Oni Press has announced that it will be holding its talent search at the San Diego Comic Con on July 22nd – 27th, as well as through the mail until August 15th!

In lieu of portfolio reviews, Oni has instructed prospective artists to illustrate at least one of the following five-page scripts (links to the scripts embedded below):

- A supernatural comedy titled Our Hero by Philip Gelatt, writer of Labor Days, and Indiana Jones Adventures.

- An espionage thriller titled Cold City by Antony Johnson, writer of Wasteland and the Dead Space video game series.

- A western drama titled Medicine Show by Frank Beaton, writer of various short stories appearing in This is a Souvenir, Outlaw Territory, 24/Seven and others.

Prospective artists should schedule an appointment with an Oni editor to ensure they will be reviewed, and should also bring 8.5″ x 11″ photocopies of both the penciled and inked art for Oni to keep as reference. And for heaven’s sake, make sure you have your name, e-mail, and phone number on not just your manila envelope, but on every single page as well!

Also, if you’re not able to attend the convention, you should send all the stuff mentioned above to:

ONI PRESS TALENT SEARCH 2009
1305 SE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Suite A
Portland, OR 97214

If you have any questions, you should send an e-mail to talentsearch@onipress.com. If not, you should hear from an editor in three to six months on your work!

Curious about the new Kate Beckinsale film, based on the Greg Rucka/Steve Lieber book by Oni Press?

Time to get more curious.

[Link via TrailerHQ]

Whoops – According to Greg Rucka himself (and pointed out below), this isn’t the trailer. At his blog, Rucka writes: “There’s a Whiteout trailer that’s apparently making the rounds at the moment. It is not the official movie trailer, but rather the teaser that WB put together for San Diego the year before last. It’s not bad, but it’s not the trailer.”

The trailer, according to Rucka, will be in front of the film Orphan.

At least, that’s what the arbiters of hotness at Rolling Stone think. In the magazine’s annual “The Hot List” issue, the magazine names Scott Pilgrim as the “Hot Graphic Novel” for 2009, thanks to the upcoming big screen adaptation starring Michael Cera. Pick up the mag for more information. You can’t miss it; it features a very Nancy Spungen-looking Lady Gaga and a hot pink background. Seriously. You can take a look at it after the jump.

(more…)

Ain’t It Cool News’ Pitdoc checked out the Licensing Show in Las Vegas this week, and came back with some nice comic book movie posters, including this one of the Michael Cera action-comedy Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, due out in 2010:

If you click on the above link, you can see that Scott Pilgrim isn’t the only poster they have, however: there are also some teaser posters for Marvel’s lineup of superhero films in 2010 through 2012, such as Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America, and the Avengers.

Portland comics artist Joëlle Jones and writer Jamie Rich will be unveiling work from their new graphic novel You Have Killed Me throughout the month of June at the Art Institute of Portland Gallery.

For those who don’t know them, Jones has worked at Vertigo on Fables and Minx on Token, while Rich — formerly the EiC of Oni Press — has written four prose novels, including Cut My Hair, I Was Someone Dead, and the Everlasting. You Have Killed Me is set to be released by Oni Press in July.

The exhibit, titled “Comic Noir: The Art of Joëlle Jones,” will beging June 4th through the 30th, from 9am-6pm Monday through Thursday, 9am-4pm Friday, and 9am-2pm Saturday. On June 4th from 6-8pm, Jones and Rich will be on hand to discuss their creative process.

…For help for T-shirt quotes.

Over on his Twitter feed, Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O’Malley has enlisted fans to help out with some merchandising for the Oni Press hit:

radiomaruHelp me out today: Tell me your favourite lines/bits/characters from Scott Pilgrim for the purposes of t-shirts/buttons/ephemera.3 minutes ago from web

Rama readers, I’ve never seen you back down from a challenge yet — any advice for the creator? Scott Pilgrim’s star is only on the rise, as a feature film starring Michael Cera, “Human Torch” Chris Evans, and “Superman” Brandon Routh is due out in 2010.

