You know, one of the many things that pissed me off today was browsing through Marvel's site and discovering the updated Open Submission Policy. It seems the days of mailing in your work is at in end. The guidelines were quite simple a few years ago. I would have submitted sooner, but I just didn't have the confidence. Now, it's just gone. I'm not sure when it happened, but this is a monkey-wrench in my plans. What happened? I guess too many scrubs submitted their crap and Marvel had enough...?

The good news is that an aspiring comic book artist can still submit his or her work at a convention, but the convenience of postal mail and email is no longer an option. I'm royally pissed. I kinda like conventions, but I rarely go to them. Hell, even if I do manage to get in, it's only for a day. I'm a poor person, for Pete's sake. Conventions don't fit in my limited budget.

I suppose one day at a convention is enough to get the job done. Unfortunately, doing it this way adds more pressure to an already stressed out person. I don't mind being proactive... it's just...

...fuck.  

I've been promising this for months now, and I guess I'm going to cave in and post it. Behold! My submission samples for Image Comics, Project: IMPACT!

 

The story, in a nutshell, is about a group of teens who are forced to become superheroes. In these five pages, the kids are fighting a nasty super villain and losing. It's actually a holographic scenario, something I didn't want to mention until the last minute (I should have added another page!!!). Their mission is to stop and contain the threat without being lethal. Of course, the fact that I have to explain this means I pretty much failed at storytelling. I'll be sure to add in a few more pages in the near future.    

Unfortunately, I didn't receive any word from the company, so there must be something wrong with the art...if not the art, then the synopsis wasn't that entertaining. A friend of mine said that page 3 was a bit boring and I have to agree to some extent. At the time, I figured a splash page was appropriate, but a few extra panels would have been better to establish some sense of drama. My beef with page five is that the flying head looks flat. Just need to make it a bit more 3-dimensional. The cover turned out to be quite awful. Sure, it's just a mock-up, but... This was just a bad attempt.

What can I say? You live and you learn. Since things didn't go so well this time around, I'll be sure to give it another go really soon---possibly try other companies like Dark Horse or IDW. I was thinking about self publishing, but that may prove a lot harder than trying to submit this to a big company.

Time for Round 2.

Cheers