Geekdad's Jonathan Liu previously mentioned the Wormworld saga, but for those of you who missed the initial articles (here and here), the Wormworld Saga is a gorgeous graphic novel being written and illustrated by Dan Lieske. Jonathan's original post described Wormworld thusly:
It’s a story about a young boy who discovers a doorway into another world tucked away in his grandma’s attic — and it’s a story about a giant dragon trapped in a mountain, and about a mysterious Firelord who rises from the fires of Worm Mountain. Wormworld contains all the sorts of places Lieske would like to wander himself: “a deep forest, a long ocean shore, a high mountain range and an endless desert,” with Worm Mountain at the heart.
Dan Lieske has been diligently working away at Wormworld, but the progress has been slower than he or his readers would like. Interestingly, Dan has dabbled in crowd-sourcing funding via Kickstarter, and apparently the interest level for Wormworld has been great enough that he was approached by an investor who wanted to fund the project in a big way. Dan describes the whole thing on his blog:
I was approached by a big investor a few weeks ago. To put it into a nutshell, they wanted to give me the money that I needed to work fulltime on the Wormworld Saga. That of course got me totally thrilled. My goal got within reach! So I created a business plan for a production company, we talked about the details and in the end it was up to me to sign the deal. It would have meant to create a company, earning a good salary as CEO and ... to hand over the major share of the Wormworld Saga property to the investor.
Relax! I didn't do it.
I realised that I hadn't worked my ass off over the last 18 months only to hand my rights over to someone else.
Dan goes on to mention that he has found a publisher willing to print the final graphic novel (given how gorgeous the artwork is and how compelling the story is, I can't imagine it was hard to convince the publisher!). As well, he drops the best news of all:
Well, all this ultimately lead me to the decision to do the leap of faith. I quit my job and will be working fulltime on the Wormworld Saga from 1st July on.
And he also says:
Compared to my old schedule I now I have FIVE times more hours per day to work on the Wormworld Saga AND I'm actually going to see my family in the evenings. That's pure craziness! Prepare to see the milestones fly by!
So, congratulations to Dan on all the success on the project! He completely deserves all of this, and more.
Be sure to head over to the Wormworld site to preview the first chapter online.
