Rising to the Challenge

Well, I did it. I submitted Spiketown to Platinum Studios' Comic Book Challenge. I went a little nuts getting stuff together and making last minute changes, and probably gave Myke a pain or two with all of my emails and phone calls, but it all came together nicely.

We decided to submit page 4 of our first issue as an art sample for our submission. It consists of a short confrontation between one of the main characters, a drunk and surly Forrester, and a hapless bike courier. Hopefully, it gives a good idea of the style and tone of the series. At least part of it, that is. I wouldn't want to give the impression that entire book consists of drunken and/or surly people arguing with each other, although that could be an entertaining theme - for a short while anyway.

The synopsis gave me the most trouble: How do you summarize a series like this where there is so much that we want to do with it, so much that we want to include? For myself, I see it as product of my many influences, comic book or otherwise, distilled down into a coherent whole while retaining many of the elements of those influences that I found so appealing in the first place. At least, that's what I hope for. I'm sure it's not going to be exactly like that - probably completely different than I expect. But that's part of the fun of working on projects like this: You never really know what you're going to end up with. That said, if it's crap I will not be overjoyed. But I don't think that I have much to worry about there.

So now, we wait until June 18th when the first round of semi-finalists are chosen. Out of the thousands of entries, fifty submissions are picked to go on to the next round. That means pretty slim odds of our continuing with the contest, but that's okay. Now we have some materials that we can tweak for future submissions, and there is a distinct satisfaction in getting our crap together enough to have entered. It feels like a milestone for the project as a whole, and gives me a good feeling about Spiketown's future.