CHAPTER 7
Breaking and Entering
Breaking into comics solely as a writer is a challenge. It’s easy for an editor or publisher to evaluate an artist’s portfolio at a glance. Writers require more effort.
Obviously, if you’re an established pro in another area—such as TV, film, or novels—it’s easy to call a comics company, lay out your background, and make inquiries into writing for their books. Well-known TV and film writers are especially welcome.
If you’re a new writer without credits in other areas of writing, you’ll need to prove yourself by having a lot of creative story pitches, then do your best to get those pitches read by editors.
The worst way to do this is submitting by mail without a personal contact. Never, under any conditions, submit an unsolicited pitch or script, meaning a script that no one knows is coming. Most likely, an unsolicited script won’t even be accepted for the slush pile, and will be returned unread at best, or will hit the circular file. In rare instances, a company throws open its doors and announces it’s looking for material. They will provide rules for submission—rules that you should follow carefully. However, editors quickly become inundated with material when they have open calls for submission like this, and the odds of getting anywhere amid the mountains of material they get are a zillion to one.
Your best bet is to establish a connection with an editor to the point where you can pitch story ideas. This is also a delicate and tricky process, but it can be done. The first step is to meet an editor, preferably in person.
Here are some of the possible methods:
• Workshops, seminars
• Clubs or associations
• Mail or e-mail contact
• Personal appointment
Conventions
A primary meeting ground is a comic book convention, and the mother of all comic book conventions is Comic-Con International (http://www.comic-con.org) in San Diego. It’s held sometime in late July or early August. When I first began attending Comic-Con in the late 1970s, it was a small, cozy gathering of comic book people and comics dealers. Now it is a massive, gigantic, sprawling convention that covers comics, animation, anime, TV shows, movies, and videogames—usually, but not always, with some connection to comics. All the major and independent publishers have booths with editors and creators there to meet the public. Plus, there is a section for the small independents to display their books, an artists’ alley, and the gigantic dealers’ room (now selling a lot more than just comics).
This is also a good place to look for an artist, if you’re looking to team up with an artist and produce your own book.
The plus to Comic-Con is that nearly everybody in the business comes to it. The downside is that nearly everybody in the universe comes to it—which means the chance to have a quiet, intimate conversation with an editor is pretty much nonexistent. However, it’s a place to start, and certainly an invaluable place to get a feel for what’s happening in the business. And there’s always the chance you can get invited to a party where you’ll get that opportunity for a more personal conversation.
At the very least, strive to meet the editor and exchange a few memorable words, maybe hand her a business card and get an O.K. from her to submit some story pitches. If she says yes, get her business card. If she’s out of cards (it happens), get the pertinent mailing info from her or from an associate.
Do not—repeat, do not—try to pitch to her or hand her your pitches to read at a convention. The last thing an overburdened editor needs is someone’s unknown work to haul around in luggage all the way back to New York or wherever. Nor do they want to be bombarded with story pitches when they’re insanely busy and distracted. They have too much to deal with already, and this will not endear you to them.
If you get an O.K. to submit some pitches, do not delay. The minute you get home, send off your ideas, with a short, polite, simple cover letter indicating that you met at Comic-Con and that said editor asked to see your ideas, so here they are, with a brief indication of which books or characters you’re pitching. Editors are busy people and need to have the info at a glance. They don’t have time to read tomes.
A good cover letter should include three short paragraphs and run no more than one page long: one paragraph to remind her that you met, where and how, and that she gave you permission to submit; one paragraph with a brief listing of the pitches; and one closing paragraph in which you should say anything about yourself that might help sell you as a writer (such as having sold other pieces of writing, writing columns or articles for a fanzine or prozine, a self-published comic you’ve put out, that sort of thing).
If you want the pitches returned, be sure to enclose an S.A.S.E. (self-addressed, stamped envelope for mailing the material back to you). If you don’t care about having it sent back, indicate in your cover letter that the material doesn’t need to be returned, so the editor will know why you didn’t include an S.A.S.E. In that case, you might at least enclose a regular letter-size S.A.S.E. to cover sending you a rejection or comment letter.
