Mike Rauch is an animation producer who previously worked as an executive at Cartoon Network, developing and overseeing shows like Apple & Onion and Victor and Valentino. Ronald Wimberly is a cartoonist whose works include the graphic novel Prince of Cats and LAAB Magazine. Together, they think they can help like-minded creatives realize passion projects without all the bureaucratic obstacles of corporate entertainment or the soul-draining content technology of artificial intelligence. That’s why they’ve launched a new indie publishing platform called Wild Signal.
“I've always been a person who very stubbornly wants to work with people who are interested in taking risks, trying new things that you don't know whether they’re going to work or not until you make them. A big part of this for me is making space for that,” Rauch says. “I've seen in TV and film, and I feel like it's broadly happening across all sorts of creators, regardless of medium, this rise of more independent voices, independent production.”
Wimberly has been frustrated by his time in development hell, working for years on TV projects or comic adaptations, only to see them not come to fruition. With Wild Signal, he wants to help artists make stuff without wasting time.
To that point, Wild Signal has already completed their first project, a limited-edition vinyl soundtrack for Boys Go To Jupiter, the 2024 animated synth-pop musical film by filmmaker and musician Julian Glander.
“When I was looking at what is doable within the resources that we have and isn't going to take two years to develop and get out there, I was like, what is something that somebody out there might want to be doing, but doesn't necessarily have the resources or knowledge to do?” Rauch says. “So in the case of Julian, he's got this film out, but that's already such a huge effort. What could be something else that's additive to what he's been doing that he may not be able to accomplish on his own?”
With its minimal budget and word-of-mouth success, Boys Go To Jupiter is also proof of the sustainable economic model that the Wild Signal team is hoping to pursue.
“That film had basically zero budget, and I think the box office at this point is around $205,000,” Rauch says. “But if he had gone and got funding for that in the millions, even a small $5 million budget, like what a lot of indie animated features are getting right now, then it wouldn't have been a success for those folks. But for him, this is a great success! When I was at Cartoon Network, if there was a consumer products opportunity and it was going to make a million dollars, that wasn't enough. But because we're not operating at the same scale and pipeline that something like Cartoon Network does, we can take on projects that have that smaller but passionate audience because that will be enough to sustain us and to sustain the artist.”
Rauch and Wimberly don’t want to give away too many specifics about what they have planned, but can say that Wild Signal has “five or six different projects” planned for the rest of 2026, including “a couple records, a couple zines” with “more coming down the road,” including work from Wimberly himself. They’ve also announced upcoming collaborators like writer, musician, and filmmaker Saul Williams; artist Freddy Carrasco; cartoonist Richie Pope; and TV on the Radio frontman Tunde Adebimpe.
“We’re making things for people that they don't know that they want yet,” Wimberly says. “Once something like that comes out, if it is a great success, people start rushing to do something similar to it. But you can't do something similar by doing what's already been done, because what was novel about it is that it had not been done before.”
But Wild Signal doesn’t want its collaborations to be fleeting. Creative fields often feel mercenary, with artists shifting between different studios or publishers based on who’s willing to make their art. By contrast, Wild Signal wants to build “a home for artists to come back to over time,” according to Rauch.
“We see a contingency that has little or no interest in cultivating the future of the arts. So we got to do that work,” Wimberly says. “If these big studios and publishers aren't going to do that work, if they're just going to sit around and wait for the thing to appear and then scrape the cream off the top, we're going to be sitting here and all we're going to have to watch is AI generated 30-second videos. We need to be able to cultivate the next generation of artists and viewers because it's fun, it's sexy, and that's the world that we want to live in.”
