Comic Book Contests

By Sean Kleefeld | Tuesday, February 27, 2007 2 comments
I'm generally not keen on touting my own horn, but I'd like to take a moment to show off my comic "wins" from the past few years. As I've repeatedly stated, I like the whole comics medium and I'm always thrilled to have the opportunity to try new things. What surprises me is that more fans don't seem to enter these contests...

Oh, there are plenty of comic-related contests I haven't won! Dark Horse has run been running one a month for the past few months, CBR had its famous Comic Book Idol, Newsarama recently interviewed the winner of Atomic Comics' Marvel Editor-in-Chief For A Day Contest, MarvelMasterworks.com seems to have something running all the time... I even hosted one based on last year's Who Wants To Be A Superhero? television show.

I complained some time back about there not being more comic contests out there, but the truth appears that the contests are out there, but people just aren't participating in large numbers. (Which, on a purely selfish level, I'm thankful for!) Is that a marketing issue? Do people simply not know about these contests? Or are the prizes really so uninteresting that people don't care to enter? I'd prefer to think the former, but I'm not always the best judge of these things.

Either way, it strikes me as a business failure to some degree. Either the person running the contest hasn't properly marketed the contest (and, therefore, his/her own backing of said contest) or they've failed to read their market sufficiently to provide an appropriate and warranted prize. Maybe we need more MBAs in the comic industry.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to come up with something for my latest entry for Patriot Factor.
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2 comments:

Spencer Carnage said...

Damn, Sean. Those are some nice winnings. I really like the frankenstein drawing. Wanna help me with pitching a 24 issue maxi-series to Marvel for Hypno-hustler? Its gonna be awesome.

3:35 PM, February 27, 2007

That was my particularly clever bit for that contest. The idea was to make a new monster using bits and pieces from characters already in the book, right? So I actually took scans from the comics and pieced them together in Photoshop. I made my "Made Man" by using pieces literally from the comic art itself. All of that wonderful brushwork is Mark Wheatley's!

And my Sin City entry? I took a photo of Bruce Willis, pumped up the contrast in Photoshop, and traced the whole thing in Illustrator.

I appreciate the offer, but I am not the man you want drawing anything for a pitch to Marvel!

5:09 PM, February 27, 2007

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