You've Got Talent - And We Want To See It

We get a lot of submissions here at Time Bomb, certainly a lot more than a small-time Brit Indie publisher could expect to receive, but in the last couple of weeks our submissions inbox has been more than usually busy. We love to get submissions, and we're always looking for new creators, but the level of interest we suddenly seemed to be getting seemed to warrant further investigation. I mean, we're small, there's maybe a handful of guys in the outside of Blighty who have read any of our books but suddenly we're getting emails from New Jersey, Delaware, Florida, Cuba, China - everywhere. So I do a bit of digging and I come across this website which explains it all.

Personally, it's great that we're listed on this site and I'm delighted that on the site illo (reproduced above) that our easily identifiable logo is sat just to the left of the one from Marvel Comics. It's the closest we'll ever get to level pegging with the Bullpen! But professionally I'm delighted that Jason Thibault has spent what must be hours collating a one-stop resource for anybody wanting to submit their work to a comics publisher. Lone reader, visit this site and bookmark it!

So that explained the surge in emails, but what was baffling was that on the site Time Bomb's submission guidelines are clearly laid out but a lot of the potential creators contacting us, invariably due to being listed on this site, weren't actually following the guidelines that were set! I've left a comment on Jason's site adressing this very thing but it's worth repeating here:

"Guys, whether you’re writers, artists, colorists, letterers or the whole package please make sure you actually follow the submission guidelines for whatever company you’re submitting to. Time Bomb’s are quite simple: 5 sequential pages of script or art. That’s it. So a couple of unrelated splash pages, or 2 comic pages, or a resume? No, we don’t want that. A link to a website is fine, but when we get there we want to see something close to those 5 sequential pages.

"Time Bomb are tiny at the moment, and we’re always looking for new creators that we can publish, but I’m guessing that if we’re not getting submissions in the format we want, then neither are the other, bigger publishers. So please, make sure you adopt a professional approach from the start and tailor your first pitch exactly to the specs given."

But I still love to receive submissions. So much so that Time Bomb are undertaking it's first official talent search at the upcoming SPExpo in May. I've sent a press release to the major UK comic news sites regarding this so keep an eye out, but I'm hoping we'll find some great creators at the show to develop future projects with. Certainly if you're an aspiring creator and you're reading this, please come along to our table at SPExpo with some samples of your work or contact us through submissions@timebombcomics.com as Time Bomb would love to see what you can do.

SPExpo, Sisterhood, Censorship

Since Hi-Ex there's been more fall-out announced by the Diamond threshold revisions, with the monthly Harker book from Ariel Press being pulled after the first issue. This was one of the gems of last year's BICS and it's a great shame that this title won't get the wider notice it really deserves, but the plans to release the intended six-issue storyline as a trade further down the line is a silver lining on that particular cloud. Good luck, chaps!

Despite the Diamond hiccup work continues at Time Bomb Comics and we hope to secure future listings in the Previews catalogue. So much so, this week The Sisterhood:Morningstar has been sent off to Andy Martin at Diamond UK for scrutiny and hopefully approval. Irregardless of how successful that is, we're now looking forward to the Bristol SPExpo where this one-shot will be officially launched. This is shaping up to be quite an event and, for something that was put together in the wake of the downsizing of the the main Expo, is rapidly becoming the more interesting of the two. Just take a look at the SPExpo website for the incredible amount of exhibitors that will be there. And I reckon that despite the Main Expo being at the Bristol Ramada over the full weekend, the one-day SPExpo at the Mercure around the corner will be the place to be on the Saturday 9th May.

Other news, and one project on the horizon is Primetime, which has been briefly mentioned here before. The art on this one is by Paul Thompson - another new find - and Paul has been steadily working on the story for a few months now. Primetime is a fast paced crime caper in a futuristic city where televised entertainment is the be all and end all, and should be one of our early 2010 releases.

Also due 2010 is a follow-up to Dick Turpin and the Restless Dead, this time featuring everyone's favourite highwayman battling vampires in the heart of eighteenth-century London. I'm in the middle of scripting this one at the moment, but the Dick Turpin and the Crimson Plague one-shot is proving as much fun to write as the first Turpin story - and works perfectly well as both as a stand-alone and a sequel. Needless to say Andy Dodd will again be the artist on this one, and we should have a teaser piece ready for October's BICS.

