Marvel’s Talent Scout C.B. Cebulski Tells You How to Break Into Comics
Marvel’s talent scout C.B. Cebulski often posts a lot of useful nuggets for comic creators over on his Twitter page. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen a representative from one of the major comic publishers be more forthcoming on how to break into the biz.
Today on Twitter he posted the following:
Who am I to refuse such a request?
Here’s some nuggets from his tweets from mid-March, 2010. I believe he wrote these after returning from the Emerald City Comicon in Seattle.
- Don’t approach an editor you don’t know at a con with sketchbook/mini/samples in hand. Start a conversation first then ask if they’ll look.
-Don’t feel you have to talk to just editors. Assistant & associate editors also control their own books and are often better to get to know.
-Don’t lurk if the editor you want to talk to is talking/reviewing with someone else. Leave and come back later. (This is my big pet peeve.)
-Don’t set unrealistic goals for yourself. You work your way up to Marvel & DC, you don’t break in with them. Think smaller publishers first.
-Don’t lurk if the editor you want to talk to is talking/reviewing with someone else. Leave and come back later. (This is my big pet peeve.)
-Don’t set unrealistic goals for yourself. You work your way up to Marvel & DC, you don’t break in with them. Think smaller publishers first.
-Don’t make excuses for your artwork while your portfolio’s being reviewed. Take responsibility for what you put on the page. Listen & learn.
-Don’t ever go to a con with the intention of pitching an editor a story. It doesn’t happen. Go solely to meet people and make contacts.
-Don’t ever bring your portfolio to the bar after the con. When the show ends, work ends, and the creators & editors just want to unwind.
-Want a comics’ “do”? Always include a cover letter with your samples. Keep it short and simple, polite and professional.
-Always personalize any communication you have with editors. Use their names. Mass “Dear Editor” e-mails and packages tend to get trashed.
-If you get an editor’s contact info, I recommend sending a follow-up e-mail without attachments first. Ask if you can submit samples.
Comic news site CBR also had coverage of Emerald City’s panel, ‘Breaking into Comics the Marvel Way‘ which includes more wisdom from CB along with some other creators’ input.
This is all killer info and should be followed. Most comic publishers practically tell you exactly what they’re looking for within their submission policies (if they do still accept creator submissions).
And as luck would have it we have a handy directory of all the comic and manga submission guidelines out there.
-Jay
Comic Creators Band Together to form CREATOR-CON
Image by Jeffrey Pidgeon
A ‘movement’ started on Facebook this week that picked up a lot of steam on Tuesday. I saw that writer Steve Niles had posted something about ‘Creator-Con, IT’S ON!’ so I checked out the Facebook Page. There were just over 300 fans on the page that morning. 12 hours later when I looked at the page again that number was sitting at 1266 fans. Clearly it was something that has struck a chord with people in the comic community.
Their mission statement reads:
This page was created as a forum for the artists, writers, designers, self-publishers, retailers and fans that have become disillusioned and frustrated with what the flagship of comic conventions has become (y’all know the one…in San Diego).
The Creator Con idea was hatched a few years ago by a few exhibitor friends as a reaction to the popular media takeover of a convention that used to celebrate artists and creators. We were tired of being pushed further and further aside each year to make room for the bigger, louder and flashier attractions that had nothing to do with the convention’s humble beginnings.
This page hopefully will give us all a platform to get the ball rolling on something new or at the very least, voice our opinions. So let it ring! We want to hear what you have to say.
There’s a lot of activity and comments on the wall and quite a few engaging conversations have started up in the ‘Discussions” area. A lot of comic creators feel marginalized at mega-cons like San Diego and are looking for alternatives where writers and artists can connect with fans and each other without the booming background noise of Hollywood and the video game industry.