[Image via CHUD]

The thing about comics-to-film adaptations is that sculpting the story is a balancing act in and of itself.

When you have heavy-hitting franchise characters like Spider-Man or Batman, just to give some examples, the story becomes easier — all you have to do is take some key ingredients (Spider-Man, Doc Ock, some of the supporting characters) and tell the best darn story you can. But what do you do when its a limited series? Many of these adaptations basically become something akin to staged readings, a la Watchmen, with only the most minor of tweaks to make the story fit into two hours.

Well, it’s looking like Scott Pilgrim is getting (hopefully) the best of both worlds, according to Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Twitter feed, in which — in addition to noting that Lisa Miller, Knives Chau’s dad, and the fight at Honest Ed’s have been cut due to time constraints — he reports:

None of Vol 6 is in the movie. Note that I haven’t finished writing it yet, but they’re already making a movie. Their ending is their ending

He later goes on to report that he has made his plans known, but either party can zig to the other’s zag. And to be honest, I think that’s a really good choice — I don’t think that a different ending by Edgar Wright would necessarily hurt the indie sensation, and one of the appeals in comic book films (at least to me) is to see these cinematic creators’ looks at my favorite properties. What say you, Rama readers?

Edgar Wright, the director of Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, has posted several great photos from his upcoming Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, on his website. Take a peek at this tantalizing pic of Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Ramona Flowers, the object of the title character’s affections:

Plenty of coolness abounds at the blog, including a look at Scott’s rivals, the band The Clash At Demonhead (love that name) and star Michael Cera in costume as Scott Pilgrim.

Like everyone else who is a fan of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim graphic novels, I have high hopes for the movie. Edgar Wright knows how to make a good popcorn flick, and he’s put together a hell of a cast. I’m especially interested in watching Cera’s performance. He can be a great comedic performer, as evidenced by his breakout role as George Michael Bluth on Arrested Development. (I’ve always thought that Cera had the toughest role on the series, as he had to get laughs almost solely through reacting to his castmates’ antics. His character wasn’t written to be as broadly goofy as David Cross’s or Will Arnett’s respective characters, for example.) But he seems to stick with playing the same character in every role he’s had since then, especially in Juno, Superbad and Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, where he was essentially playing George Michael with different names in each film. And judging from the trailers for the upcoming Year One, it doesn’t look like that trend will be ending anytime soon. He really needs to prove his acting range goes beyond sensitive and perpetually exasperated before the backlash and career flameout begin.

The adaptation of the Oni Press book Billy Smoke has a director, the Hollywood Reporter says.

Jeffrey Nachmanoff, who wrote and directed the Don Cheadle vehicle Traitor, has signed up to helm the film. Matthew Fox (the screamer from Lost) is set to star in the film, while Oni’s Peter Schwerin is set to executive produce.

Billy Smoke, created by B. Clay Moore and Eric Kim, is the story of a hitman who is nearly killed during a botched job. His pathway to redemption? Rid the world of all other assassins.

First Second’s editorial director, Mark Siegel, has drawn a pretty witty graphic review of Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe for the webcomic Unshelved, which has been linked over on the company’s web site.

I’d show more on this post, but your head might explode because of how fun this review is, especially as it is in the style of Bryan Lee O’Malley himself. But click here to see what Siegel and the First Second crew had to say.

[Image and permission courtesy of Mark Siegel]

Looking for your Salt Water Taffy fix? Oni says: look to the web.

While creator Matthew Loux is hard at work on the third print volume of Salt Water Taffy, Jack and Benny will have a new home on the World Wide Web. The creator plans to write a new online strip every other week until the third volume is released.

“When I was working on The Truth About Dr. True, Salt Water Taffy v3, Jack and Benny kept wanting to go on side trips, and I realized they would make great comic strip characters,” said Loux in a written statement. “The Salt Water Taffy website creates a place for me to tell more of their adventures in a new format.”

