Greetings, all. Welcome to my first real post after years of lurking. It is a great big over-sharing wall of text. Let's begin.
So...
A year ago, a friend of mine contacted me hoping I would write something for him to draw. Because I don't write anything I won't try to get out in the world, I immediately began thinking about ways to publish our new comic.
Webcomic seemed the most obvious route, and we tried it out for a while, but the story was awful, the art was awful, and we lost faith that we could produce new pages every so often. We both obviously needed room to improve, but the only way to improve is to keep going, so we pulled the webcomic and continued working.
Because the artist is a cinematographer by trade, he suggested we do something live action, too. We got everything together and made a really awesome trailer for a potential series, while I worked on six short screenplays.
Back to the comic, we doubled down on a miniature issue to show off and garner some interest in the project. It was much better than our first go around, but admittedly not good enough to expect much. We submitted to Image with a series proposal but didn't hear anything back. Instead, a small publisher in a city near ours contacted us. We had a series of meetings and made a game plan, but at the last minute my artist got cold feet; he explained that the deal and the exposure wasn't really enough to justify choosing it over self-publishing, and also wasn't sure he could operate under the proposed deadline. I agreed to him letting the publisher know we would no longer be going ahead with them.
While all of that happened, an associate of my illustrator's showed off our live action trailer to some connections he had. The executives at some major companies showed interest in the series, and the associate was set to become our show runner. I very quickly grew uncomfortable with the idea of someone else being in charge, and creative differences combined with hearing nothing back from the companies put all of this on hold.
I waited for months without doing anything for the project, worried that if we continued on the comic the show runner would be angry. Finally, I decided if my illustrator friend didn't want to continue doing the comic, I'd just take it all back and start over again with a different artist. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily for reasons I'll get to, my artist agreed we should go ahead with the comic, only this time we'll treat it like a book. Take our time, perfect everything, and then find an agent.
That seemed like a brilliant plan (bravo, me), but everything I've read on the internet suggest that agents only take writers without agents, that publishers prefer to team them up with artists they've already got working for them. Now that my illustrator is on board and we're excited about doing this again, I certainly can't replace him, nor would I really want to. I also don't have any hope of self-publishing, because my marketing skills are shite.
For a project that's never fully gotten off the ground, a lot has happened to it, with it, and about it. I remain hopeful, especially as there's already been interest in it.
TL;DR or the version of this post I'd have started with if I didn't feel I needed to fill the void with a wall of text: I'm making a comic, but I already have an illustrator for it. I want to release it in volumes as graphic novels, instead of as a series, and I want to do it professionally instead of self-published. Are there agents that will represent the project as a whole? Does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing?
Thanks in advance!
So...
A year ago, a friend of mine contacted me hoping I would write something for him to draw. Because I don't write anything I won't try to get out in the world, I immediately began thinking about ways to publish our new comic.
Webcomic seemed the most obvious route, and we tried it out for a while, but the story was awful, the art was awful, and we lost faith that we could produce new pages every so often. We both obviously needed room to improve, but the only way to improve is to keep going, so we pulled the webcomic and continued working.
Because the artist is a cinematographer by trade, he suggested we do something live action, too. We got everything together and made a really awesome trailer for a potential series, while I worked on six short screenplays.
Back to the comic, we doubled down on a miniature issue to show off and garner some interest in the project. It was much better than our first go around, but admittedly not good enough to expect much. We submitted to Image with a series proposal but didn't hear anything back. Instead, a small publisher in a city near ours contacted us. We had a series of meetings and made a game plan, but at the last minute my artist got cold feet; he explained that the deal and the exposure wasn't really enough to justify choosing it over self-publishing, and also wasn't sure he could operate under the proposed deadline. I agreed to him letting the publisher know we would no longer be going ahead with them.
While all of that happened, an associate of my illustrator's showed off our live action trailer to some connections he had. The executives at some major companies showed interest in the series, and the associate was set to become our show runner. I very quickly grew uncomfortable with the idea of someone else being in charge, and creative differences combined with hearing nothing back from the companies put all of this on hold.
I waited for months without doing anything for the project, worried that if we continued on the comic the show runner would be angry. Finally, I decided if my illustrator friend didn't want to continue doing the comic, I'd just take it all back and start over again with a different artist. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily for reasons I'll get to, my artist agreed we should go ahead with the comic, only this time we'll treat it like a book. Take our time, perfect everything, and then find an agent.
That seemed like a brilliant plan (bravo, me), but everything I've read on the internet suggest that agents only take writers without agents, that publishers prefer to team them up with artists they've already got working for them. Now that my illustrator is on board and we're excited about doing this again, I certainly can't replace him, nor would I really want to. I also don't have any hope of self-publishing, because my marketing skills are shite.
For a project that's never fully gotten off the ground, a lot has happened to it, with it, and about it. I remain hopeful, especially as there's already been interest in it.
TL;DR or the version of this post I'd have started with if I didn't feel I needed to fill the void with a wall of text: I'm making a comic, but I already have an illustrator for it. I want to release it in volumes as graphic novels, instead of as a series, and I want to do it professionally instead of self-published. Are there agents that will represent the project as a whole? Does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing?
Thanks in advance!
Last edited: