Rustle The Leaf

Rustle the Leaf is an environmental comic strip that was published from November 2004 through July 2007, and is still available online through various environmental and earth science web sites. At the height of its distribution, the weekly comic was featured on over 70 Sierra Club Chapter and Group web sites, on the home pages of the U.S. and Canada Green Party web sites, on several college and university web sites, and on hundreds of environmental, natural products and science web sites around the world. From February 2005 through February 2007 the strip was the weekly comic feature on the web site for Orion, a publication called "America's finest environmental magazine" by The Boston Globe.

The strip's characters were created in late 2002 and early 2003 by Dave Ponce, a Central Indiana-based marketing consultant, and were proposed as a comic project to Steve and Melissa Zeitler, founders/owners of Citra-Solv, LLC., a manufacturer of natural, eco-friendly cleaning and personal care products. Ponce provided consulting and creative services to the Zeitlers, and believed their philosophy of sustainable lifestyle practices would resonate with a larger audience if presented in an engaging, humorous, noncommercial, less politically charged context. In January 2003, the Zeitlers agreed to fund the development of "Rustle the Leaf," and to make it available on their web site at www.citra-solv.com. Although Ponce had knowledge and experience writing environmental articles, and was a devoted follower of the comic strip medium, he did not have the art skills to draw Rustle the Leaf, and tapped friend and digital illustrator Corey Wilkinson to bring the characters to the page.