back then' and may even take with her into her future, her toy rabbit... and falls asleep.
BANG! Eyes wide open she is awake, or so she thinks. And then... The adventure begins."

The novelty with this book is that Andrew is looking for "Crowdfunding", which is basically readers funding the project up front, with a figure of your own choice. In return the sponsors will receive updates on the book and, depending on the amount you contribute, anything from having your name printed in the book (and a signed copy) to an opportunity to own an original canvas of the characters painted in acrylics.


The book itself sounds like a refreshing change from much of the dark, heavy material around today, and should appeal to all ages. It seems like a worthwhile project to donate to if you can afford to. The goal is to raise money to seed the project and to help with marketing costs but, as Andrew says on his website, "its not necessarily about that. Its more to do with giving others the opportunity to be involved in the genesis of something new. A pre-order campaign that will allow you to be along for the ride and get your name forever in the book. Or to take up any of the other opportunities on offer here to order limited edition prints, deluxe format books and original artwork. The choice is yours. You can be involved as much as you like."

As ever, British comics have to adapt to survive. Today it's tougher than ever, with a retail system that makes publishing new titles difficult and established publishers are reticent to be experimental in the current economic climate. Crowdfunding may be one way forward to help new ideas off the ground.

To find out more about Horizon, and to see samples of the book, visit the website and join in if you can:

http://www.indiegogo.com/Horizon

Andrew's blog:
http://wildwords.wordpress.com/