If you can’t make it to Comic-Con, search out other comic book conventions that you can get to, and find out whether they will have editors there as guests.
Workshops, Seminars
Once in a rare while, a company or creator may hold introductory workshops or seminars. These will occur in large cities, so won’t be easily accessible to everyone. You’ll need to keep abreast of general comic book news to stumble across these. See the resources chapter for links to Web sites.
Clubs or Associations
Another route is to search out comic book clubs or associations that might have regular meetings and might sometimes have a comic book pro as a guest. That was how I met Roy Thomas, which led to my selling him my first story for Savage Sword of Conan. This is likely only if you’re in or near a large city, though.
If you have a comic book retailer in your area, check with them to see if they ever have comic pros make appearances at their stores. Again, this tends to happen mainly with stores in or near big cities, and depends on how savvy the owner is with setting up such appearances. Maybe you could offer to help with that, and thereby become personally involved in contacting pros to make visits to the store. If you can’t go to the pros, be creative in finding ways to bring them to your area.
Mail or E-mail Contact
Neither of these next two methods is recommended, but if you’re simply too far away to attend conventions and can’t travel, you may have no choice. Most editors will probably ignore e-mail inquiries, unless they get to know you and welcome hearing from you.
A cold inquiry letter should follow the basic guidelines laid out above in following up a contact at a convention. You should have several usable story ideas ready to send, so if by chance you get an O.K. to submit, you’ll have them ready to go.
Personal Appointment
Back in the 1980s, I contacted the editors at DC and Marvel and made appointments to meet with them and pitch ideas to them in person. I had a few small writing credits behind me by that time, but I think the editors were also impressed that I was willing to travel from California to New York to have meetings.
The catch here is to have strong ideas to pitch, with the hope that the editors might actually let you in the door. It’s a tough form of cold-calling, but what have you got to lose? Other than the cost of travel?
It would require a polite phone call to the editor’s assistant, explaining that you want to travel from the Far Ends of the Earth to have a half hour of the editor’s time to pitch your ideas. They will undoubtedly want to know more about you, which you should be ready to provide. Even if a personal meeting isn’t on the agenda, try to leverage it into an invite to submit by mail. Most importantly, don’t be obnoxious, overanxious, or a pest. Keep it light, friendly, and professional. If you don’t make progress, don’t call on a daily basis. Maintain a written record of when you call, whom you talk to, and what they said. If waiting for a response, allow several days between calls. Give it a try, but if you get the feeling they don’t really want to see you and are trying to discourage you, you should quickly backpedal and ask if you can submit by mail instead. Most of all, remain polite at all times and be able to take no for an answer. Thank them for their time and move on to someone else.
What to Send
Here are a few methods for choosing what to send as a pitch:
METHOD NO. 1: If you’re approaching an editor at one of the Big Two (DC or Marvel), pitch a stand-alone or fill-in idea. By stand-alone, I mean one that could easily fit into the series, stands on its own (not a continued story), matches the tone and feel of the book, and doesn’t include any changes in the series’ continuity. In fact, much of the pitch advice I give in the animation section applies here as well. For example, don’t kill off, maim, resurrect, or give a sex change to any major character. You’re not trying to revise their continuity; you want to show that you can come up with good, usable ideas.
METHOD NO. 2: If you’re submitting to one of the Big Two, pick one of their characters or books that hasn’t been active for a long time and isn’t currently being utilized. Come up with your unique, updated approach to bringing back that character or set of characters. This is trickier because you’ll have to be very, very good at it and come up with an approach that grabs the editor’s interest. If you have the guts and a fantastic “hook” for revitalizing the character, go for it. Even if that particular approach doesn’t work, you could get the editor interested enough in you to pursue other work.
Alternatively, you could pick some minor, secondary character that appeared in one of their books, then disappeared. If no one has done anything else with the character and you can see some potential there, you might come up with a spin-off idea utilizing the character in a new and interesting way.