You can check out the comic’s web site by clicking here.

A friend gave me a copy of Labor Days way back in those dark days before NYCC, and I finally got the spare time to actually read it.

And I loved it.

It reads like Lucky Number Slevin meets Clerks and then has a whirlwind affair with Marxist theory and every cheesy spy movie you ever saw. It winks at everything from hip music to celebrities to communists, and allows you to laugh

It has sassy writing, unique art, a wicked sense of humor, uber-geeky theorist references combined with foul-mouthed sex jokes. In other words, almost everything I love.

Labor Days is the story of Bags, a ne’er-do-well who stumbles into the middle of a mess over a videotape that every revolutionary group in the world wants a piece of, and each time it appears that he’s going to get out of trouble, he finds himself falling in deeper.

Philip Gelatt and Rick Lacy mock all the revolutionaries–from communists to radical feminists to super-jingo-American-spies–but does so with an understanding that they aren’t going to accomplish anything but at least they’re true believers. The real bad guy is the one who stomps on all their dreams, even if those dreams were outlandish and silly.

And, well, this quote speaks for itself:

“It’ll be all the chicks, beer, and revolution I can handle. And at least some of the chicks and beer you can handle.”

Buy it. Read it. Laugh. Then wait for Volume 2.

Howdy, folks!

Sorry about the delay between my first column and this one. I probably would have written sooner, but every time I get an idea for a new column, I find yet another person writing eloquently about the same material. In the meantime, the hard working people of WHOOPs (the World Headquarters Of Oni Press) attended the New York Comic-Con, which was a fantastic show. While in NYC, I presented my “How NOT to Break into Comics” panel (along with the talented Jonathan Hickman) and attended several panels focusing on the ins and outs of trying to get and sustain work in the comics industry.

Seems like every comic book reader wants to be a comic book creator. I once heard a professional comic writer say, “There are no comic fans… just people who want my job.” I always thought it was just a funny little glib statement, but it sure seems accurate these days.

The simple fact is that not all comic readers are going to be able to work professionally. The reality is that not everyone has the talent, skill, or professionalism required to succeed in this industry.

If you are reading this column, I can assume you have some passing interest in working in comics. So you have to ask yourself, are you the William Hung of aspiring comic book professionals?

That may sound like an odd question, but one of the things that has never ceased to amaze me when looking at portfolios and submissions is the hazy cloud of self-delusion that so many aspiring creators seem to be living in. At least 95% of all pitches I look at SUCK. I mean, they are instantly laughably bad. I am not trying to be cruel here, but if this column can help wake up aspiring creators to this fact, then it may help people achieve their dreams.

There is often a great deal of passion in these projects, but just because you are passionate, doesn’t mean you are good or that the material is marketable as an artistic or commercial endeavor. The problem is that people get so caught up in their passion and enthusiasm that they never step back and honestly evaluate their work. Who knows? It may be that people simply can’t be honest about their own work. Sure, you may show your work to your mom or friends, but they aren’t necessarily going to be giving you the most constructive criticism.

This is the William Hung problem. I am sure Mr. Hung thinks his singing is fantastic. He probably thought he had an honest shot at succeeding on American Idol. But the guy was absolutely delusional. Everything about his tryout was so horrifically bad. So bad that he became a nationally-known phenomenon. Yet the guy was earnest and genuinely gave it a try.

I applaud anybody working hard at achieving their dreams, but you have to be able to honestly evaluate if you are on the right track to reaching your professional goals.

What has been said time and time again to artists is that you should hold your work up to something currently being published and ask yourself, “Is my work as good or better than what I am looking at?” Does it look as good? Is it as professionally finished? How does my page construction and panel layouts compare to the quality work I respect and admire? How is the storytelling and narrative flow?

Being a comic book professional requires constantly honing your craft. If you want a long career, you will need to constantly be improving on your skills in the pursuit of excellence.

