Dissecting a Pitch
What all goes into crafting a comic book pitch? Here's a perspective from a colorist.
It’s really easy to forget projects that didn’t get off the ground. The ones that barely make it past a scribbled thought can evaporate the quickest. Yet, somehow, even the projects that took significant time and dedication can dissolve into the background. A couple of weeks ago,
and I exhumed the remains of a project, Tenka, that we collaborated on. I took the opportunity to create a breakdown of how the project came together over on Patreon. (It’s free to read!)After sharing the project breakdown, it struck me that I haven’t discussed the work that goes into a pitch. I think I do a great job of telegraphing a creative life hidden under a rock. While I stress the importance of community, I do a lot of my work alone. However, solitude isn’t a universal truth in my work, and I’m not just a wizard pulling levers, making stuff fall out.
Pitches are a huge part of the comics industry. I’ve had a handful of them I’ve spearheaded. From DinoBoy & Rex, to Unstoppable Ivy, to horror submissions, I’ve had irons in the fire that didn’t exactly pan out. Periodically, I have been involved in the pitch process without being the project lead, and Tenka was one of those projects. Written by Austin Hamblin, Tenka was just one of his numerous pitches and projects. My involvement was simple: color it.
By the time Austin even approached me, he had already written the draft, and had locked in an artist, Dan Lauer, who took on penciling and inking. I was growing my Twitch audience at that time, Austin and I agreed that coloring this short pitch would be great content. I had it easy. I could take these pages and put them in front of my audience and color, meanwhile, Austin was being a project manager.
If you flash back to 2021, you might remember living in your first full year of working from home. Maybe an N95 mask had finally become as easy to wear as glasses? Perhaps you’d found yourself perfecting social distancing, and you were hungry for content. I felt trapped in my house and desperate for human contact. With events dried up, I needed an outlet I could leverage to keep my career churning along. Twitch wasn’t my favorite thing, but it was useful in a time when we all wanted to connect more than anything. Coloring Tenka proved to be a pathway to a steady audience.
One of the hardest parts of pitching a project is landing on a sturdy enough concept. Sometimes you know there’s an open anthology, or maybe you find a good industry contact and want to take a swing. Either way, you need to have a good idea, which is rare. Austin put effort and hope in this script, and built a team he trusted to take his thoughts and bring them to life. He stayed on top of an illustrator, a colorist, a letterer, and a graphic designer just to ensure we had an attractive product in the end.
Project management can be a pain, especially when you’re working on something with a small or nonexistent budget. If you're submitting to an anthology, deadlines can be tight. Sometimes you only have a month to get a pitch together. If you’re in touch with an editor at a publisher, you often need to craft meaningful deadlines that line up with your relevancy and the timing of your relationship. It’s tricky. Sometimes, like when I took DinoBoy & Rex to Comic Book Hour, you’ve got a tight, dedicated team, and ample time. Other times, it can be chaotic. Austin patiently steered the Tenka ship filled with five working professionals, and he managed to keep us all updated and excited for what we were working on.
I’ve buried the lead long enough. Tenka was a pitch for a comic that took themes from stories like Conan The Barbarian and blended them with high technology while staying perfectly pulpy. Tenka, the character, was the daughter of a vicious warlord, Pentar, who had been trapped in a sword she now wielded. Tenka was kitted out with cybernetics and armor, and was set to go on a quest against demons and magic to save her mother, while learning more about her father. The pitch featured Pentar’s final conquest before becoming imprisoned in the sword.
Coloring a comic isn’t just coloring, though. The goal of a good colorist is to design a color palette that encapsulates the mood of the story, the personalities of the characters, and catches the attention of the reader. Because the Tenka is a pulp story, and because Dan’s artwork presented a gritty world, I wanted to keep most of the world muted, worn, and a bit drab. But, the pitch contained plenty of magic and blood. With a violent story like this, I thought the blood ought to shine and force more color into the world. Furthermore, a muted world would be radicalized by magic that pulled from neon and extreme color palettes. I wanted contrast and grit, and I think I nailed it. Sure, I had a blast coloring for an interested audience, but I never lost sight of the goals I’d set for myself.
As much as I love running a project, there was a lot of freedom and creativity in interpreting another artist’s work, comparing it to the script, and creating a path forward. One of the most rewarding parts of the process was seeing the logo come together from the designer,
. Travis had a similar task in interpreting Dan’s inks, but he also had to lean on my colors, and create a logo that would grab your eye and hold you. I think he nailed it. Travis pulled so much grit in the general logo, and pulled influence from my take on magic that it felt like we had the logo the whole time.
Who knows what Austin was managing on the back end. I can’t even guess what it must have felt like to see all the parts come together. I know when I got colors back on Champions I was always amazed. It felt like a whole new project in the very best way. It’s unfortunate that Tenka made its way to the cutting room floor. Cancellation can happen at any point in a creative project. I have half finished scripts, unnamed rejected pitches with finished artwork, and folders of concepts that just won’t go anywhere. Like I said, project management is a pain. Although Tenka didn’t take off, the project was managed well. I think everyone involved was excited for those few weeks we pounded it out, and that’s meaningful.
Without further ado, here it is, Tenka:
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