METHOD NO. 3: Submit something that is your own, original idea. This is a tougher road to go down because few publishers are really looking for new books from unknowns.
Peter David (X-Factor, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Fallen Angels) has this advice: “I always recommend that [the prospective writer] should come up with story springboards (five, six lines) designed as “evergreen” (or as we used to call them, fill-in stories) that could be used for popular characters in multiple books, such as Spider-Man, Superman, or Batman. Then send them, not to the editors of the respective books, but the ASSISTANT editors. Why? Because no one ever writes to the assistant editors, so they’ll actually open the envelopes and read the contents. That’s the biggest problem right there: getting your material in front of people’s eyes. Now I don’t know for sure that that will actually work, but it seems a good theory.”
Kurt Busiek (Astro City, Superman) has written an excellent essay called “Breaking In Without Rules” (Write Now! #13). He gives a cogent and vital piece of advice: there are no rules for breaking in. You must be clever, inventive, and creative in finding the method that will work for you. Each writer will have a different story for how he or she broke in. In most cases, the only thing the writers will have in common is dogged persistence and enough talent to pull it off.
Kurt says, “The trick to it, if there is one, is to remember that you’re a craftsman with something to sell, and if you’re trying to break into the business, you need to find someone willing to buy it. No one will hire you to write X-Men just because you really, really want to. They won’t even hire you because you’ve got really good ideas for how to revolutionize the Batman books—they have experienced pros lined up for those assignments. What you have to do is find someone who needs what you have to sell.”
Astro City by Kurt Busiek. Cover art: Alex Ross.
He emphasizes the need to study the market. “That’s half the job anyway, and you’ll need to keep doing it even after you break in. Look for opportunities. Make the best of them. And then look for another.”
“These days, there are far fewer openings at the bigger companies for new talent—but the good news is that there are a ton of smaller companies that didn’t exist when I was looking for opportunities. They need books to publish, and they might need you. But it’s up to you to do the research, to figure out who’s out there, what they’re publishing, where your particular skills might fit best—and where they’re most likely to need you, which is even more important—and approach them.”
For the independent and smaller companies, Method No. 3 is your best bet. With indies, Method No. 1 isn’t quite as useful, because the books tend to be more-personal creations of a specific writer and/or artist, unlike the corporate fare of the Big Two. And Method No. 2 doesn’t apply very well either, for the same reason.
Indies are usually interested in finding new creators, and are more willing to look at proposals for a new series. The drawback is that an indie is more likely to require that you have an artist attached. If submitting original material to an indie, that is probably the first question you need to ask—will they look at your series proposal on its own, or do they want to see a full-fledged book with an artist attached?
Create Your Own Comic
This provides more challenges to the writer than to the writer-artist because it means you have to find an artist who is willing to work with you, either for free or because you can pay him or her. But if you’ve exhausted other avenues and are hungry enough, this could be your best bet.
Your first effort doesn’t have to be a full-size color book. If you can find a like-minded artist to take a risk along with you, you can start by creating a black-and-white ashcan of your idea. Then send that sample to editors and publishers. Sell it at conventions and hand it to any editors you meet there. An ashcan is small, light, and a quick read, so it makes a nice calling card—provided it’s of professional quality. You must be a good judge of the quality of art, and recognize that vague but crucial borderline between amateur art and professional-quality art. Poor-quality art will do more damage than good, because the reader’s lasting impression will be of the art first and the writing second.
Many independent creators have done well for themselves by creating their own black-and-white series, which they produce consistently year after year so they build a following. The main examples that come to mind are writer-artists:Wendy Pini’s Elfquest (fig. 7.2), Terry Moore’s Strangers in Paradise, the Hernandez brothers’ Love & Rockets, Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo (fig. 7.3), Colleen Doran’s A Distant Soil, Donna Barr’s The Desert Peach, and Dave Sim’s Cerebus.
