Seeking Talented Artists for All-Ages Comics Proposal

[cdonaghe]

My name is Carlton Donaghe, and I’m looking to see if it would be possible to put together a group of artists interested in working on a proposal for an all-ages line of comics.

Thinking about this from the artists’ point of view, if I were going to work on a project with someone I did not know or have never met face-to-face—whether there was money involved or not—I’d want to feel I could trust the person I was working with.

So let me put it this way: I’d like to put together a group of artists who not only have the talent, but who enjoy working together and have built up a level of trust between them, to put together a proposal for a small line of all-ages comics.

Note that I’m not talking about doing the actual comics (yet). I’m just talking about creating a presentation to show a publisher.

If you read this, and decide you might like to work together, I think I’ve come up with a fun way to get to know each other a little and perhaps build up a modicum of trust between us. And I think we can do it in a way that would be beneficial for everyone involved.

I’ve written a fantasy proposal for a new line of Marvel Comics, as I would do it, were I editor-in-chief. In it, I describe the characters, powers, relationships, supporting cast, stories & plot-lines, and super-villains for an all-ages line of 12 king-size monthly Marvel comics. I worked to give it a good gender balance, and I’ve tried to use characters from a variety of backgrounds, nationalities, and age-ranges.

Here is the PDF of my Marvel proposal:
http://www.zianet.com/donaghe/popart...rtproposal.pdf

Marvel doesn’t even look at unsolicited proposals, and there are good legal reasons why they don’t.

Also, I don’t work for Marvel, nor do any friends or family. In fact, the only Marvel Donaghe in the family, from the Virginia Donaghes, died in 1907 at the age of 83.

Rather than use my own original characters to post online, I wrote this Marvel proposal to show what I would do if I had total creative control, the same as I would have working with my own creations. It also illustrates what I call “all ages” comics. All-ages doesn’t mean comics aimed at children, nor does it mean “cleaned up” adult comics. Instead, like Silver and Bronze Age Marvel Comics, they would be aimed at all ages of readers simultaneously.

Please read the proposal. If you like it and want to work with me, I would be acting in the role of an editor as well as writer, for the purposes of putting together this proposal.

If this actually works, my idea is to work together with a group of artists on a fun project, where no one artist has to do all that much work, but where we could still make something epic.

In doing this project, we’d get to know each other a little, we’d see how well we work together—if we’re simpatico, as they used to say—and we’d develop a little trust and, hopefully, respect between us.

Ideally, I’d want to find 12-15 artists who’d like to pretend they’d be drawing three titles a month each (it’s a fantasy, after all—you wouldn’t really be expected to draw those comics). I don’t actually expect to find that many artists. Heck, I don’t know if I’ll find any, but it doesn’t hurt to try, right?

Based on interest and the best fit for the character, I’d work with each artist to design the look for each series. For each series, an artist would put together a set of drawings to be used for logos, model sheets, and the merchandise we’d produce in this wonderful fantasyland where we ran Marvel Comics.

Also, once we got rolling, all my original ideas in the proposal would be negotiable. If you start coming up with ideas that make it better, that’s when we know we’ve got something. And that’s why I think it would be a good idea to do this experiment using Marvel characters. We can contribute our brains out, and we won’t lose any of our own ideas.

Once we have all the art, text and graphics, we make a website out of it and put it online. We make something to be proud of. We spread the word, and get people to check it out. We people to see it and want these comics to be real.

The goal would be to make an epic proposal that would catch people’s attention and get our little group of artists noticed. We will never get Marvel to look at the proposal, but if we made something that created a buzz around the internet and the comics community, you might get noticed as an individual artist.

That’s one thing we could do.

What if you like my idea, but you don’t like, or want to do, Marvel. Fear not! Going in a slightly different direction, I’ve also put together a (less comprehensive) website with an idea using the Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning super-hero cartoons of the 1960’s!

Visit the website for the Saturday morning super-heroes at
http://www.zianet.com/donaghe/Saturday/

Again, it’s the same idea, on a slightly smaller scale. I don’t think this would be a pitch we could really get looked at, but in putting it together, we’d get the chance to work together and see how it goes.

Ultimately, yes—I want to find artists to work with in creating an original work that actually earns us real money. Hopefully, this is a proper stepping stone towards that goal.

If you are interested, send a link to your artwork to me at my email address:

My name, Carlton Donaghe, all small letters and no spaces, at gmail dot com.

(I write my email address that way to prevent web-bots from getting my email and spamming me—cool trick, huh? The guys at Digital Webbing aren’t the only ones who are paranoid!)

I look forward to hearing from you.

Carlton Donaghe (all small letters and no spaces) at gmail dot com