While looking over my Twitter feed, writer C.B. Cebulski was recently talking about the upcoming writers wanting a job during the New York Comic Con. He is one of those people that I don't consider just a writer. I see him as more of a storyteller. (Check out some of what he's written.) What advice can he offer?
Just to clarify, while I meet and talk to writers, I can't read pitches & proposals or discuss stories. My job is to find artists only. I'm not venting, just trying to head off any potential confusion. Don't want people pitching me when they shouldn't be. Hope that helps. As for submissions, there will be news coming from Marvel next week on that front.
Ultimately, it's the editors who hire the writers & artists. They choose the talent on their books. Disturbing but eye-opening fact: No writer or artist has been hired through a cold submission mailed into Marvel in recent memory.
Upon intense review, we discovered that almost all new talent hired by Marvel over the past five years has come through "word-of-mouth". Sorry if some folks don't like what I'm saying here, but it's the honest truth. It's not as easy to break into comics as people think.
We've put A LOT of thought into our talent discovery and hiring processes recently. We WANT to find more talent. It's in our best interest. But sometimes this old adage is still the most apt: "The best way to get published by Marvel and DC is to get published elsewhere first."
So the best thing to do is try to get published somewhere. Even if it's self-pubishing. Let your work speak for itself.
