Erik Larsen on good comic submissions

Image Comics :: View topic - The official SUBMISSIONS THREAD:

I’m going to off on a bit of a rant here. It’s not aimed at you in particular but rather the collected body of people that are thinking about submitting books to Image comics.

A submission is essentially a SALES PITCH.

You're trying to SELL ME on YOUR BOOK.

A lot of these questions seem to forget that. Use some common sense. If you're trying to sell an anthology--it doesn't make sense to show five pages from one guy. To REALLY sell the book--you should have samples from EVERYBODY involved.

A lot of folks in this thread are getting all worried about things, which are pretty irrelevant. It DOESN’T MATTER if you include more pages—it DOESN’T MATTER is you include a letter—it DOESN’T MATTER if you try to suck up. What matters is the work itself. The work itself speaks for you. We need an e-mail address in order to respond to you—we need to see a few pages to know that you have a clue what you’re doing and we need a brief overview of what your story is—and that’s it.

There is NOTHING you can do or say to get a BAD submission green lit.

If the work is good—everything else is irrelevant.

We’re not going to pass on a good book because the person submitting it included more than the required number of pages. We’re not going to pass on a good book because the person submitting it DIDN’T include a résumé. We’re not going to pass on a good book because the person submitting it DID include a résumé. We’re not going to pass on a good book because the person submitting it didn’t include a nice letter with his submission. We’re not going to pass on a good book because the person submitting it didn’t sing the praises of Image comics.

We’re NOT looking for excuses to pass on good books.

If you have a good book—we WANT to be the ones to publish it.
_________________
-Erik Larsen

Publisher
Image Comics

Note to Self

Note to self: Raymond Carver adaptation.

Performancing editor was here.

Sitting around talking in comic book land

A review of Will Eisner’s final graphic novel (about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion) on amazon.com raises an interesting question. Can a story whose action consists largely of two people conversing make a compelling comic book? Are there certain rules we must abide by to make an interesting and engaging comic book? Obviously, what will hereafter be known as the Kirkman Doctrine (“make sure your work doesn’t suck, and you’re halfway there”) applies. But beyond that, do we have to inject a certain amount of action to make an effective comic book story? Is the medium limited in what it can convey effectively – are only certain types of stories suitable for comic books, and conversely, are certain types of stories not suited for comic books in any way, shape or form?

My next post will take an in-depth look at these questions and issues and try to arrive at some answers – at least, my answers, if not the Grand Cosmic Universal Answers.

In the beginning

I was too little to read, so my sister Tammy read my comic books to me. Mainly Batman, but some Superman as well.

Little did I know at the time that I was witness to some of comic books' finest hours, such as Neal Adams's run on Detective Comics. All I knew was that these were some great funnybooks!

"Ghost Mountain Midnight", from Detective Comics #440, stands out in my mind to this day. Batman on the cover, struggling to free a damsel in distress who is chained to a tree, while a horrible monster looms in the distance -- a very short distance, actually.

It was all about the DC 100 Page Super Spectacular in those days. 60 meager cents for 100 pages of comic book adventure! I didn't know or care that most of those pages were reprints of old material. All I knew was that when I bought one of those comics at Magic Mart, I had what seemed like hours of reading ahead of me.

Were comics in those days written for kids, or were kids just able to enjoy them, even though they were targeted at an older audience? What are kids doing today instead of reading comic books, and what does that portend for the comic book industry's future? If you had one chance to get a contemporary comic book into the hands of a 10-year-old, knowing that reading experience might make or break his future as a comic book fan and potential future creator, what book would you choose?

These are some of the topics, questions, issues, and conundrums I'll be addressing in ComicBookOlogy | CBO. So stick around -- sign up for the feed, post your comments, and click on any Google AdSense links you see if they seem of interest (so I will make a gazillion dollars, yeah, that's gonna happen!).

My answer to the one comic that 10-year-old should read, at the risk of giving Joe Casey more impetus for wearing sunglasses indoors, is GØDLAND. More on that later...