The Cloudscape Comics Society is now taking story submissions for our sixth comics anthology, Giants of Main Street. Following our successful forays into science fiction, historical drama, and travel fiction, for this book we are seeking out fantasy stories set in an urban environment.
The ideal story for Giants of Main Street will be set in a dense, man-made environment. A city, regardless of time period, may be recognized by its elaborate architecture, a large stratified population and its status as a center of commercial and political power. It may hold many of the same challenges and opportunities as any modern city. In other words, this is definitely not the happy pastoralism of the Shire.
This project will primarily be an exercise in fantasy world building. By fantasy we mean that the world you create has some component of magic and/or myth (with a non-scientific or non-rational slant, i.e., everything can’t be explained away by midi-chlorians*). The fantasy elements in each story should not be disputed by the general population that makes up your world. For more of an idea of the feeling we are trying to convey, check out the “mood board” our editors are putting together on the forum.
The deadline for submissions is April 13th. At that time we need to see the following four things:
1.) A brief one sentence synopsis or “elevator pitch” of your story.
2.) A script, or script-like entity. Whatever form your script takes, whether it be screenplay or thumbnailed drawings, it needs to be legible and include the full dialogue of the story and the panel break-downs with an approximate page count.
3.) Your name, phone number, email, and a few sentences about who you are. Currently we are only taking submissions from creators who now live or have previously lived in British Columbia. Tell us where you’re from so we know you’re eligible.
4.) ARTISTS- we need to see samples of previous, finished, SEQUENTIAL art. That means comics. We need proof you know how to compose comics and not just pretty pictures. This could be as simple as a link to a website with comics on it, or as complex as a printed portfolio.
The final deadline for finished work, once we have gone through the script submission process, will be around the end of July. Writers who don’t draw and artists who don’t write are welcome to submit, but we can’t guarantee finding someone to match you with. It depends who else submits.
Stories will be black and white or greyscale. Page dimensions are 7.25 by 11, with an additional 0.25 inch bleed and interior margins of 0.5 inch on all sides. Stories must be an EVEN NUMBER of pages long, starting on the right-hand side of the spread and finishing on the left, with a maximum length of twelve pages and a minimum of two. Plan to have the title of your story and the name of the creator(s) prominently displayed on the first page. You can download a print-ready template with all the formatting information you need from right here as a PDF.
Cloudscape has always relied on its members and contributors in order to fund the printing of our books. While contributing to the cost of printing is not a requirement to be included in the book, without the financial support of contributors this anthology will not be printed.
For questions join the forum or send us an email at comm(at)cloudscapecomics(dot)com.
*-Star Wars reference. Excuse my nerdiness.