Kieron Gillen’s Workblog » What Do I Need To Pitch To Image?

[Someone writes to me, asking the perennial Getting Into Comics question. Man, I’m barely in comics. What do I know? Specifically, what do you need before pitching to Image or Dark Horse or whoever. They got that you needed an artist for that but… well, did I have any experience or something? Does it matter? And I have a bit of an old rant, like a tedious old man. But it’ll save me writing it again…]

I’d written quite a bit. Mainly in the small press. I did a few webcomic things (www.bustedwonder.com was written about the same time I was actually writing Phonogram). I did a few small press books of my own, and ran a comic anthology with Alex De Campi for a few years (Who’s probably best known for her Eisner-nominated SMOKE for IDW). Jamie and I did basically 5 years of editorial strips for a videogame magazine, and I had a handful of other WFH stuff (A couple of Warhammer strips and a genuinely terrible marketing comic for a videogame).

Did any of that help with the pitch to Image? I suspect not. The real in was that Jamie had done a book with Eric S before, so he was a known reliable quantity they liked, and the pitch and script were interesting enough for them.

That said, I’m not sure they’d have found the script interesting and/or competent enough without me having spent all the time learning comics. I mean, I did all my future-shock stuff in writing 5 page comics for people to draw. I did a load of them, because 5 pages was about as much as I could talk an artist into doing (Or rather, finishing). No matter how rubbish each was - and a lot were pretty rubbish - it was me seeing what worked and what didn’t. That sort of experience is vital.

A lot of people I consider peers actually went straight to pitching at companies without doing nearly as much playing with the medium as I did. Sometimes they do fine - Alex De C’s work was great, for example. Other times… well, I felt their effort chasing publishers would have been better spent just doing some work. And just by doing small press work you meet a lot of people who are also trying to develop as creators - whether they mean that artistically or commercially, of course, varies on person to person. As a writer, doing short comics, having them not be shit and having other artists say we should do something together sometime is… well, it’s pretty much how I got to where I am today.

In terms of breaking in, assuming some manner of talent, I actually think it’s possible to get work before you’re really ready for it. As Alex De C said to me a long time ago when looking at a pitch I was sending out circa Phonogram, all very good - but do you want it to be your first comic? And she was right. You only have one chance to make a debut, and preparing for it rather than looking straight for the makes-some-money or my-eighty-issue-epic options strikes me as the smarter option.

One other warning: If you actually want to play on a larger scale than the small press, it is possible to get stuck there. If you want to be there, that’s great. If you’re only there because it’s safe, that’s probably bad.

God, that’s totally not answered your question. In short: No, you get an artist who’s willing to do some sample pages, you write a script and assuming the results are snazzy (or they think it’s snazzy), a publisher may go for it. If you’re good enough, you’re good enough.

But if you’re asking me how to get into comics, no, that’s not how I’d recommend doing it from cold.

Do some comics for the sake of doing comics first. The point is doing comics.

13 Comments so far

I’ve been trying to take a similar path and actually learn comics, rather than just diving in, and it’s actually working for me.

I’ve managed to land several strips in FutureQuake and it’s sister title Something Wicked (I was also fortunate enough to actually share some page space with you in Accent UK’s ROBOTS graphic novel from last year), and each and every one has been a valuable learning experience; I’ve taken something away from each published strip, and I feel my writing skills have developed considerably (whether anyone else agrees with that is another matter entirely, however), not just in terms of comic writing, but in terms of good, solid storytelling.

I’ve also had the good fortune to work with some incredibly talented artists, and I’m working with one of them now on a pitch to hawk around publishers - and it’s a pitch that we’ve been trying to get right for a while, and one that I would be very happy to have as my debut.

This isn’t just me agreeing with you for the sake of agreeing: I do genuinely believe that anyone who wants to break in to comics should learn comics before tackling editors.

Something else that is super-critical, IMO, is networking. 90% of work I have been assigned or decided to work on is due to industry connections I’ve made. Approaching networking like you are just making friends (and doing that honestly, not just BSing it) seems the best way of doing it, as well. Nobody likes smarmy ladder climbers.

Anyway! Great article!

Lee: Something else I tend to say - you learn more than one 5 page story that gets drawn than any amount of script which never does. The errors are immediately obvious in a way which they’re not always visible when written down. Grows skills like writing for artists specifically too, etc…

Mr Sanders: Yeah - I kinda hinted around that in the article without saying it forthright. If you do comics and get out to cons and work with people, you end up meeting people and it leads place. I mean, if you go through Commercial Suicide, about half of the people in there have done pro stuff now, I think.

So we’re allowed to ask these sorts of things?

I very nearly emailed you a couple of days ago, Mr Gillen, with the same question except substituting ‘comics’ for ‘games journalism’, after a particularly infuriating session of Viva Pinata produced something I’m actually quite proud of.

Alex: If you use the search, there’s an article I wrote called So You Want To Be A Games Journalist? or something similar.

Aha. Ta!
(And here we were, on the cusp of a “Dear Kieron…” advice column.)

Just read it.
Very informative and surprisingly spiriting (compared to the usual “So You Want To Be *Some Fun Job*: Well, don’t bother kid. You might as well try to climb inside your own asshole.”)

You mention Work Experience, though, briefly and I was just wondering if you knew of a system for that? (Is it just a case of similarly checking the magazines/websites?)

Dear, Kieron, I have a strange rash that I don’t know what to do with…

Seriously, though, that’s a great point about seeing the errors in published strips, and I think it’s something people don’t immediately pick up on. I would add, too, probably the greatest piece of advice I was ever given by an artist: “I’ll never draw exactly what you want me to.”

It taught me that the whole comics creation process is a collaborative effort, and you have to let the artist you’re working with have the freedom to do their thing.

Which I know sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised (or probably not, actually) at how many up-and-coming writers take the Alan Moore route…

Another one of my one line guides: You are not Alan Moore.

(Specifically, the problem with taking the Alan Moore route is that you’re just copying the surface by writing a lot. Moore writes a lot. Ergo, to be as good as Moore, I must do the same. The trick is realising why Moore writes what he does - and whether you need it to get the effects you’re looking for, etc)

What about “So You Want To Write for Plan B” ?

It took me long enough to figure out “So You Want To Buy Plan B?” (Though now I keep seeing it everywhere and marvelling, its in a Spar!)

Lovely stuff. One of these days I’ll actually get around to pitching my Pen Noir comic idea to some one. That or I’ll just continue to drown under a torrent of game releases - NOOOoooo!

[…] is, “I wrote comics.” Kieron Gillen (writer of Phonogram, among other things) recently addressed this question in his blog. He says: ” . . . you get an artist who’s willing to do some sample pages, you write a […]

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What Do I Need To Pitch To Image?

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