Finally to get serious for a moment, please click over to the excellent Comic Shop Voice website which has been instrumental in forming the Comic Book Alliance in response to how the proposed Government Coroners Bill could have an effect on comics. Please read the excellent article on the Comic Shop Voice homepage and please then add your name to the online petition.

Hi-Ex Hi-Jinks

Time Bomb Comics has been looking forward to the Hi-Ex 2009 convention since last year's Bristol Expo when we were sat at the opposite table from Richmond Clements and Vicky Stonebridge who somehow organise Hi-Ex along with being part of the Futurequake team and holding down day jobs. Our enthusiastic confirmation that we would attend the next show, followed by an equally enthusiastic payment to secure an exhibitor's table was only mildly tempered by the realisation of where the Inverness home of Hi-Ex actually is.

From Time Bomb Central in Leicester it's A Long Way - Inverness sits at a point in Northern Scotland where you imagine there's not much of anything further up, excepting remote wilderness, snow and extremely doughty Scots - so the prospect of a 10 hour train journey was not something either Suzanne or myself were looking forward to. Luckily it turned out we could fly up there from Birmingham airport for £30 cheaper and 8 and a half hours shorter so that was the far more sensible option. As it was our flight was delayed due to Inverness airport being closed by a sudden and unexpected blizzard but we still arrived in Inverness on a crisp Thursday afternoon safe in the knowledge that had we had laid ourselves at the mercy of the rail network we'd be just passing through Newcastle. If we were lucky.

With Hi-Ex taking place over the weekend, we had some time to have a good look around. Inverness itself is best described as small but bustling, but the main attraction must be the infamous Loch Ness. Friday afternoon was spent on a small motor-boat chugging up the centre of the Loch, and although we didn't see any monsters the atmospheric nature of the Loch made me understand why some people do. With Nessie in mind we also visited what is known as "The Monster Centre" which was sold to us as Scotland's best-rated attraction to do with the Loch Ness legend. I'd love to meet who rated it this way as it really was an appalling waste of time, just a series of dark connected rooms that play poor quality screen projections. That the gift shop is bigger than the "attraction" itself speaks volumes, that the gift shop doesn't contain any books, pamphlets, guides or even comics about the monster legend or indeed anything else speaks even more.

The touristy bit done, we could now look forward to Hi-Ex. We'd been following the Hi-Ex website closely and were aware that some of th high-profile guests had dropped out, so it was great to arrive at the Eden Court venue and find a healthy mix of publishers, small-pressers and dealers nonetheless. Along with ourselves Futurequake were there, as well as Murky Depths, Semiotic Cohesion, Cinebooks, Omnivistascope and Renegade Entertainment - a real mix! As with the BICS event last year, this time the Hi-Ex was split across the two sides of the venue, with all the artists and workshops being at the other end to us. This meant that at times the dealer's room was empty of visitors, but this was invariably followed by a mini-rush between the workshops, signings and panels as people looked for other things to do. (Overall I'm not sure if splitting the event like that worked - as with BICS there was a feeling that some visitors were not fully aware of where everything was - and hopefully this will be something Rich and Vicky will look at for future shows. Certainly the size of the dealers room and the wide corridor outside of it could easily have accommodated the creators who were in the other half of the venue.)

For us it was great to introduce Time Bomb Comics to a whole new audience, and our table did a healthy trade through the weekend - our previews of The Sisterhood generated a fair bit of interest which bodes well for the book's official launch this coming May at Bristol. We'd decided to do a special deal for Hi-Ex, with a copy of each of the three one-shots and a signed Dick Turpin poster for £10 and this seemed to go down very well with maybe three quarters of our sales coming from this deal, so we'll probably be repeating that at Bristol too.