A few years back, somebody scanned and posted the critique Alex Toth gave Steve Rude. Here was one comic great critiquing another. Steve Rude was already an established working professional who has obviously had a successful career. Yet he solicited Toth’s criticism, and boy did he get it. The validity or merit of Toth’s critique isn’t as important as the fact that Rude was wise enough to understand the value of genuinely constructive honest criticism.

Everybody should give it a read.

Interesting side note:
When I first saw the clips of William Hung, I thought there was something seriously wrong with the guy. But after looking at his Wikipedia page, it turns out he is actually pretty darn intelligent. He immigrated to America when he was 10 years old and eventually ended up at the University of California, Berkley where he was an engineering student. Since his appearance on American Idol, he has released four CDs, been in numerous commercials and television shows.

But the question you need to ask is, do you want to be remembered as the terribly delusional guy everybody laughed at or do you want to be respected as a valued and viable creator in this creative industry?

As I always say, working in comics requires three basic things: talent, professionalism, and persistence. I should add perspective to the list. If you don’t have an honest perspective of your work, then odds are you aren’t going to be able to cut it professionally.

In our next column, we’ll be looking at the subject of pitching the appropriate material to the appropriate publisher and how people can be just as delusional about the subject matter that they are excited about.

In the mean time, if you have any questions or suggestions for future columns, please post them in the comments section.

Until then, never stop trying.  The world needs more art, more stories, and more talented voices.

Randal C. Jarrell

Managing Editor

www.onipress.com

Howdy, folks!

Welcome to Sequential Parts, my new column here at Blog@Newsarama!

My name is Randal C. Jarrell and I am the Managing Editor of Oni Press, an independent comic book publisher based out of Portland, OR. Oni Press was established in 1997 with an emphasis on publishing creator-owned works. We have published over 200 graphic novels and trade paperbacks from almost every genre and for every age group. My job at Oni Press brings me in contact with every aspect of the business of comic book production.  In a nutshell, I work at the intersection of creative development, commerce, and logistics. I am regularly involved in portfolio reviews, conventions, appearances, looking for talent, approving pitches, reading scripts, scanning art, digital production and clean up, prepress, and whatever other stages are involved in getting a project completed, printed, and distributed. The fact that I have worked in virtually every aspect of comic book production gives me a relatively rare perspective on many elements to this business.

In this series of columns, I hope to educate some readers about the behind-the-scenes aspects of the comics industry. I’d like this to be an informative and educational resource for anybody aspiring to work in comics. Even if you don’t have any desire to work in comics, I would hope what I intend to write will give you an added sense of appreciation for the books you read and all the hard work that goes into nurturing a project from a simple idea all the way to a physical copy of a book you can hold in your hands.

The first few columns will focus on some of the topics I cover in a series of panels I give at comic conventions called How Not to Break Into Comics. These panel discussions focus less on the how to’s and more on all the goofy mistakes people make when pitching comics or trying to get work in this industry.

For our initial column, I’d like to address one of the biggest mistakes new talent often make when pitching comics – being overly ambitious in your pitch format.

I would say that on average, we receive about a thousand pitches a year for new projects. Most of these pitches are coming from creators who we do not have any publishing history with us and the vast majority of those are from people with no publishing history at all.

When you are new and trying to break in, your best bet is to start small. Don’t pitch a 70-issue space epic. NOBODY is going to green light such a mammoth project until you have become a proven commodity that can be trusted to meet the strenuous deadlines involved with an ongoing series. It would be idiotic for any publisher to green light such an ambitious undertaking from an unproven creator.

Bryan Lee O’Malley would be a good example for this. Bryan is most known for his Scott Pilgrim series of original graphic novels. But if this had been the first thing he had come to us with, we probably wouldn’t have approved the project. Bryan’s first project with us was some inking on the second arc of Queen & Country. He then illustrated a 4-issue Hopeless Savages miniseries. After performing admirably and professionally on these two projects, Bryan then pitched Lost at Sea, his first original graphic novel that he would also write. It was after Lost at Sea that he pitched us the 6-volume Scott Pilgrim series. As you can see, each project got a bit more ambitious but he started small and his ability was both proven and strengthened at every step of the way.

