FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

NATIONAL AUTISM ASSOCIATION ANNOUNCES WEBCOMIC T-SHIRT FUNDRAISER
Shirt Features Popular Online Daily Comic Strip “THE CHELATION KID”

The National Autism Association is selling t-shirts featuring the online daily comic strip, THE CHELATION KID. Written by Robert Tinnell and illustrated by Craig Taillefer, THE CHELATION KID is a free daily online comic strip which chronicles the real-life efforts of Tinnell and his wife to recover their son from autism.

The daily strip is featured on several sites – in both the comic and autism web communities – and has generated acclaim and spirited discussions in many different segments of society. With TCK, Tinnell, an Eisner Award-nominee for previous work, has received a volume of feedback he never before experienced as his regular comic readers are joined by many new viewers from the autism community and the populace as a whole.

The idea to offer a T-Shirt as a fundraiser developed along with the enthusiastic reaction the strip has received.

“The National Autism Association is grateful to Robert Tinnell for the opportunity to offer The Chelation Kid T-shirts in our online store”, said Ann Brasher, Vice President of NAA and founder of the ChelatingKids Yahoo! Listserve for parents. “The Chelation Kid comic strip is a wonderful way of promoting the message that Autism is a treatable disorder and there is hope for the one in 166 children affected in the United States.” Proceeds from the T-Shirt sales will benefit NAA’s research and family care programs. The URL for shirt orders is http://www.nationalautismassociation.org/proddetail.php?prod=ChelationKid

“We weren’t prepared for the passionate reaction TCK generated – attracting thousands of new readers to comics through our outreach to the autism community,” said Tinnell. “To see your characters and story getting this kind of reaction, and to see that reaction put to use for a cause I very much believe in, to me that’s a big deal.”

THE CHELATION KID is updated every weekday and can be seen on a variety of sites including www.sunnyfundays.com, www.webcomicsnation, www.drunkduck.com, and www.thechelationkid.com. The strip is currently re-running the first several episodes, with new strips starting up again on January 22, 2007. THE CHELATION KID is also available, for free, to anyone who would like to carry it on their site through ‘tooncasting. All one must do is simply paste in this code:



The mission of the National Autism Association is to educate and empower families affected by autism and other neurological disorders, while advocating on behalf of those who cannot fight for their own rights. We will educate society that autism is not a lifelong incurable genetic disorder but one that is biomedically definable and treatable. We will raise public and professional awareness of environmental toxins as causative factors in neurological damage that often results in an autism or related diagnosis. We will encourage those in the autism community to never give up in their search to help their loved ones reach their full potential, funding efforts toward this end through appropriate research for finding a cure for the neurological damage from which so many affected by autism suffer.

A working screenwriter, Tinnell is best known to comics fans as a writer of horror graphic novels such as THE BLACK FOREST (co-written with Todd Livingston and drawn by Neil Vokes) and the recently-released SIGHT UNSEEN (with artist Bo Hampton) as well as the Eisner-nominated FEAST OF THE SEVEN FISHES. A visit to www.TheBlackForest.net covers Tinnell’s comic output in greater detail.

Taillefer has branched out from comics to work in TV animation, although he continues to produce his popular WAHOO MORRIS webcomic among other projects. For more information visit www.CraigTaillefer.com

A few more pages from Cleopatra, fresh off the scanner…

I concocted this little ad to go in a future issue of Athena Voltaire from Ape Entertainment. Just finished it today…

… is not something I’m good at. If I have to work on more than one project at a time I’m more likely to get nothing done on any of them than be productive on multiple projects at once.

And right now I’m neck deep in three, count ’em three, separate projects at once. I’ve been doing 5 daily strips of THE CHELATION KID a week, as well as working on CLEOPATRA for Moonstone Books, and trying to maintain a weekly update schedule on WAHOO MORRIS so I hit my projected publishing date of May for WAHOO MORRIS Book Two.

If you’ve been paying attention you will notice I’ve kind of fallen off the wagon the last two weeks or so. The final details of getting WAHOO MORRIS Book One to stores and then preparing for and attending SPX threw a bit of a monkey wrench in the whole proceedings. I haven’t fallen behind on The Chelation Kid, but Wahoo Morris fell by the wayside first, then Cleopatra.

This week things are back to normal and I have resumed the schedule I was maintaining through most of September. Basically I get up in the morning and draw and ink an episode of The Chelation Kid. In the afternoon I work on Cleopatra, sometimes managing to pencil a whole page. In the evening (if I choose to have no life and work) I alternately work on Wahoo Morris or pick away at finishing tag ends on Cleo or the Chelation Kid.

It’s not the best way of getting a project done in a speedy manner, but it is keeping all three projects moving, albeit slowly. I’m hoping Cleopatra will be wrapped up by the end of November so I will only have two projects on my plate for a little while until I have to take another paying job to keep the wolves from the door.

Once The Chelation Kid wraps up (when we are not sure yet) I’ll just be working on one project at a time for a while. The idea of working on one project all day long from start to finish seems rather heavenly at the moment…