Sector 13 is putting together its plans for next year. We have at least three titles slated for release next year, we'll be publishing
details of the others shortly but are starting with, ‘GOTHIC’.
‘GOTHIC,’ will be an A4, square bound, comic that we expect to contain a mix of B&W and colour art. The aim is to produce something that
reflects the girls’ comics of the past, especially the dark stories found in Misty. But written for the grown-up readers of those comics today.
We will be making small, ‘token’ payments for first publication rights, copyright will remain with the writers and artists.
WRITERS
We want stories that will have the same appeal to the grown-up women (and men) who as girls (and boys) loved Judy, Spellbound or Misty
etc.
We want ‘GOTHIC’ to be female-oriented, and, if possible, feature a, mainly, female team of writers.
We’re looking at stories with exclusively female protagonists. But that reflect the multiple genres popular in the girl’s comics of the
past.
A school story would be very welcome, or a tale of doomed romance. Hauntings, evil aunts/uncles/schoolteachers are all fair game. Maybe even
a monster story or some heroic fantasy so long as they have gothic overtones. I'd like to cover horror (not gorefests), dark romantic fantasy and straight romances as well as stories in the style of
early Gothic novels, Castle of Otranto, The Monk etc.
There are no restrictions on storytelling techniques, so long as sequential illustration is involved. That goes from wordless comics to
heavily illustrated prose stories. Just so long as the pictures are essential to the telling of story.
Submissions can be in any form at this stage. We’re happy to read a synopsis, or a full script, or even chat about an idea you
have.
No comic writing experience is required. We love collaborating with people who have good story ideas but have not written a comic before. If
that means some teamwork to turn their tale into a format suitable for comics, so much the better. There is nothing we enjoy quite as much.
If you want to try and put a full comic strip together, and are not sure how to start, we have a Word template for a script format we can
send you. Just ask.
Stories can be up to 10 pages, if you have something that would be longer, have a word with us but we’ll only be accepting one story of
greater length. Avoid double page spreads, we’ll be publishing square-bound and I hate how that distorts the artwork, and assume your story will be starting on a right hand page when you consider big
reveals or surprises in your script (always better to have those on a page following a page-turn.
We’d prefer you to use Microsoft Word for your submissions, if you send a pdf, we just have to copy it to word anyway, but that’s not a
deal-breaker in any way.
Most of all, have some fun! Any questions, contact us at admin@sector13comics.co.uk.
Deadline for completed scripts, December 24th, 2024, but the earlier the better.
ARTISTS
As with the writers, we will be giving preference to female artists for GOTHIC. Please send samples of sequential art (some comics pages,
basically) to admin@sector13comics.co.uk. Let us know a little about any previous publications you have had and any genres you are interested in. If you are someone who would like to try their hand
at comics for the first time, please feel free to contact us and we may have a suitable sample script to send to you to try out.
We’ll look at any styles, including Manga, but be aware that’s something we’ve very little experience of and we don’t want GOTHIC to be
dominated by it.
COVER ARTISTS
We have a pretty clear idea of what we want for a cover, and already have a few people who we will be contacting to see if they are
interested, but please feel free to submit examples of your work and ideas. We’re looking towards, brooding romantic images. Probably painted, probably featuring a redhead named Oonagh (she is our
host for the comic), an Irish version of Misty.
Samples to admin@sector13comics.co.uk, ASAP.
No AI art. Sample art taken from Freepik and will not be included in the comic. We were shocked at just how much how much selecting 'no AI'
reduced the number of images available.
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