We once got a 250 page pitch from an unpublished writer. 250 pages of pitch material. This was going to be the creator’s sci-fi space-viking magnum opus. The pitch had detailed histories of alien species, schematics from spaceships, excerpts from “historical” documents, and page after page after page of star charts.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to create such a large epic. It probably just won’t be your first project out of the gate. Start small. Do some shorts in anthologies. Produce a mini-comic or two. Pitch a miniseries or an original graphic novel. Heck… if you want, pitch it so that if your miniseries does gangbusters, it can be the first volume in your multi-volume epic. Everyone has to start somewhere and if you start small, each of these little projects can help build up your resume. Then, when it comes time to publishing your epic, you will hopefully have a proven track record and a built-in fan base to buy, read, and appreciate your work. That is something every publisher is looking for.

And on the theme of starting small… that’s all I have for you today.

Till next time,

Randal C. Jarrell

I’M THE GODDAM MANAGING EDITOR.

www.onipress.com

If you are going to be at the New York Comic-Con, come visit me at my panel:

How Not To Break Into Comics

Saturday, February 7^th – Panel Room 10 (1A21) – 11:00am-12:00pm

There have been countless articles and panels on how to break into comics, but very few on how not to. Come join Randal C. Jarrell (Managing Editor at Oni Press) and other industry insiders as we discuss the common and often hilarious mistakes people often make when trying to pitch or get work in the comics industry. This unique inside perspective will help any prospective creator learn how to navigate the potential pitfalls that doom far too many in their attempts to break in to comics. If you want to work in comics, you do not want to miss this panel!

Or at least that’s what it seems like, with its latest blitz of marketing.

The publisher of Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe has released its schedule from now till New York Comic Con, and it looks massive. So what’s going on with Oni?

Perhaps we should start with the event that the publisher seems to be circling around: February 4th, also known as the release date for Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe Vol. 5. For those not in the know, here’s the solicit for the new book:

SCOTT PILGRIM VOLUME 5: SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE UNIVERSE
by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Scott Pilgrim is at the top of his game: he just turned 24, he moved in with the girl of his dreams, and he defeated at least half of The League of Ramona’s Evil Exes. But life at the top is treacherous and if things can’t possibly get any better for Scott, it means they can only get infinitely worse! Scott’s band is in total turmoil, his own exes have all boarded the train to crazy town, and Ramona’s evil exes have started appearing in pairs! And what’s up with Ramona, anyway? She’s been acting kinda weird ever since she and Scott moved in together. It’s the second-to-last volume of the Scott Pilgrim series and it looks like Scott’s precious little life has come back around to bite him in the butt!

On Tuesday, February 3rd, Pilgrim writer Bryan Lee O’Malley will be hitting the People’s Improv Theatre in NYC from 8-10pm to join the Comic Book Club! He will be discussing the release of Pilgrim Vol. 5 and, knowing the classy boys of the Comic Book Club, any number of hilariously weird sexual neuroses. (I kid because I love.)

Following that, he’ll be travelling to Jim Hanley’s Universe off 34th Street to promote the book at its Midnight Release Party. The next day, meanwhile, at 7pm, O’Malley will hit Brooklyn’s Rocketship Comics for an additional signing.

Apparently, the first printing has a foil cover, and if you hit any of the New York events, you can get a limited edition Obi wrap as well as a “I Scott NY” t-shirt. (They don’t know what that statement means, either.)

But wait! What about the Comic Con itself? Well, the Oni people have given us a schedule for that, as well. Here’s the skinny for the publisher’s panels:

Saturday, 11:00-12:00 in room 1A21: How Not to Break into Comics
There have been countless articles and panels on how to break into comics, but very few on how not to. Come join Randal C. Jarrell (Managing Editor at Oni Press) and other industry insiders as they discuss the common and often hilarious mistakes people make when trying to break into the industry.