A special example that must be mentioned is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. What became a multimillion-dollar powerhouse phenomenon spawning animation series, movies, toys, and tons of merchandising began life as a small indie black-and-white comic book parody. It’s a bit of a fluke, but if the commercial potential is there and the right people discover it, this kind of success can happen. There are movie-production companies formed with the express purpose of finding comic book properties to turn into movies, so it never hurts to think of a self-published comic as a launching platform to other media.
Wendy & Richard Pini’s Elfquest.
Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo.
Your task as a writer is to find an artist who is willing to partner with you, who is not only a good artist, but is reliable and professional enough to keep working on a long-term basis. One or both of you need to have the funds to get your book published, promoted, and distributed. You must, must (I can’t emphasize this enough), must have a written agreement with your artist partner to lay out who owns what part of the art, the rights to the book, how the copyright will read, how you’ll divide the money and responsibility, and so forth. You should have a lawyer well versed in copyright issues draw up an agreement for you. There should be no surprises that can destroy your working relationship later on. Both sides should know very clearly exactly what they’re putting into, as well as what they’re getting out of the partnership.
It would take an entire book to tell you how to self-publish a comic, and that’s not the purpose of this one, though I will recommend some books in the Resources section following this chapter. You will need to research self-publishing and learn a great deal about printers. When getting quotes, it will immediately become clear why the indies go for black and white rather than color. You’ll need to learn about promotion, as well as how and where to buy ads. You’ll need to contact comics distributors and find out how they operate and what they’ll demand of you. Mainly, they’ll want to see the book, and they’ll want to know whether you can continue to put the book out on a regular basis. Maintaining a regular, dependable output is one of the single most important elements of succeeding in self-publishing. Nothing is more ruinous to establishing a career than a book that doesn’t come out on a dependable schedule. It doesn’t have to be a monthly schedule, as long as it’s a consistent one.
Places to look for an artist partner:
• Local or nearby art schools
• Specialized art schools that teach comic book illustration, such as the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art (http://www.kubertsworld.com/kubertschool/KubertSchool.htm), the Center for Cartoon Studies (http://www.cartoonstudies.org/), or the Savannah College of Art and Design (http://www.scad.edu/academic/majors/seqa/index.cfm). Planet Cartoonist (http://www.planetcartoonist.com/services/schools) lists art schools (some of which have courses in comics art) by region.
• Comic book conventions
• Through your local comic book store, where aspiring artists often hang out
• Comics club (though they may be too fan oriented, thus making it hard to find professional-quality artists)
• Advertise by placing an “Artist Wanted” ad in a comics-oriented publication (either paper or online). However, be careful how you word the ad, and be prepared to sort through the flakes who may answer. I had extremely dubious results via this method early in my career, so I don’t highly recommend it.
On the Internet
Creating your own comic and putting it up on the Net, instead of publishing on paper, is another alternative. As with any alternative, it has pros and cons.
On the pro side, it’s cheap and easy. You need a Web site and some basic knowledge to get the digital version of your comic onto the Web site, and off you go. You can do color without the associated costs of printing in color. If you have a good comic that will attract readers, and you do a lot of promotion, you can build up a readership that might eventually enable you to sell paper versions of the book.
On the con side, you don’t make money from it. Charging people to look at a Web comic is out of the question. You can add banner ads and hope for some income that way. You can have an online store to sell associated products, such as T-shirts or mugs. All of this depends on building up a sufficiently large and loyal following, which again requires good-quality work put out on a regular basis.
What you mainly hope for with an online comic is attracting the attention of people who can do something more with it, whether we’re talking about a regular comics publisher or someone from the TV or film business. I can’t think of an instance where this has happened, but at least your work is out there and available if you don’t have the means to do it any other way.
I would take a good look at how Scott McCloud adapted one of his Zot! comics to the Web site. What he did is creative and brilliant, and takes full advantage of how Web pages work. Check this out at http://www.comicbookresources.com/columns/zot/heartsandminds.shtml.
