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To Be Continued #7 "Breaking In, Part III." For the past two weeks, I've been telling you how unlikely it is that anyone new will break into comics, ever. Well, my prescription finally came in and the ointment seems to be clearing the rash right up. This may make for a slightly more upbeat reading experience this time out. We'll see. Last time I was telling you why your cold pitch, however brilliant, will never get you hired. Today I thought I'd share with you a few real life examples of how some people broke in. Once you see the common thread among them, you'll have a better idea of what you should be doing. Okay, that was kind of a lie. What I'm really going to do is string together some loosely-connected anecdotes, using the promise of secrets to be revealed to keep you reading to the end. This is not unlike how, during sweeps month, local news shows run promos all day that tell you "something in your house could be killing you! Details at 11:00." This drives me crazy. If it could kill me, why not tell me now? It's just not right. So just in case I'm already boring you and you want to log off, or maybe surf over to one of those creepy sites of Anna Kournikova bending over to pick up tennis balls (she's 16 years old for Christ's sake. Unless you're also 16, there's really no excuse but I'm not your mother. Do what you want) I'll cut to the chase. Secret #1: The only way you're going to get your stuff read by a real person who can hire you, is to know that person. Secret #2: You have to get incredibly lucky. Secret #3: You have to be useful. Everything else I'm going to tell you today is simply an amplification of these bold-faced truisms. I broke into comics when an acquaintance of mine, colorist supreme Greg Wright, was trying to sell his first story (as a writer) to the late Mark Gruenwald. Mark, who bought more first stories than anybody I can think of, was actually looking to break in some new talent on short stories for Solo Avengers. Greg had been trying to sell him stuff for a couple of weeks but hadn't quite nailed it yet (actually, Greg was doing fine but didn't like working alone, at the time). Knowing that I had some professional sales in other media and that I was a big-ol' comic book nerd, Greg invited me to collaborate with him. It sounded like fun, so I did. We worked up three pitches and Mark bought two of them (I re-read them before writing this column and let me just say, Mark was very kind to do so). Paul Neary pencilled one of them and Jackson Guice the other, so they ended up looking like real comics. This, I thought, is both fun and easy. I decided I waned to do some more. In the meantime, I took a job at Marvel as an assistant editor. Lacking even the smallest bit of knowledge about the business, I decided that, since no one was going to fire a long-time pro to give me a writing job (I was right, see DeFalco's Law, next week) I should make up a new book that nobody else was writing yet (I was incredibly, monumentally wrong, for reasons I'll explain shortly). I typed up a pitch for "Damage Control, A Sitcom Set In The Marvel Universe" and gave it Greg, for him to give to somebody or other. This is easily the stupidest plan I've ever had that didn't involve contracts with Time/Warner. Nevertheless, three or four days later, Editor-In-Chief Tom DeFalco came down the hall to see me. I had learned very little in my few days as a Marvel employee but I had learned this: Tom coming to talk to me was never good news. "Yeah," Tom said, a copy of my proposal rolled-up and crumpled in his fist. "This weird thing you pitched? I guess we're gonna do it.". Simple, huh? I sure was. Here's some of the important things I didn't know when I pitched Marvel: Marvel rarely buys new series ideas, even from established pros. Marvel never buys new series ideas from an unpublished writer who hasn't even demonstrated that he can write a whole issue, much less a new series. What I'd attempted to do was flat-out impossible, except for the random confluence of a bunch of events that I was totally unaware of, at the time. My pitch just happened to appeal to Mark Gruenwald's continuity-minded sensibilities. He had likewise just happened to talk to Tom about how I seemed a promising new writer. Future Damage Control editor Sid Jacobson had just happened to mention that he wanted to edit a Marvel Universe book but that he wanted to do something funny. If my pitch had come a week earlier, or a week later, or if I had pitched something else, no go. Not a chance. My story illustrates all of the factors necessary to break in. I knew somebody, so I could get my stuff read. I was lucky, in that I pitched the right thing at the right time. And finally, I fulfilled an editorial need. This last one will be the main topic next week but the short version is this; the absolute best way to get a job in comics is to happen to walk by the room when the editor desperately needs somebody to do a job right now. I call this the Lobdell factor. Scott Lobdell owes all of his early Marvel assignments to an adamantine tenaciousness combined with his relentless dedication to the proposition that, if he hung around the office long enough and kept asking, somebody would eventually need a fill-in. I think he used to sleep over. Anyway, Scott has parlayed these humble beginnings into an extremely successful career. Well, I'm running long, so my planned stories about how Sam Keith, Ivan Velez, Jr. and a couple of other pros broke in (in Chriscross' case, he literally broke in) will have to wait until next week. Until then, this is To Be Continued...
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