Welcome to Maple Leaf Publishing!

Hey, welcome to the new place! Looks nothing like the old one, eh?

Well...Maybe it looks very similar for now. Truth is, there is a lot of material I want to display "at a glance". I want it to be visible as a visitor arrives. So the basic format used for TSOG is still good, I've just added another column in order to better identify product types and removed projects that are either dormant, dead, or moving along at a glacier-like pace. I may create pages specific to certain defunct books (such as Heroes Of The North and Legion Unleashed) but I want ongoing, in-progress work to be emphasized to visitors.

So if you've visited TSOG in the past, you won't be surprised to see Auric, Big Nick, Canadian Corps, etc, listed here. But let's get right into what other projects have our attention going into 2017.

Click the banner above to be taken IMPACT's Facebook group. Below, I display a sample page from the first issue (still in production) which provides an introduction to a villain named Pitbull, as well as a design sketch for a character named Polar Knight.

While we watch take form, in the spring, we can expect details about a team-up between two prairies-based characters in Axiom-Man and Auroraman.

This isn't a complete surprise as Auroraman creator/writer Jeff Burton mentioned it on his Facebook page last spring. Still, when months go by without a mention, you can't help but wonder whether the project is still in the works. But clearly it is.

Axiom-Man creator/writer A.P. Fuchs recently celebrated the character's 10th anniversary by releasing a revised version of the his first novel...

...and now he expects the team-up book to be available by the time the Kickstarter campaign goes live. Find out more about Axiom-Man and Fuchs' other work from this page.

Auroraman, meanwhile, is a relative newcomer. He came to life following a very successful Kickstarter campaign launched last April.

I'm curious about the dynamic here. The significantly younger character, Axiom-Man, will actually be the far more experienced one. The student-aged character will be working with the teacher (literally, that is Auroraman, and Burton's, profession). I hope Burton and Fuchs play off that a bit, it's a rare combination.

The last project I want to display (for the moment) is North Force Alpha.

I believe that NFA is the creation of one Peter Colp. Colp is also responsible for the apparently-90s-influenced art. And there is plenty much of that on the Facebook page linked above! The book is expected to be available later this month so join the group in order to reserve your copy or to track the series progress.

That is it for now, but there is so much more to look forward to from a Canadian indie comics scene which is far more active than many people realize. Issues of North and Deborah Daring should be available shortly. More Auric and Big Nick material is on the way. The North Shield should debut this year. Chapterhouse continues to publish a mixture of re-imagined classic Canadian comics characters and new material while giving Canadian talent a chance to shine.

Of course, should a Canadian character appear in a book released by an American publisher (such as Dr. Frost in All Winners Society by Iron Gate Comics), he or she will be mentioned here and from time to time we'll take a look at a Canadian publisher regardless of degree of Canadian content.

In many ways, very little changes but I want to clear the clutter and get more focused. I hope you enjoy it and that you'll join me in supporting Canadian talent.