Please Don’t Have Any of This in Your Comic Book Portfolio

PORTFOLIO HORROR
by Jim Zubkavich

This bi-weekly column is meant to give advice from me and eventually other people in the industry about how to break in as an artist. This will include tricks for the formal submission routes as well as a bunch of informal elements you may not have realized.

Although I’d given critiques to students at an art college in Calgary where I worked from 1999-2002, nothing could really prepare me for giving feedback to hopeful comic book artists as a Project Manager at Udon.

Once my boss realized that I could do some pretty sharp critique of people’s portfolios he

Grant Money to Self-Publish Your Comic Book

http://xericfoundation.org

You’ve just completed your first comic book, and you know that you don’t want to subject your work to the soul-crushing scrutiny of editors and other middle-men as well as the anonymity of a publisher’s slush pile. But then you also realize that, while the self-publishing route can be highly rewarding, it can also get expensive. This is where the Xeric Foundation could help. I first found out about the Xeric Foundation through Bebe Williams, a web comics pioneer whose “Bobby Ruckers” comic book was the recipient of a Xeric grant. Founded by “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” co-creator Peter A. Laird, the Xeric Foundation has offered financial assistance to “fully committed, self-publishing comic book creators and nonprofit organizations” since the early nineties. Note that Xeric’s assistance is expressly not intended to fully finance the artist/writer through the entire process of self-publishing. Also note that Xeric grants usually don’t exceed $5,000.

Advice on Breaking into Comic Book Writing

This is a letter written by Steve Lieber discussing the topic “How to break into Comic Book Writing”

Steve Lieber (born May 19, 1967) is a comic-book illustrator. His best known work includes runs on Detective Comics and Hawkman, the graphic novel Whiteout and its Eisner Award-winning sequel, Whiteout: Melt. He is also the co-author (with Nat Gertler) of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Creating a Graphic Novel. Lieber is married to the novelist Sara Ryan. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and lives in Portland, Oregon, where he is a member of Periscope Studio.

To the fellow who asked about breaking into comics:

First, don’t even THINK about quitting your day job. Writers I know who’ve
worked in comics and Hollywood have told me it was a lot easier to sell
their first tv or film script than their first comic script.

Format a Comic Book Script

This is a very, very simple formatting breakdown, but I think it points you in the right direction. Formatting a comic book script isn’t really all that hard, the key is to be clear in your vision. You are writing something that an artist (whom you may have never met) has to illustrate. I have also included a sample script layout. I am planning on posting a much more detailed article on comic book script writing in the near future, so please keep checking back.

Formatting a Comic Book Script

Each page should start on a fresh piece of paper with a notation of how many panels are on the page.

Character dialogue is done all in caps and indented to make it easier for editors and letterers to identify who is speaking. Dialogue starts with the character’s name and then an optional modifier to let the letterer know how to letter it.

Essential Skills to Become a Comic Book Artist

There are a million ways into the comic book industry. You can spend countless hours sending in samples and working on spec scripts. You can attend comic conventions, totting around your portfolio and hitting up everyone in site (this particular avenue has become a time honored tradition, but that is another article all together), or you can take the path of least resistance and self publish. Of course all of this work will do you no good if you haven’t mastered a few very important skills. If you can become proficient at these four artistic skills then you have a good shot at not only breaking into the comic biz, but also making a career out of it.

#1. You must be able to draw the human anatomy.
Allow me to reiterate this one. YOU MUST BE ABLE TO DRAW THE HUMAN ANATOMY, both accurately and stylishly; over-exaggeration gets ugly when taken to extremes. As most stories feature a lead character of some sort, you must be able to make that character look good and, believable. When the graphics are the only description given of a character, ugly means readers don’t like the character, so no second series of the story.

Advice To Aspiring Comic Book Creators

Scott McCloud has been in the comic book business for a long time. Recently while on a speaking tour at Drexel University he was asked “If you could give one piece of advice to an aspiring comic artist or writer about the comic medium, what would it be?“. I love this question. Here is his response:

“Write and draw what you really want to see as a reader. Don’t try to write and draw what you think others will buy or what others want to see, because if you’re not as interested in the subject matter that you’re telling us about, then that’s going to show. And that lack of enthusiasm is going to weaken your work. You have to care deeply about what you’re doing. If you do, then there will always be at least someone else out there who cares as deeply about it as you. But if you’re trying to sell out, if you’re trying to create the kinds of stories you think other people like, you’re always going to come in second behind others who have a more genuine love for that material. So you might as well just write what you love.”

Biography

McCloud was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He created the light-hearted science fiction/superhero comic book series Zot! in 1984, in part as a reaction to the increasingly grim direction that superhero comics were taking in the 1980s.[citation needed] His other print comics include Destroy!! (a deliberately over-the-top, over-sized single-issue comic book, intended as a parody of formulaic superhero fights), the graphic novel The New Adventures of Abraham Lincoln (done with a mixture of computer-generated and manually-drawn digital images), 12 issues writing DC Comics’ Superman Adventures, and the three issue limited series Superman: Strength.

Advice For The Moronic Comic Book Reviewer

In The Book Standard, Jessa Crispin offers advice for reviewers tackling the elusive comic book or graphic novel. Her first and perhaps most urgent, piece of advice: “‘They’re not just for kids anymore’ is not an original, interesting, clever or even remotely intelligent opening statement.” She also advises against comparing every artist to Art Spiegelman, or ghettoizing the genre in clusters of short reviews. And for that matter, writes Crispin, “Now that the arty comics are seen as almost respectable, isn’t it time for the superhero comics to get a little mainstream love?”

Write Comics with Style

Alright, this article is actually called “How to Write with Style”, but I really don’t think it makes a difference what you are writing. This is great advice. I think it’s one of the most enlightening essays I have read in a very long time.

Newspaper reporters and technical writers are trained to reveal almost nothing about themselves in their writings. This makes them freaks in the world of writers, since almost all of the other ink-stained wretches in that world reveal a lot about themselves to readers. We call these revelations, accidental and intentional, elements of style.

These revelations tell us as readers what sort of person it is with whom we are spending time. Does the writer sound ignorant or informed, stupid or bright, crooked or honest, humorless or playful– ? And on and on.

Obtaining ISBNs and Barcodes for Your Self Published Comic Book

Independent comic creators are dreamers. They dream of seeing their artwork printed in full color on pristine semi-gloss pages. They dwell upon the idea of opening a comic book to find their characters brought to life on a Technicolor splash-page. They dream of seeing millions of people picking up their new and utterly original work and asking “Who created this amazing comic book?” Of course this brand new die hard fan is asking this question while dropping their $8.00 of hard earned cash onto the comic book store counter.

Sell Your Comic Book on Amazon

You can sell your comic book on Amazon.com! In fact, surprisingly, you can sell almost anything on Amazon…within reason.

Distributing your independent comic book will most likely be difficult. Marketing and promoting can be rough, but finding a place to sell your book will almost certainly drive you up the wall. I have spent endless hours researching ways to sell independent comic books, and I have to be honest; if you don’t have “Diamond Distribution” listing your new title, you have a long row to hoe. That being said, just remember, all is not lost, there are alternatives.

Today I thought we would discuss one of the alternatives. Amazon.com; how to sell your new comic using the site, setting up an account, what you can expect to make per sell and is this right for you.

How to sell your comic book or graphic novel on Amazon

Anyone can apply to sell their merchandise on Amazon but a book has a few extra requirements that must first be met.