Comic book writer's quest for success finds TV home
Manalapan native Jason Kruse will see show debut on Kids WB!
BY AMY ROSEN Staff Writer
Jason Kruse had all but given up on his dream of having his comic book series professionally published and animated until recently, when Warner Brothers gave it the green light to go into production.

Kruse, a Manalapan native, will have the satisfaction of seeing his efforts come to fruition when "The World of Quest" makes its debut on channel 11, The Kids WB!, at 10:30 a.m. March 15.

"I like to describe 'The World of Quest' as Calvin and Hobbes meets 'The Lord of the Rings,' " Kruse said in a telephone interview from his current home in Massachusetts.

Quest, produced byMichelleMelanson, tells the story of Nestor, a spoiled young smart-mouthed prince who enlists the aid of a retired hero in a mission to help him save his parents from the villains and restore order to the kingdom. The hero is Quest, who wants nothing to do with adventures or children, especially this young prince, but he is bound by a mystical spell to safeguard Nestor.

According to Melanson, some changes were made to make the Saturday morning cartoon more attractive to young viewers. While the graphic novel is more on the action adventure side, the animated series has more comedy, visual humor and gross jokes.

Kruse, aManalapan High School graduate, came up with the idea for the comic strip in 1995 when he was a student at Ohio University. His comic strip ran three times a week in the school's newspaper, The Post.

In 1997 Kruse drew the original first issue of the comic book, but was not able to find a publisher.

After graduating from Ohio University he went to the California Institute of the Arts from 1999-2000 and created an animated version of the comic strip for one of his classes.

In 2003 Kruse met Shannon Eric Denton at the Pasadena Comic Book Convention in California. Denton ran an Internet Web site called Komikwerks.com with Patrick Coyle. They invited Kruse to create a stand-alone episode of his comic strip for their Web site.

In October 2003 "The World of Quest: Prison Break" debuted on www.komikwerks. com and garnered a lot of interest on the site.

Denton, who was employed by Warner Brothers at the time, showed the cartoon to his boss, who liked it. The project eventually went into development withWarner BrothersAnimation, but it took four years before anything was completed.

In the interim Kruse worked as a cleanup animator and storyboard artist on the feature film "Barnyard" in 2005. He also worked on "Stuart Little" and "Cats and Dogs." He eventually moved to Massachusetts where he worked as a video game animator.

Kruse continued to develop more issues of the Quest comic book, which were supposed to be published with Ibooks, but in July 2005 the company went out of business due to the death of the owner and Kruse's hopes of finding a publisher were put on hold.

In 2006 he decided to publish the comic book on his own and produced a limited run of the book, but nothing really came of it, according to Kruse.

In March 2007 Kruse finally got the call he had been waiting for. Warner Brothers had given the Quest project the green light to go into production. Cookie Jar Entertainment in Toronto, Canada, was going to produce it for Warner Brothers. Mercury Filmworks was to provide the animation.

One week later Yen Press agreed to publish Kruse's newest version of the book, a graphic novel, which is an extended version of the story consisting of five issues on 144 pages. The comic book has been on the shelves of bookstores since November.

Kruse continues to be a creative consultant for the animated series and is currently working on "The World of Quest, Volume II" for Yen Press.

For more information about "The World of Quest" cartoon series, visit www.worldofquest.tv or kidswb.warnerbros. com/shows.world-of-quest.