The lulls in footfall meant that there was more time for the exhibitors themselves to have a look around, and a great feeling of cameraderie developed amongst us that spilled into the evenings as the creators and exhibitors all got together in the hotel bar, usually in a great big circle, and just got to know each other. I ended up next to Al Davison, someone who I'd seen at every convention I've been to but never had an opportunity to speak to, and had a thoroughly engaging and fascinating discussion with him about his comics career - including some juicy titbits about the forthcoming Doctor Who monthly comic he's working on with Tony Lee. As well as getting to know Al I spent time catching up with Terry from Murky Depths, and letting Alex know from Renegade Entertainment that their "new talent" artist Rudy Nebres had actually been working in comics a fair few years before most of us. It was also good to meet Gary from Heroes For Sale, Inverness' sole comic shop who bought a big pile of Time Bomb Comics to sell on to his customers and therefore revealed himself to be a thoroughly decent chap!

Of course, no UK convention these days seems complete without Stormtroopers and it was good to see the 501st Garrison out in force again. There's something about these guys that just puts everyone in a good mood, and they really added to the atmosphere of the weekend - especially when frog-marching a young lad out of the building for making disparaging remarks about Darth Vader! There were also big smiles when Judge Rosie arrived - the cutest of 4 year olds in a Mega City Judge outfit, the home-made pudding bowl helmet the icing on the cake!


It was also great to see a real mix of people at the show. Apart from the expected comics fans there were families with children who thought it would be a fun day out (they were right, it was!) and smatterings of folk who really never knew comics existed as they do and seemed to be happily amazed that comics are much more than DC Thomson, 2000AD and Viz. Encouragingly, one phrase we heard a lot from visitors to the show was "this is my first comics convention but it won't be my last!"

However, the real stars of the event were Rich and Vicky who spent the weekend racing around making sure everything was as it should be, making us all feel very welcome and continually thanking us for making the trip North.

The pleasure really was all ours, guys.

A Welcome Haven

It's been a mixed time of it since my assessment of the Diamond situation last week. The bad news we received was that Diamond will not now be distributing Dick Turpin due to inital orders falling short of those pesky revised thresholds. Obviously a big disappointment for us, but half-expected. Diamond UK are keen for us to continue submitting all our future one-shots so the door is not closed, but for the time being we may need to give it a bit of a shove.

At the same time we've been taken on by Haven Distribution, who for many are being hailed as the saviour to all those publisher's unable to get a Diamond deal. It's great they want to take us on, but it's no secret that they're a much smaller operation and with that not as all-encompassing as Diamond are. That said, they seen very enthusiastic to support the smaller publishers and have found themselves in the eye of the storm in the last couple of weeks, so hopefully everybody will benefit. For us, it means we get some Time Bomb prescence State-side, which is very good news. I've also directly sold 20 copies each of Dick Turpin and Ragamuffins off to a New Jersey based comic shop who sells mostly online, so it proves that if the Diamond Highway is closed to new traffic then the journey can still be completed on the B-roads!

Other better news: The Sisterhood:Morningstar is currently being printed up, and I should receive them back in time to pack some into my Hi-Ex flight bag come Thursday. The online preview is up on myebook and has already had a fair few viewings (as can you if you follow this link) and we've had some good online coverage of it already. The official launch date in May at the SPExpo seems a way off, but it's great to have something completed so far in advance for a change!

Time Bomb are also receiving a fair few submissions at the moment, which bodes well. Some are showing a lot of promise, so hopefully before too long we'll be making some official announcements, but to me it's great that other creators are seeing Time Bomb Comics as a viable means of showcasing their work and that we're steadily moving to a publishing schedule that's a good mixture of different talents. It's also a good feeling that not only are all our 2009 publishing slots full but our 2010 and 2011 slots are filling up too!

However that's still a long way off. The immediate focus now is Hi-Ex taking place next weekend, where we introduce Time Bomb Comics to Scotland, we get our first feedback on The Sisterhood and I introduce Suzanne to the delights of haggis and deep fried Mars bars!

Three Steps Forward One Step Back

I've been following the unfolding story on some of the comics news sites of Diamond's decision to increase publisher thresholds. The thresholds are the minimum sales numbers a book must achieve through Diamond for them to agree to distribute it. More importantly these numbers equate to the profit margins that Diamond are looking to achieve on each comic and book sold through Previews. Needless to say this move has caused uproar in certain quarters of the comics community but here's my opinion of it all.


