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My big proposal to DC Comics

Started by howardhallis,

54 posts in this topic

howardhallis

howardhallis

Posted
Posted

THE LONG STORY...

 

For the last few years I've been working at animation studio Klasky Csupo, maintaining their corporate and kid friendly websites as well as their music labels and web store. Unfortunately, with Rugrats and Wild Thornberrys no longer in production, I went from 7 days a week to one day a week sending out a newsletter. With a new wife wanting to start a family, this hasn't been cutting it.

 

Besides occasional sales of my artwork and comic books on eBay, freelance work has been my bread and butter for the last few years... But I need another full time job, and getting good work in Los Angeles has been really tough. I've been actively searching, sending out about 10 resumes a day, Monday thru Friday. It's been slow and I feel really discouraged, so when my friend Brendan McCarthy hired me to help with his DC comic earlier this year, I was overjoyed.

 

As some of you around here know, I did digital coloring and special effects on Solo #12, Brendan's issue of the award winning DC title. It was great, and while we were working on it, Brendan asked me what I really wanted to do with my life.

 

My absolute dream... the thing I would want most in the world... would be a job in comics. Especially at the big 2.

 

Yeah yeah. I know. Reality check. I've seen the mile long lines for portfolio reviews at conventions, and my artwork isn't nearly good enough to cut it...

 

Still, with Solo #12 being out as well as a little write up on my Custom Strange Tales covers in Alter Ego Magazine this month, my visibility in the medium has never been better. I figured I could get a proposal to the right people about an idea I had to put the DC Comic Book Archives online... and just maybe... Maybe... if they liked what they saw... they would hire me to help out.

 

Images of moving to New York City to work at DC rushed through my head. But I was realistic. Big corporations have no love for the little guy.

 

I worked for almost a month on a kick azz proposal for DC Comics. I created a full color 16 page booklet detailing how people would be able to download and read a comic on their computer for $1.00 each, sort of like I-Tunes. With Brendan's help, I got 4 of these booklets into the hands of Mark Chiarello, Dan DiDio, Paul Levitz, and Richard Bruning (head of DC Online). Not bad for a nobody like me.

 

For the last month I heard nothing. Last week Brendan called Mark and asked if he got what I sent him. Mark said yes, but that I would have to contact Richard Bruning if anything was to happen with it. I wrote Richard an e-mail last Friday and waited. Today I got the form letter response...

 

Dear Howard - thank you for sharing your enthusiasm to offer DC's rich history online. We appreciate the feedback and understand your interest in wanting to see this material more readily available. But, at this time, we are not accepting proposals for online projects.

 

As I'm sure you can imagine, we already have a number of online programs in development and hope to begin launching these in the new year. We also receive countless marketing proposals from the outside which tend to mirror our own efforts to get this material online for readers to enjoy.

 

That said, we wish you the best of luck on your future projects.

 

Sincerely,

Richard

 

I know this letter. This is the letter Klasky Csupo made me send out to all the kids who wanted us to look at their Rugrats scripts, or to see their ideas for new cartoons. It's the letter that says "Thanks, but you can go eat a heaping pile of you-know-what because we cannot legally consider any proposal you submit for fear that you would sue us later for stealing it if we decided to do something similar."

 

Oh well. Maybe this was karma.

 

There go my dreams of moving to NYC to work in the comics industry. Guess I should have seen this coming.

 

Anyway, because I worked so darn hard getting it together, I figured I would post the proposal here on these boards for all to see. So if DC does decide to do something like this some day, you'll know where you saw it first.

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