It used to be that you could call DC Comics and ask them to send you a script to work from. You’d send copies of your work back – in my case pencils – and sometime in the future you’d get a response. The form rejection letters always came in cool DC logo envelopes and on DC comic character stationery. It made it doubly worse to get excited to see one of those in your mail only to have it be an anonymous “No,” without any explanation why your work was being rejected.
DC no longer accepts unsolicited submissions, preferring to use their comic convention sample review for new artists, as well as artists that have proved themselves by getting work with other publishers. The web now also offers an easy way to gain exposure and come to the attention of publishers. But in 1992 it was still all done by phone call and mail.
Download the Submissions from 1992 PDF. You’ll enjoy it more if you read the blog post first.
I found another piece from 1989 when I was still using nibs for inking. Grey Armor was a Sunday-style strip. I don’t think I actually ever sent this to anyone, which was odd for me. There was a little brush used on the pile of bodies and the silhouette of the main character in the last panel. Scanned from a photocopy.
Green Lantern vied with Batman for my favourite DC character. Gil Kane was a huge influence in helping me understand the structural basics of good figure drawing in a way that made sense to me. So when DC said they had a GL script they could send me, I jumped on that. I remember painstakingly working on those five pages, drawing and redrawing, doing my best to avoid the dislocated limbs I was prone to rendering.
I have no idea what happened to the original pages. I may have sold them at a convention appearance. I honestly don’t remember. Scanned from photocopies.
After getting the rejection letter for Green Lantern, I called them up again and got a Martian Manhunter script. The storytelling in this one is okay, but I didn’t really do justice to J’onn himself. His head in the top right on the third page is the only one I think works.
Same situation as GL on the original pages. Scanned from photocopies.
The four Marvel characters are ones I had a lot of affection for. Starlin’s Warlock was frikking brilliant. Steranko on Nick Fury. A couple of good runs on Captain America, with Roger Stern & John Byrne standing out. And Miller & Janson on Daredevil.
The first version is the original from 1992 and is overly linear as my style was then. The second is from the late 90s and has black spotted in.
When I started working on the mini series for Alpha, Ron Fortier quite liked the Marvel Four, and asked me to do a version for him with the Alpha characters. That’s Gideon King – the Nightmark – in the trenchcoat, Totem and his lady teammate crouching (sorry, I forget her name), and it was Lady Liberty (I think) arcing in the background.
Up next : Nightmark : Blood & Honor for Alpha Productions.