One interesting new tool for possible self-publishing is a piece of software called Comic Book Creator. This program allows you to create comic book pages by using images you import from videos, digital cameras, videogame screen captures, or images you’ve scanned. It has templates for panels, various types of balloons, text, and other features. With enough creativity, it might be possible to produce commercially viable comics, or at least something you could use as a sample.
Copyright and Ownership
If you’re new to writing, you need to understand the difference between owning your material and doing work for hire. Anytime you’re hired to work on an existing property or a property in development that belongs to someone else, you’ll be employed as work for hire. This means that you have no ownership or rights at all on the work that you do. If you’re hired to write for Spider-Man or Superman, it is obviously going to be a work-for-hire situation because these are corporate-franchise characters.
Copyright is a complex issue, and I urge you to become as informed as you can about copyright and trademarks. Here is a brief primer.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Here is a definition taken from Cornell University’s Web site (http://www.library.cornell.edu): “Intellectual property refers to creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce. Intellectual property is divided into two categories: Industrial property, which includes inventions (patents), trademarks, industrial designs, and geographic indications of source; and Copyright, which includes literary and artistic works such as novels, poems and plays, films, musical works, drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures, and architectural designs. More information is available from the World Intellectual Property Organization (http://www.wipo.int).”
If you create an ashcan, single graphic novel, comic book series, online comic, or a proposal for a comic book, that is an IP. It’s a creation of your mind, a creation that has commercial value—or at least the potential for commercial value.
COPYRIGHT
The word conveys exactly what it means—the right to copy. Once you create an original and unique work (be it a book, drawing, painting, song, movie, game), you automatically own the copyright to that work. That means that you and you alone can determine who will make copies of that work, how they will make the copies, what they’ll pay you for that privilege, and where or how they can distribute those copies. You own that right to control the copies of your work by any means in any media. You get to decide how you will share, sell, or license any part of your copyright to others.
Although copyright law automatically gives you that protection from the moment of creation, the trick is having absolute proof of your creative ownership. A court of law isn’t going to take your word for it. That is why you need to register your copyright as soon as you can, and before you set out to sell your work to anyone else. If you self-publish your own comic, it’s a standard part of your business procedure to register each issue with the U.S. Copyright Office. It would be wise to do the same for an online comic.
You register your copyright by going to http://www.copyright.gov. Print out the correct form for the type of media you’re copyrighting (for a comic series, it would be “Serials/Periodicals”; for a script or proposal, including illustrations, it would be “Literary Works”), fill it out, include a copy of your book or script, and send it in along with the registration fee ($30 at the time I write this). The Copyright Office Web site has lots of useful information and instructions.
You cannot copyright an idea or a concept. For example, you can’t copyright “A series of adventure tales about warrior-women set on an island.” You can copyright only your specific, exact expression of that idea in a finalized form—whether that form is a prose novel, a script, a comic book, a proposal for a series, or whatever. That is why it’s possible to have two such different approaches to the same idea as DC’s Wonder Woman and my The Sisterhood of Steel. Your specific expression of an idea is the only thing you can protect.
A copyright does have to be protected. Allowing other people to create fan-based material based on your copyrighted work undermines your copyright. If you freely allow others to make new creations based on your IP without exercising your rights or control, it is viewed as giving up ownership in your copyright.
Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org) is a movement to allow a more flexible form of copyright, designed to make it easier to share creative works on the Net. You may want to investigate this and see if it suits how you feel about copyright.
TRADEMARK
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) defines it this way: “A trademark includes any word, name, symbol, or device, or any combination, used, or intended to be used, in commerce to identify and distinguish the goods of one manufacturer or seller from goods manufactured or sold by others, and to indicate the source of the goods. In short, a trademark is a brand name.”
You have to file for a trademark for each category where you want that protection. A comic book trademark would fall under “Publications,” which would also cover other types of publications, such as coloring books, activity books, storybooks (paperback and hard-cover), tape sets, magazines, and so on. If you wanted to trademark your character for an action figure, you’d have to trademark it under another class that includes such things as toys, games, playthings, dolls, action figures, stuffed animals, and miniatures. Clothing is a separate class, and so on and so forth. It’s extremely complicated.
