HOW A COMIC

ARTIST CAN MARKET

THEMSELVES
AND GROW THEIR
AUDIENCE.

BY
JASON THIBAULT

Optimum Wound Comics

This was originally a to-do list
that I wrote for myself. I was trying to think of as
many things that I could do as an artist to expand
my reach and get the word out there. Some were
stupid so I immediately omitted them and tried to
chisel this list down to only the good stuff.
This isn’t meant to distract you from your goal of
becoming an uber successful comic book artist. I
understand that you need to dedicate the bulk of
your time to your craft and comic pages take long
enough to finish as it is. Believe me, I sometimes
wish there were 100 hours to a day.
But sometimes you’ll hit roadblocks. Other times
you’ll hit seemingly endless plateaus where
progress seems to elude you for months. This list is
meant to shake things up and get you to exercise
the rest of your creative muscles.
I’ve personally already followed some of these
suggestions. Others I’ve just begun to take steps on
and then there’s the rest which I’m eagerly trying
to clear up the time to get to.
Somewhere down the line I’ll expand some of these
suggestions into full blown articles of their own.
Please feel free to add more of your own ideas
in the comments section. We’re all here to help
each other. When you step outside of comics what
creative endeavours do you get up to?
A few things to note:
way to becoming a pop artist and your little comic
drawing is now potentially a much more valuable
piece of art. Now go improve on that and make 20
more.
If you really take to painting or creating larger
works then you may be able to get in on a group
show and eventually your own show. Head out once
in a while to a gallery show in your town and talk
to the artists and the gallery owners. There’s a lot
of coffee shops, bars and restaurants that want
art on their walls. Some give you the lion’s share
of the commission as you’re decorating their place
for free. You get extra points for making your work
topical and perhaps even ironic.
2. In all seriousness there’s a lot of examples of
comic artists who went from comics into successful
painting careers. And some who still continue to do
both. Artists don’t necessarily like to be confined
to a box (or panel as it were) and wnat to stretch
their legs and work on bigger canvases. So join a
night-time painting class or go for drop-in sessions
at local studios and get some life drawing sessions
in. Studios will often charge a day fee so that the
cost of the model’s time and space is covered. You
should be able to create in any medium once you
show up. If you want to master pen and ink, go to
the studio and draw directly in pen and ink.
These experiences will add new depth to your
drawing style.

1. Drawing styles are all over the map. Some draw

in a simple and loose cartoony fashion while others
tend to render highly realistic illustrations. Not
every suggestion below will apply to every creator
but there’s still a lot of room for artistic freedom.

2. In order to be successful in any field you’re going

to have to hustle. Opportunities don’t often fall into
your lap so you’re going to have to get out there
and make things happen. You don’t need to be
pushy but you’ll have to be very outgoing.

3. This is all a lot of work. There’s no easy

solutions. To become a master of anthing you need
to put in your ten thousand hours.

23 ways for a comic artist to

hustle, survive and thrive in
any economy
1. Draw big - I mean really big like 24″x24″ or
36″x36″. Try painting onto a board or canvas with
acrylics. Maybe even take a painting class at a local
college or art studio. Congrats, now you’re on your © Copyright Kent Williams.

Optimum Wound Comics

 Artist Glenn Barr
illustrated the
astounding Brooklyn
Dreams for DC Comics’
Pirannah Press. Glenn
later found huge success
as a painter in the “low
brow” art movement
made popular by
Juxtapoz magazine.

Optimum Wound Comics

Artist Kent Williams came from a fine art and illustration background. He illustrated the Wolverine /
Havok miniseries with John J. Muth for Marvel Comics. More recently we worked on Darren Aronofsky’s
The Fountain graphic novel for DC / Vertigo. His large oil paintings command tall dollars.

3. Test out some t-shirt designs - print 50. It’ll some knowledge about color seperations to do
cost you a few hundred and at worst you’ll have 50 more elaborate prints or you’ll have to enlist the aid
people running around town with your artwork on of the shop itself for an hourly fee. Be careful about
their chest. The image doesn’t have to be from your those hourly fees.
comic book either. It could simply be a fantastic
design. Now you’re accessible to the other 99.5% of
the population that doesn’t read comics.

Some artists have found great success in

merchandising. Webcomic creators make a good
portion of their income from t-shirts and there’s no
reason why you couldn’t make some extra cake this
way either.

4. Make screen prints of your best artwork.

Not the cheaper 500-1000 offset poster runs. I’m
talking about the quality hand-pulled silk-screen
prints that you’d sell in limited quantities. Out of
the potentially dozens of screenprint shops in your
area there should be a few willing to print on larger
surfaces. 18″ x 24″ is a standard size for a print but
I have a collection that runs the gamut from huge
to long and thin. If you provide your own paper Screenprinting process. Check out a video of Wes
stock to the printer you can get quite creative with Winship from Burlesque design rock a ridiculously
ink color choices and even paper colors. You’ll need intricate Aaron Horkey screenprint.

