And we interupt our regular service for a commercial break:
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"YES, SIR.
ALMOST COMPLETELY SURE."
Me: Award-winning professional consumer-media journalist of 10 years standing. In terms of comics, I’ve sold scripts to Warhammer Monthly, have a monthly strip in 200,000 selling OPM2 Magazine and co-edit acclaimed underground Brit-anthology Commercial Suicide. I’m looking to step up from my assorted short work and try a serial action comic.
You: Pro-quality artist looking for an adventure comic to call their own. Interest in both the full-bore action and the emotional moments which make the action actually mean something. Ideally, you both pencil and ink, but a suitably brilliant master of the pencil is just fine. If you like to colour your own work, even better. Most schools of art considered, but the project lends more towards moody atmospherics than day-glo positivism.
Us: What each other desperately needs.
The comic: Modern-day military-action/horror comic. If you’re in a Hollywood mood and fancy a cheap and nasty high concept: Hellboy meets The Losers.
References in terms of tone apart from them: ABC Warriors and Bad Company from 2000 A.D. WE3. The Dirty Dozen. Global Frequency. Bravo 2 Zero. The Clash circa Combat Rock. Blade 2 (Without the Plotholes). The Ultimates. Where Eagles Dare.
Personality notes: While the book is aimed at a teenage and up readership, it doesn’t play with kid gloves. The artist shouldn’t be easily offended. The fundamentally religious, for example, will probably have trouble with some of the material. And it’s a small advantage if you’re British, if only to make phone-calls more affordable.
Financial: While I wish I had the resources to do so, I can’t offer payment in advance.
If a publisher picks it up, it’ll almost certainly be a back-end deal. If so, all monies gathered will go to pay your pre-agreed page rate before any reaches me. That is, you get paid to an agreed level before I get a cent. Once (and if) that is reached, the monies will divert to me until they reach my page rate. After that point, all cash is split according the page rate’s ratio (That is, you want seven shiny gold coins a page and I want three shiny gold coins a page, all shiny gold coins after we’re reached our would be split 70:30). This strikes me as the only fair way to do something like this, considering I’m an unknown writer in the field and the sacrifice of time is so large for a serious artist.
In short, you get to eat before I do.
The Artist will also have co-creator credit and 50:50 ownership. Because to do otherwise would be insane.
Art required for the pitch: Six pages of art.
Contact: Mail me at kieron@gillen7.fsnet.co.uk. Ideally, provide a link to your art samples, but if you haven’t got any online, will accept attachments.
Thanks for reading.
Kieron Gillen.
