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

The Xeric Foundation can make self-publishing your comic a reality.

I first discovered the Xeric Foundation through Bebe Williams, a webcomics 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 offers financial assistance to committed, self-publishing comic book creators and nonprofit organizations.

Two key points should be noted: Xeric’s assistance is not intended to fully finance the artist and writer through the entire process of self-publishing; Xeric grants 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.

How to Format a Comic Book Script

This is a simple formatting breakdown meant to direct the novice comic book writer down a solid path.

Formatting a comic book script isn’t hard. The key is maintaining a clear vision. You are writing something that an artist, who you may never meet, has to illustrate.

When formatting a comic book Script each page must start on a fresh piece of paper along with a notation of how many panels are on the page.

Character dialogue is written in capital letters and indented. This makes style makes it easier for editors and letterers to identify who is speaking. The dialogue always follows the character’s name along with an optional modifier that alerts the letterer to preferences such as bold, or italic.

Essential Skills For Comic Book Artists

There are a million paths leading into the comic book industry. An artist can spend countless hours sending in samples, working on spec scripts, attending comic conventions, and toting around a portfolio while hitting up everyone in site. These are time-honored methods to be sure. And let’s not forget self-publishing with its own set of challenges. But all this work and effort is for nothing if the product for sale is unprofessional and insufficient. For many artists, this is a hard pill to swallow. Having natural ability is not enough if you are looking for a career in comic book art, you have to hone your skills first.

Before you start sending your work out into the world here are four artistic skills that must be mastered. If you can become proficient at these, you will have a shot, and maybe even a career.

#1. Draw the human anatomy
Allow me to reiterate this one. YOU MUST BE ABLE TO DRAW THE HUMAN ANATOMY, with both accuracy and style. Comics are populated with human characters and everyone knows what a human looks like. Most people don’t know why your characters look right, but they all recognize why they look wrong. If you can’t draw the human form, comic book art may not be your perfect place.

If You Could Give One Piece of Advice to an Aspiring Comic Artist or Writer About the Comic Medium, What Would It Be?

Scott McCloud has been in the comic book business for a long time. 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?” His response is fantastic.

“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. 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?”

How to Write With Style by Kurt Vonnegut

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 millions of people picking up their new original work asking, who created this amazing comic book? And of course, this brand new fan asks the question while dropping their $8.00 of hard earned cash onto the comic book store counter.

How to Sell Your Comic Book on Amazon

 

I wrote this article eight years ago, and it was so out of date I decided to remove the entire post. Do not fear though, I am providing a link directly to Amazon’s direct publishing for graphic novels page. This is all you will need.

Amazon Direct Publishing