Creator Michael J. Ruocco seemed to sum up best with his comment:
I didn’t spend hundreds upon hundreds of dollars to fly clear across the country, book a cruddy hotel room for 5 days, get my pass, wait on lines & wade through thousands of people just to see screaming fans of vampire romance novels, Harold & Kumar’s latest blockbuster hit or Fox’s upcoming Fall lineup. What kind of a…rtistic integrity is that? Sure, it was nice to see old friends again & to meet new ones, but it’s not really worth it anymore. Conventions like the Creator-Con or the CTN Expo would be/are much better environments for artists, cartoonists & animators to get together, show off their work and have an all-around good time! I’m totally up for it!
Jeff Pidgeon the artist of the image above wrote a bit more about Creator-Con on his blog as did Amid Amidi over at the animation site Cartoon Brew.
Should be interesting to see how this Facebook page shapes up over the next few weeks. People seem energized.
-Jay
We Launched “Blunt Force Beating” a New Online Crime Culture Site Today
By Jason Thibault
Since we decided that we didn’t have enough work to do already here at Optimum Wound we decided to build a second site over the last few months.
I give you BLUNT FORCE BEATING, our new online crime magazine. This has been in the planning stages for eons. It’s only recently that we decided that talk was cheap and it was time to build the damn thing.
My friend and long-time collaborator Chris Williams were sitting on a patio over beers one afternoon dreaming up a site that would cover every facet of the crime genre. TV, comics, film, books, video games, and documentaries. No stone would be left unturned.
There’s amazing horror sites out there like Bloody Disgusting and Fangoria covering the horror beat but I couldn’t find any similar site doing the same for crime.
There’s been an amazing worldwide output of crime and revenge films from every imaginable corner of the earth. A bonanza of African crime fiction has arisen in the last few years. Unique publishing houses like Akashic and Soft Skull Press have been releasing profound but largely undocumented books. And the comic scene is seeing genre books like The Hunter make great strides into the mainstream.
I couldn’t sit on it any longer. We needed to get a crime culture journal put up on the net. Richard Serrao, Chris Williams and contributing writers like Violet Dear started producing reviews and essays while I got to work putting the framework of bluntforcebeating.com together.
The gloves come off over there. There’s no censorship and the profanity can get quite loud. I wanted to create a home away from home for people that are passionate about violent, noirish tales both fiction and non-fiction that span every medium across the globe.
It’s been fun as hell so far. Hope you dig it.
-Jay
Richard Serrao Featured on Electric Playland [VIDEO]
Back in the end of August we found ourselves in Artist Alley at Toronto’s FanExpo, the third largest pop culture convention in North America. The good folk of pop culture television show Electric Playland stopped by for an interview with Richard Serrao. That piece finally went live and can be viewed either by visiting their site or watching it in the player below (if you can see it).
I think they did a killer job cutting it together.
Madam Samurai Looks Like a Badass Little Graphic Novel
File this under cool things that show up in my inbox. Scar Comics is releasing the first of what is to be a two-volume graphic novel series called Madam Samurai. It’s hitting the streets in the summer of 2010.
The first thing that caught my eye was that it was written by Gary Young, the screenwriter for both The Tournament and the Michael Caine revenger, Harry Brown. I’ve seen both films and love them each for different reasons. Harry Brown in particular was an amazing and mean little drama and I can’t wait for the rest of North America to catch it on DVD and Blu-Ray.
Gary Young writes tough as nails scripts so I can’t wait to see what he does when turned loose on a comic book. And comic fans on both sides of the Atlantic will get a chance to see what he can do with the graphic novel form in June.
A quick synopsis for the story reads as follows:
Madam Samurai is a hard hitting historical adventure drama that spans the battlefields of feudal Japan and the crime ridden streets of Victorian London.
Look for it in the April 2010 edition of Diamond Previews.
Here’s a couple of unlettered preview pages by the series artist Dave Hitchcock who has previously won an Eagle Award in 2005 for his artwork on Springheeled Jack.
And here’s a nifty trailer for the book.
