After sitting for three hours staring at the same line of dialog, I start to wonder why I’m doing this to myself.

Why am I working so hard on this script? Why am I chewing my fingernails to the quick as I wait for a response from a perspective artist? Why don’t I just say to hell with it, go watch TV and focus on my day job. A day job that has paid me more in a single week than I’ve made in total in the two years I’ve been seriously doing comics. The only answer I can come up with…

                                                                                            …because I love it.

I could write prose, I have and I will again, but it doesn’t hold the same draw. Comics have been my dream since I was a kid. I remember being so passionate about them that a friend once told me that I couldn’t come over to play unless I stopped talking about comics. I didn’t go to play, I stayed home and read comics instead.

Something about this art form captured me. Something in the quality of it, the intimacy and the interactivity. The slow burn of a full bleed panel. The rhythm of the gutters. The pull of a well placed page turn. Going back and letting my eyes linger over the lines of a nib or a brush.

Wednesday afternoons at the comic book shop. Christ, Wednesday afternoons. The feel of a 22 page floppy. The fulfillment of a months anticipation over what happens next in a series that’s had you by the balls for the past 13 months. The talk over artists, writers and what team you’d love to see work on what title. The ritual of the bag and the board and the box.

This is why I do it. Because I dream in comic book. I don’t want to do anything else with my life. This is a thing I must do. In the end, it won’t matter if I make any money at it. It won’t matter if I get more work published. The very act of doing it is reward.

I won’t lie. I would love to do it fulltime. I’m pretty damn sure I will. If I don’t though, it’s alright. The love keeps me going. This is no industry for tourists. The margins are too small and the competition too talented. The only thing that will keep you going after hours of staring at the same panel description, page layout or balloon placement, is the love. If it’s not there, if it’s not driving you, I advise you quit and find the thing that does. It’s a waste of your time without it.

Now, I’ve got to get back to that damn line of dialog.

 If you’re trying to break into writing comics you’ve probably found that few publishers actually accept scripts. This makes sense, I mean it takes a while to read a full script and know that the person writing it has the chops to be hired. Art on the other hand they can just look at and almost immediately tell “Hey, this guys good enough”.

So you may be a bit disheartened that you can’t find anyone to take your golden ideas! Well fear not, here’s a list of the publishers that will accept your scripts. Understand though that most of the time they want a script featuring their characters, also they generally only want maybe 10 pages max. Check their individual submission guidelines.

• 2000 A.D. : They only want future shock episodes from new writers. Future Shock is their proving ground. Write enough that they like and you might be    moved to one of their other titles. It was good enough for Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison, and Garth Ennis… it’s good enough for you.
• Avatar Press: OK, for these folks you need to turn in a script featuring one of their characters…..here’s the hitch though, it’s a bit hard to figure out who their characters are! Try Pandora she’s basically their flagship character.

Nowadays those are essentially the only companies that will accept unsolicited writing samples. Even with these two don’t expect a whole lot back, the editors there are only reading slush scripts when they have time…and I suspect they don’t have much time.

Keep writing.

-Steve