Sunday, 2:45 PM-3:45 PM in Kids Zone 3: Pillaging History For Story Ideas
Pirates, ninjas, gunslingers, and knights – history is packed with events, characters, and settings that you can use to make your own original stories! All you need is to know whereto look. Chris Schweizer (The Crogan Adventures) will help you will help you learn how to take real history and use it to make the types of stories that you want to tell.

Sunday, 1:30 PM-2:30 PM in room 1A14: Scott Pilgrim vs. The Panel!
Bryan Lee O’Malley (winner of the Doug Wright, Joe Shuster, and Harvey Awards) sits down with NYCC to discuss his ground-breaking, slice-of-life series Scott Pilgrim. From its genesis to the NYCC release of volume five, O’Malley speaks frankly about where Scott Pilgrim came from and where the series is going from here. With moderation by Douglas Wolk and a fan Q&A to close the discussion, this is a must see event of NYCC 2009!

In addition, at Oni’s booth, the following creators will be in attendance for signing: Bryan Lee O’Malley (Scott Pilgrim), J. Torres (Love as a Foreign Language, Scandalous), Eric Kim (Love as a Foreign Language), John Layman (Stephen Colbert’s Tek Jansen), Matt Loux (Salt Water Taffy, Sidescrollers), Philip Gelatt (Labor Days), Rick Lacy (Labor Days), Ray Fawkes (The Apocalipstix), Cameron Stewart (The Apocalipstix), Rick Spears (Black Metal), Ross Campbell (Wet Moon), TJ Kirsch (Uncle Slam Fights Back), Vasilis Lolos (The Last Call), Chris Schweizer (The Crogan Adventures), Cullen Bunn (The Damned), Ryan Kelly (Local), and Greg Rucka (Queen & Country, Whiteout).

Finally — what better way to end a post than with Scott Pilgrim Cubees? If you like ‘em, check out Oni Press or Cubeecraft.

Ain’t It Cool News is reporting that Chris Evans, who played Johnny Storm in those unfortunate Fantastic Four films, has been cast in Edgar Wright’s live-action Scott Pilgrim vs. The World movie (based, of course, on the awesome Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O’Malley and published by Oni Press). Evans will play Lucas Lee, one of Ramona Flowers’ evil ex-boyfriends and rival to Scott Pilgrim (as played by Michael Cera, who’s finally playing a character that isn’t basically George Michael Bluth).

And don’t forget, Scott Pilgrim vol. 5: Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe is set for a February 18th release. Start saving your pennies.

Kieran Culkin, last seen in Igby Goes Down, will be playing Wallace Wells in the film adaptation of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, according to HitFlix.

Wallace, Scott’s roommate, acts a responsible foil for the titular character during his quest for battle seven evil ex-boyfriends for the heart of his lady love.

While there is no set date for the adaptation of the Bryan Lee O’Malley book yet, it has been confirmed that the role of Scott will be played by Superbad’s Michael Cera.

While we showed you a poster for the upcoming film last month, there has been little word on the film adaptation of Greg Rucka’s Whiteout… until now.

Filmofilia has posted some photos from Warner Bros. showing Kate Beckinsale as U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko, the lone American law enforcement officer in Antarctica.

Whiteout is about Stetko’s struggles as three days before her resignation, a body is found under the ice, drawing her into the first murder mystery of Antarctica. The film, set to be released Sept. 11, 2009, also stars The Spirit‘s Gabriel Macht.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen anything about Dominic Sena’s adaptation of Whiteout, based on the 1998 Oni Press miniseries by Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber. The shifting release date has made it slip off the radar, I guess.

But now ShockTillYouDrop.com has the movie’s international poster, which apparently popped up at Comic-Con. Now Warner Bros. has released it officially, and I like it. Well, except for the font.

Whiteout, which stars Kate Beckinsale and Gabriel Macht, is set to open on Sept. 11, 2009.