GUN HONEY Comic Artist
Job Description
Hard Case Crime is a labor-of-love project from creators Charles Ardai and Max Phillips to revive the look and feel of the classic pulp crime novels of the 1940s and 50s. Launched 22 years ago on the tiniest of shoestring budgets (we still don't have much!), we've published authors like Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, Mickey Spillane and Brian De Palma alongside the work of world-famous artists such as Robert McGinnis, Drew Struzan, Adam Hughes and Bill Sienkiewicz. A decade ago we kicked off an experiment with Hard Case Crime Comics, adding graphic storytelling to our traditional novels, and five years ago we published what has become our most popular comic ever: GUN HONEY, the story of a beautiful weapons expert named Joanna Tan who will get you the weapon you need, where you need it, when you need it, no matter how impossible. A spinoff series titled HEAT SEEKER has also proved popular, and we're working on a second spinoff series as we speak.
Next year we are planning to launch a new 4-issue comic book miniseries set in the GUN HONEY universe and very much in the same spirit: sexy, action-packed, with all the excitement of a great crime movie in the action/thriller vein.
We are looking for an artist who draws realistically rather than in a cartoony style and in particular loves drawing beautiful women (sometimes dressed, sometimes not; this is a comic meant for adult readers and does feature nudity), as well as thrilling suspense scenes in exciting international settings -- something like a James Bond or Mission Impossible movie, only with beautiful women rather than handsome men in all the main roles. We're open to hearing from artists at all levels of experience, but you should be able to show us examples of comic book pages you've laid out and drawn, with strong sequential storytelling skills, since you'll have to translate the page breakdowns in our scripts into comic book pages that are dynamic, fun, and clear/easy to follow. (Being able to draw a gorgeous single-panel page or cover isn't the same as figuring out how to lay out five or six or seven panels on a page in a way that leads the reader's eye from event to event so that everything both makes sense and also makes the reader's heart race!)
This probably goes without saying, but we only want to hear from artists who do not use A.I. in their work.
In terms of timing, we're ideally hoping to find an artist who can produce four 22-page issues back to back at a steady pace of about 45 days per issue, starting sometime in the fall. That's a total of 6 months to complete the four issues, which sounds like a lot of time, but when you break it down, it's basically a page every two days, and that's a pace not every artist can manage while still producing top-quality work. We're looking for someone who can pull that off. (If you need more than 45 days/issue, we might be able to stretch the deadlines a bit -- but not by a ton, since we want to publish the 4 issues on a monthly schedule, not with delays between issues.)
We can either work with a separate penciler and inker or with one artist doing both. The page rate we can afford is $120/page if you do both pencils and inks (we'll take care of colors and lettering separately), or $70/page for just pencils and $50/page for just inks. It's not the highest rate in the business, we realize -- we're an indie outfit and don't have the deep pockets of Marvel or DC! -- but four 22-page issues at $120/page still adds up to $10,560 in all. And it's a chance to be a part of a book that looks gorgeous and of a series that has gotten a lot of attention, making it a great calling card for future work. Plus, for anyone who likes the idea of working outside the superhero/fantasy/horror genres, it's a chance to do that -- if you like film noir and James Bond and sexy femme fatales, this book will be right up your alley. Of course, we totally understand that not everyone has the luxury of taking on a labor-of-love project at the rates we can afford. But if you are open to it, we would love to hear from you.
Skills and Requirements
You can work either traditionally or digitally (either is fine), but you do have to be digital enough to receive scripts from us via email and turn in your finished pencilled and inked pages digitally as well. Location is not an issue -- we're an international crew already and happy to work with anyone anywhere. (It does help if you're somewhere where we can pay you via PayPal!) And, as noted above, although it's not easy to find someone with the gorgeous, realistic style we want who is also fast, ideally we're hoping to find someone (or a separate penciler and inker working in parallel) who could draw each 22-page issue in about 45 calendar days, meaning a pencilled and inked page of art roughly every 2 days.
Application Details
Please send some samples of your work, or a link to your portfolio, to gunhoney@hardcasecrime.com, preferably including comic book pages showing sequential storytelling (not just splash pages that contain only one panel apiece). It will help enormously if you show us you can draw beautiful women since that's such a big part of what our readers love about our books; being able to also draw scenes of suspense and action well is the other important piece.