Optimum Wound Comics

You can also just have one-color black on white
prints done on nice quality paper and then hand-
color them with inks, watercolors or acrylic paints.
That would make a series of highly unique prints.
Go to GigPosters.com to see the best of the best
show off their prints and posters.
And while you’re at it, run off some of those
aforementioned cheaper offset posters to give away
at conventions. People may even ask you to sign
them. You might be able to get away with selling
them for a few bucks. Especially if you tell people
it’s to raise funds to print a book.
“In order to be successful in any field
you’re going to have to hustle.”
5. Learn some software already. It’s almost
2010. Get a member ship at Lynda.com. 25 bucks
a month. Can’t afford it? You can’t afford 5 latte’s
a month? You’ll be able to get on top of Photoshop,
Indesign and Illustrator. Web design as well. If
you’ve already figured out anatomy, perspective,
backgrounds learning software is a snap in
comparison. You’ve spent 20 years drawing. Adobe
Creative Suite will only take you a couple more to
master.
6. Get your own website and stop relying on
MySpace and Facebook so much. What’s going
to happen when all of the kids leave for the next
coolest thing? You’ll still have your website, that’s
what. If you think Facebook and Twitter will still
be a major play in 3 years you’ll be in for a rude
awakening. To save money in the beginning you can
used shared hosting at a company like DreamHost
or AN Hosting. I’ve used both and can recommend
them. Others’ opinions may differ.
You can get one up and running pretty quickly by
using Wordpress. If you find the learning curve too
steep you can hire someone to build it or have one
of your more tech-savvy friends take a shot at it.
7. Get traffic to come to your website. Just
having a website is not enough anymore. You need
people to find it and then your fan base will need
a reason to keep returning. Here’s a good resource
page by Jack Humphrey for getting traffic to your
site.
Optimum Wound Comics
8. Social Networks part 1. On the other hand if
you’ve still resisted joining these social networks
GET ON IT!!! 200 million people are on Facebook,
half as many are left on MySpace and millions join
Twitter each month. It’s where all of your fans are.
Don’t be dropping that, “I don’t have time” crap on
me either. You don’t have time NOT TO. Join some
Facebook groups in your niche, follow some peers
on twitter, post some videos on YouTube or Vimeo.
Wade in slowly and get a feel for it.
9. Social Networks part 2. And contribute to
these networks. Don’t get on there and be all
me me me. Yes you can promote but don’t be
proposing marriage on the first date. Be helpful. Be
useful. Read the Seven Deadly Sins of Social Media
as a primer on this.
10. Is your comic online? No? Well then stop
reading this right now and go get it online. There’s
individual webcomics online that have the same
visibility (alexa ranking) and traffic as the entire
Dark Horse Comics website. The really successful
ones tend to update everyday and it’s not just gag
comics about videogames anymore. Any subject
that you can think of has a webcomic to accompany
it. And yes, it’s an amazing amount of work to keep
these running like a well-oiled machine. But it can
pay off big time.
You can either post your webcomic on a network
like Webcomics Nation or Zuda or you can learn
how to host your own webcomic.
11. Make some custom skateboard paintings.
You know ink sticks to wood right? What’s a blank
skateboard run, 20-30 bucks? Coat that sucker
in white and then drop on some artwork. Acrylic
paint works just fine. Kudos to you, you’re now the
Adam Turman is a very skilled artist who first caught my eye with his killer ink work. This is a custom
skatedeck that he painted. Here’s an online store filled with decks featuring his graphics.

coolest artist on the block and your customized
skate deck looks pretty darn sexy hanging up on a
wall. Now go make 12 more.
12. Music / art plan part 1. You’re an artist so
you probably listen to a lot of music. And there’s
probably some local bands in town that play on a
regular basis. You might even like some of them.
They need posters and flyers to advertise their
shows. If you manage to drag yourself away from
your studio and drawing table, truck on down to
those shows and approach them in person. Give

Artist Derek Hess used to book shows for the Euclid Tavern in Cleveland,  Ohio back in the early 1990’s. In
order to pull in more people to the shows he turned to his own artistic skills and drew flyers. Within a few years
he was creating and designing posters and prints for international acts along with magazine covers, album jack-
ets and t-shirts. Axel Alonso at Marvel Comics eventually engaged him to draw the three covers for the Captain
America: Dead Man Running mini-series knowing that Hess was a huge fan of Cap.