To register a trademark, you are best advised to use a legal professional who knows how to do the necessary trademark searches and applications. Filing a trademark is considerably more expensive (we’re talking hundreds of dollars for each class in which you register your trademark), and you have to make sure there isn’t already in existence a similar trademark with which yours might conflict.
For more information, the USPTO Web site is http://www.uspto.gov. The site does allow you to do a basic search by yourself, but the USPTO will do its own search once you make an application, and they could still turn you down. They don’t refund your application fee if they turn you down, which is why you’re better off using a lawyer who can make sure it will be done right.
The Ownership vs. Making a Deal Trade-off
Some publishers out there are looking for new ideas from new creators and can provide another way to break in. One of these is Platinum Studios, established by comics pros who know the field. Platinum has an emphasis on publishing graphic novels that can be sold as movie properties. Men in Black was one of their early successes. They’ve done well at making deals in the film and television arenas, and have the contacts to give your book a push in that direction if they take you on.
The trade-off is that Platinum will own the copyright. The creators are offered monetary participation if the IP is sold into other media, but as far as I know, there are no guarantees that the writer would be able to work on the other project.
If you’re only getting started and this is your first chance to be published, you have to weigh the pros and cons of giving up ownership. It depends on your temperament and how important it is to you to get those first credits.
If you happen to sell a proposal to a large comics publisher, they will likewise want ownership. The major publishers have had creator-owned lines of books from time to time. That’s why I still own all rights to The Sisterhood of Steel. I sold it to Marvel’s Epic line, which was publishing creator-owned books at the time. If you want to sell your proposal to a big publisher and still own the rights, you’ll need to research whether or not they have a creator-owned line of books in existence. Then you’ll need to research what type of books they buy, and see whether your idea falls within their guidelines.
A manga publisher called TokyoPop was involved in a flap over the rights issue. In addition to Japanese manga, they offered deals for what many people labeled EOL (English Original Language) manga, meaning manga by English-language creators rather than Japanese creators. The flap was about this same trade-off—new creators were getting a break and getting books published in exchange for giving up a significant chunk of their copyright. Established creators who already had credits in the field were able to negotiate contracts that didn’t require giving up ownership.
Is this worth it to get published? That’s very much a personal decision. You may not have a problem with making that trade-off, or you may feel strongly about owning your material. It’s something you need to think about if you get serious about trying to sell your IP to a publisher rather than publishing it yourself.
Getting Paid
Large companies use a voucher or invoicing system. Some of them provide you with vouchers, which are a type of invoice that you submit when you turn in work. Other publishers might require you to invoice on your own letterhead, and at other companies the editors may take care of the invoicing for you. You’ll have to find out what the procedure is for the company that hires you.
It will be up to you to track pending payments to make sure you get paid on time. When it’s a work-for-hire situation, you’ll receive a contract first. Your contract must specify how your payments are broken out, what you have to turn in for each payment, how long they can take to pay you, and whether they have to accept or approve your work before you’ll be paid. Be sure your contract sets a specific time for approval or acceptance of work that’s turned in. Otherwise your payment could sit in limbo while you wait for an editor to accept your work or ask for revisions.
The larger companies offer royalties or incentives that will be based on how well your book sells. You might have a royalty that kicks in only when your book sells a certain number of copies, so you should do some research and try to determine how well certain books sell (this is not easy info to come by, I should add). Sales of comics have fallen tremendously over the past couple of decades. Setting a royalty that doesn’t kick in until a book sells five hundred thousand copies a month, for example, means it’s highly unlikely you’ll ever see a penny in royalties.
Your contract should specify what percentage the royalty or incentive will be, what sales figures it’s based on, and when such royalties or incentives are paid (quarterly? twice a year? once a year?). Unless you’re a big name and have tremendous clout, you won’t see a royalty based on gross (total profit from sales, with no publisher expenses deducted). You will be offered royalties based on net. What you want to watch for is exactly what are those expenses that will be deducted, because that will eat away what you receive. Again, unless you have some kind of clout, you won’t have much chance of changing what they offer you.