First of all, irregardless of how much this decision makes it that more difficult for smaller comic publishers including Time Bomb Comics to achieve wider distribution, I can wholly understand the business decisions where Diamond is coming from on this. Diamond do NOT have an obligation to stock every comic book under the sun. They're a distribution business, they only need to stock product they think they can sell and make a return from - just like any other distribution business the world over. If a distrubutor has a product that's not shifting the required units for it to make the costs involved in that distribution viable then they will no longer stock that product. Period.


Secondly there seems to be a general wave of anger with the comments on the various news sites that Diamond are killing off the small press with this announcement. That, somehow, it's Diamond's fault that the indie press may be squeezed out of business. Sorry guys, but Diamond aren't the big bad here. If any fingers should be pointed it's to the comics buyers who only read Marvel/DC, the retailers who only stock the mainstream, the shops who over-order just to get those variants which can be sold at a ridiculously inflated price. You see, it's a lot of us that's to blame here, for not supporting publishers who really needed it or even giving them a chance. Case in point, there's many comments on the varoius comics news forums that go something along the lines of "I really support the little guys but I never buy any of their books" which to me perfectly illustrates one of the big hurdles that the little guys have to jump, often fail to, and are now likely to be taken out of the race as a result.


That said, we indie publishers are a tenacious lot. Unlike the big guys, a lot of us really aren't in it for the money but just because we love the comics medium. So, alternatives will be found whether it's smaller distributors like Haven or (here in the UK) Smallzone, embracing more fully e-books and the opportunities they bring, Amazon listings, e-commerce or building up a base of friendly retailers with which to deal with direct. The only major drawback is the sheer global coverage that Diamond provides as a one-stop-shop will be removed if an indie book doesn't get that all-important Diamond listing in the first place.

Time Bomb Comics are looking at this whole situation with a three steps forward and one step back attitude, which I think is the best stance to take and which seems to be how a lot of our fellow publishers are approaching it. We have projects slated for 2009 and 2010 that will be completed and published whether or not Diamond feel we make the grade, so although it's no guarantee we'll be listed in Previews again we're going to be putting out quality one-shots no matter what.

Not a bad thing, surely?

HI-EX on the Horizon

Time Bomb Comics' convention circuit is getting off to an early start this year with the Inverness Hi-Ex show on the weekend of 14th February. This is Hi-Ex's 2nd year and the first Hi-Ex gained instant notoriety not just because it was a great addition to the UK convention calender but also because it was snowed in following a very heavy Highland downfall! To be honest, the idea of being trapped in a convention centre for days with only 1000's of comics and their creators doesn't seem too bad a thing to me - but I'm not really sure how those variant covers would taste once the food ran out.

We had hoped to attend the first show but the logistics just didn't work out so we're delighted that we'll be there this time around. Our attendance involves a first for us - the first convention we've flown to, the 2 hour Birmingham/Inverness flight time much more attractive than the 9 and a half hours it would take by train. There's also been a great deal of thought given to how much we can bring with us, what with the luggage restrictions you get with flights, although I'm looking forward to travelling light with only 2 bags rather than the usual 5 that somehow are essential for those more Southern shows. We've also decided to leave our funky roll up banner behind - it was either that or no fresh clothes for four days.

Andy can't make it to Hi-Ex (it's much too far for him to travel without a carer) but both Suzanne and myself are getting very excited about it for a couple of reasons. Probably the main one is that it will be the first time most comic fans in Scotland will be able to sample our wares as I suspect not that many take the lengthy journey to Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds or anywhere else which has become the convention mainstays of recent years. So unlike the latter shows where we pitch up with one new one-shot as well as the previous releases, all three of our one-shots will be brand-new to a lot of the Hi-Ex crowd.

That's right - three one-shots - as we'll be using Hi-Ex to present some advance copies of The Sisterhood:Morningstar, fresh from the printer but hopefully not still wet. To be honest it was touch and go if we'd manage this, but Dan's finished the artwork and next weekend will be coming down to Time Bomb Central in Leicester to make sure that everything is set to print. The official launch won't be until May for this one - at the SPExpo in Bristol no less - but I'm really keen to be able to bring Hi-Ex a Time Bomb Comics mini-exclusive as well as getting some advance feedback about the book that we can hopefully use in our main launch.