Optimum Wound Comics

‘em some photocopies of your recent work. Tell
them you’d like to help out. Yes for free.
13. Music / art plan part 2. Most bands use
a local poster distributor (a dude who pastes
up flyers on phone poles and walls in various
neighborhoods). Excellent, now your work will be
seen all over town. Those posters will be gone
within a week or two, so keep making new ones for
promoters and bands every month. Oh yeah, keep
all of the originals and a few copies of each of the
flyers. When you’re famous those will make a nice
collection for an artbook ten years down the road.
14. Music / art plan part 3. Keep this up and
eventually you’ll be a local underground celebrity
artist. Eventually people will contact you for paying
work on CD covers (those still exist?) and t-shirts.
And a lot of bands are starting to sell silk-screened
prints at their merch tables now. I’ve picked up half
a dozen prints over the past few years at shows.
This harkens back to the 1960’s and the Summer of
Love.
15. Music / art plan part 4. If you have mad
design skills make posters in Illustrator or InDesign
for bands to distribute on the interwebs.
Optimum Wound Comics
16. Make minicomics. Do you have 12-16 pages
of your comic ready to go? Good, now get them
scanned in and format a minicomic booklet in
Adobe Acrobat or lay it out by hand. An 8.5″ x
11″ page folded in half will do but if you want to
go super small, you can do 4.25″ x 5.5″. Make
1-200 of those at Kinkos or any local copy shop.
Ask to borrow their heavy duty stapler. Don’t
wait until you get home, get folding and stapling
right at the shop. Good, now you have a couple of
hundred comics to distribute. The mini-mini-comics
(4.25×5.5ers) are the coolest business cards in
the world. You engage the person you’ve handed it
to in an interactive reading experience. Make sure
your website address is listed on the back. Some
comic shops might even sell them on consignment
although the financial rewards will be limited.
The Comics Reporter has a good primer on putting
together a minicomic. And so does Caption.Org.
17. Submit your comics to the smaller
publishers. Bummed that Marvel, Dark Horse and
DC don’t agree that you’re the next hottest thing
yet? There’s over 5 dozen other publishers that will
still look at your samples and as luck would have
it, I have a complete list of those comic and manga
submission guidelines for you.
Comic artists as diverse as Daniel
Clowes and Todd McFarlane have
been hired to create CD covers
and album jackets for bands of
varying levels of success. The
connection between the music
and comic scenes has been an
ongoing relationship since the
1960’s.
 19. Join some comic forums. Remember
those old message boards and forums that were
supposedly dead? Well they aren’t and thousands of
people still post on them every day. There are still
a lot of worthy communities out there to engage in
conversations with. Comic writers like Warren Ellis
and Brian Michael Bendis have their own forums.
Message boards get a bad rap and some of the more
fanatical ones deserve it but there’s a lot of great
conversations to be had on Digital Webbing, CBR,
Whitechapel and ConceptArt.

“People love original

art. You can sell it and
possibly give some
away at contests.”
20. Be original. I know it’s a cliche but if you’re
an artist you probably have something unique to
express. I mean nobody really wants to see your
take on Spiderman or Batman. We’ve been reading
re-hashed storylines for the past 30 years. Odds are
yours won’t be any better. Give us something new.
We’re thirsting for it. Comic store owners and the
comic industry are very resistant to change.
Check out this video on making a minicomic that But when you’re starting out, you don’t need
stands out. And here’s the blog that details that them. Start a comic online. Blow our minds on a
process. regular basis and we’ll keep coming back for more.
We’ll subscribe to your RSS feed and we’ll tell our
18. Try out  print-on-demand (POD) sites like friends. And post it on blogs, tweet it, talk about it
Lulu and Ka-Blam who will print up low runs of your on forums, bookmark it. If enough of us dig it (or
comic for a fraction of the cost of what a traditional digg it) then you’ll print it (or a publisher will) and
printer would run you. And the quality of their books we’ll head to the shops and buy it or order it from
are getting better each year. This accomplishes a Amazon.
few things for you. You get a complete package to
present to an audience without fronting thousands 21. Draw by hand on paper. Are you using Manga
of dollars. And you get to see your work in printed Studio, Adobe Illustrator or a wacom tablet to draw
form which will enable you to make improvements all of your comics? Maybe you should consider
immediately based on things you’re not happy with. doing some of that art with pen, ink, pencil, paint,
whatever. You’ve read my post on reasons to draw
with pen and ink haven’t you? People love original
art. You can sell it and possibly give some away at
contests.

22. Hold Contests. Speaking of which you should

hold contests on your webpage. We’ve had really
positive results from running contests in the past.
You can do it in a blog post, tweet it, run it in your
newsletter or throw it up on Facebook. If you want
to appeal solely to your fans you can have them
do something in return to promote you in order for
them to be eligible to win the prize. Skies the limit
on this one.

Optimum Wound Comics

23. Hit up conventions. You could experiment
with smaller local ones at first. Unless local for
you means San Diego, Toronto, Chicago or New
York. Reserve a table at artist alley. Then you’re at
ground zero. If you don’t feel comfortable renting a
table just yet at least get out to a con and observe
other artist’s tables and booths. Take note of which
displays and companies impressed you as an
attendant. Or just take pictures.

If you do rent a table, EXCELLENT. Make sure to

read 7 Tips for a Winning Tradeshow Booth. Engage
in conversations with comic and art fans. Don’t be
too much of a salesman. Find out what they’re into.
Conventions, especially larger ones give you a feel
for the health and pulse of the industry. We’ll be Jason Thibault is a writer, artist and the
attending FanExpo 2009 in Toronto on August 28-
publisher for Optimum Wound Comics.
30.
He recently wrote a widely read article entitled
This is by no means a definitive list but it’s a start The Comic and Manga Submission Guidelines
and I’m sure I’ll post a part 2 in the near future. for every publisher in North America and the UK
We didn’t discuss doing illustrations for local papers who still accept creator submissions.
and magazines. And we didn’t discuss Flickr or
Deviantart. Let’s do that soon.

Optimum Wound Comics