If a company doesn’t offer a royalty, they should instead offer a greatly increased amount of money up front to make up for this.
Going rates? It’s tough to give a going rate in a changing business, but a rough guideline would be anywhere from $50 to $200 per page and up (possibly higher than that for writers who are under contract on a continuing basis). However, smaller companies or independents may ask you to accept a deal with no money up front and only royalties on the back end. They’re asking you to share with them the risk of publishing. If they’re a reputable, established company that doesn’t seem like it might fold at any minute, and you can afford to do that in order to break in, then you should consider it.
“Per page” means the number of pages in the printed book. So if you get $100 per page for a twenty-two-page book, you make $2,200 for that script (plus royalties later, if any).
Location, Location, Location
At one time, where you lived was more of an issue than it is now. Marvel and DC are in New York City, and at one time that meant that you needed to live in New York to work for them. If you aren’t an established or big-name writer, it still is helpful to live there if you want to work specifically for one of those Big Two companies. Living there gives you more opportunity to make personal contact and become known to the people who can hire you. That means meeting and getting to know someone on staff—an editor, another writer, artist, or anyone who can get you in the door. You might also try getting hired on as some type of assistant and work your way up from there.
But comic book companies sprout up everywhere, from Oregon to Florida, and most of them aren’t going to decide whether or not to hire you based on where you live, as long as you have good Internet access for sending and receiving material.
If you’re going to go the self-publishing route, what is probably more important is to live in a major city, or at least close to one, so that you have access to a larger pool of artists, letterers, colorists, printers, binders, retailers, and other people or services you might need. You don’t have to live in the same place as your artist, but it usually works a whole lot better if you do.
Agents
There are no agents for writers in the comic book field. I had an agent for a while. He’d worked in the comics business for decades, had published the first-ever line of alternative comics that weren’t undergrounds, had helped establish the direct market (selling to retail comic book stores rather than relying on newsstand sales), and really knew his way around. He set up an agency to represent writers, artists, colorists, letterers, and others in the field. Yet after putting a lot of years into it, he finally closed it down.
The resistance to agents is partly history. It’s a business in which the creators never had any significant say and never had anyone to represent their interests, so there’s no precedent for representation. It’s in the interest of the big companies to avoid that. And because the majority of comic book deals aren’t for big money, there’s not a lot of payoff in it for the agents who have to battle this resistance.
It’s possible that big-name writers from film or TV have their Hollywood agents negotiate comic book deals for them. The big names already have those agents, and by virtue of being a big name, they may be able to command enough money to make it worth the agent’s while. I don’t know of any agent, however, who actively tries to represent comic book writers. Plus, you run into the problem that a Hollywood agent won’t know much about the comic book business. If they don’t know any more than you do about the business, they’re not of much help to you.
If you’re breaking in and being offered a standard work-for-hire contract, there’s not much you can realistically do except take what’s offered. If you’re selling an original IP where a contract needs to be negotiated, you should immediately hire a good entertainment or copyright lawyer. This will cost you, but it will be worth it to let the lawyer handle the negotiations and legal end of the deal. It’s the only way to truly protect yourself.
Unions and Organizations
There is no union or organization that represents people in the comic book field. Artists and writers are notoriously difficult people to organize under any conditions, and as stated earlier in this chapter, there was never any precedent set for that type of representation.
Los Angeles does have some local groups, such as the Comic Art Professional Society (CAPS). This organization requires that you have professional credits to join. Joining is a nice way to socialize and network. There are other, less formal groups that I’ve heard of that meet for dinner once a month or get together for a “writers’ lunch.” If you get into the business, keep your ears open for groups like that and join in. Social networking is a great way to pick up work.
One group that everyone in the business should join is the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF), which fights to defend comic book creators and store owners who have been arrested, censored, or otherwise prohibited from exercising their First Amendment rights in comic books. The CBLDF uses donations to cover legal fees in fighting the good fight. Please give them your support.