To me, it's a key element to bring something new to each convention we appear at. Whether it's a new one-shot, merchandise or the brand in itself I'm a great believer in added value and when I'm taking in a convention as a comics fan - even if it's those quick 10 minutes away from the Time Bomb Comics table - I always get a big kick out of seeing what new stuff the other exhibitors have this time around. If it's the same old stuff as last year, then I'm disappointed.

The other thing I'm looking forward to at Hi-Ex is the fact that it's not as huge as the other shows just yet, so there's a chance I can meet some of the other exhibitors and guests that will be there. Sometimes the big shows can be overwhelming, the smaller events tend to have a tighter focus and usually everyone is slightly more relaxed about things. Two people who I'm suspecting won't be that relaxed are Richmond and Vicky, Hi-Ex's organisers, who will no doubt be displaying that manic stare and rictus grin over the two days that all con-runners seem to get due to putting anything like this together being no easy task.

But apart from them I'm expecting a pretty chilled vibe - and not just from the snow outside.

Fathering The Sisterhood

Over the past few months there's been a few mentions of The Sisterhood on these pages. Now that publication of this latest one-shot is imminent it seemed a good time to give you an idea of what it's all about. Firstly, here's a few lines from the initial premise put together in November 2007:

In the far future the Church is all. Not since the middle ages has the domination of church over state been more manifest, but in this future the church rules on an interplanetary scale, system after system bound by rigid dogma – a dogma as convoluted and contradictory as the different belief systems that it has adopted into one.

The Church’s rule is absolute, but it is also ruthless. Anyone and everything that does not conform is branded undesirable and is marked for conversion. Anyone and everything that opposes conversion faces one thing – annihilation.

The church has many agents, but along with it’s popes, cardinals, bishops and priests is another faction that are feared by those even at the higher echelons of the church itself.

They are the Nuns of the church, women with the appointed the task of maintaining the proscribed faith and ruthlessly destroying any who would dare to oppose the church and its teachings.

They are The Sisterhood.

Or to put it another way: Space Nuns with Big Guns. The concept came after meeting with Dan Barritt at the 2007 Thoughbubble, deciding I wanted to work on a one-shot with him, and then coming up with an idea that seemed to suit his art style. The Sisterhood seemed ideal for that, Dan's manga-inspired artwork deserved showcasing with a story that could feature some of the elements so associated with that: science-fiction, action heroines, and hardware.

Following the original premise Dan and I spent a couple of months bouncing designs back and forth, locking down the look of the character's and the world they inhabit. This was a rewarding experience, the creative wellspring had just been tapped and the concepts and ideas gushed forth, not all of them useful and one or two pretty useless. I'll admit the useless ideas were mine. What was more exciting though was how the concept continued to evolve, the initial storyline I'd developed transmogrifying into something that really drove home how collaborative comics are.

I usually work on a comic script in sections. There's couple of reasons for this. Firstly I personally hate decompressed comics and the feeling that a 5 page story has been stretched out to 20 for no great reason, so I work on each six pages as a mini-episode in itself. This means that during those pages the story has developed somewhat and given me a focus to really tighten the dialogue and to lose any flab. By the end of page six there has to have been some development to carry the story forward into the next six, and so on. The second reason is that if something goes horribly wrong and I need to re-write or re-work a script substantially, scripting in smaller segments seems to allow me to fix things without too much of a headache. It's also useful to find out what the artist thinks as we go along as in some cases the story changes in the latter stages because of the feedback from the earlier stages.

The Sisterhood is a case in point, with a conclusion springing from some comments Dan made after receiving the first few pages of script that only enhanced what we'd already planned. The story road remained the same, but now there seemed some more interesting things to look at along the journey. Of course it didn't end there, at each stage of The Sisterhood's completion Dan and I would swap suggestions to fine-tune what we had, right through to the finished art stage. It's a great way to work and a true synthesis with writer and artist, creating comics as a collaborative process which is what they always should be.

Pending any last minute disaster The Sisterhood will be heading for the printers in February, and with the distinction of being Time Bomb's first full-colour comic. At the moment we're hoping we'll have some preview copies available for Hi-Ex but if not will be available through our online shop shortly.