Q&A - Getting Started (Patreon)

Eric Gahagan posted this question as a comment in one of my posts and I thought it would work better as its own post so everyone here could read it:

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Hey Jim how did you handle paying for art, colors, and lettering when you first got started? Kickstarters seem to be the way to start these days. Also what project of yours seemed to be the one that got the attention of the likes of Marvel and Image? Thanks as always! 

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When I started working on Skullkickers (my "break out" project), I was juggling two jobs, one as a part-time instructor at an art college here in Toronto and another as a project manager and illustrator at UDON Entertainment, the studio behind the Street Fighter comic series. Slowly but surely I saved up money from those two jobs to finance Skullkickers (which was originally intended to be a 5-issue mini-series but we ran for 34 ridiculous issues). If I was starting out now I would probably take advantage of Kickstarter, but that wasn't around when I started on Skullkickers or, even earlier, when I made my first webcomic back in 2001.

Skullkickers came about through good timing and luck. An artist I regularly worked with at UDON named Chris Stevens was approached by Joe Keatinge, who was editing an anthology for Image called Popgun. Joe asked Chris to submit a story and Chris didn't know what he wanted to do for it. We brainstormed ideas back and forth and Chris asked me to write it. That 10-page short story was called Two Copper Pieces and it was the prototype for what would eventually be Skullkickers. That 10-pager caught the eye of Erik Larsen, who was Publisher at Image at the time. He contacted me to let me know that if we sent him a series pitch with those characters he'd probably approve it. It would take a while for me to get the schedule and financing in order, but that was my road to getting a series at Image.

Skullkickers launched to some acclaim and was swept up in a mini-wave of Image interest that came about thanks to the unexpected success of Chew and Morning Glories. That ripple got my name out to a wider audience and led to an offer to write the Pathfinder comic series for Dynamite, which was very much in the same wheelhouse of sword & sorcery. I'd end up using money earned from freelance writing Pathfinder to keep things rolling on Skullkickers even when our single issues started to lose money.

During the third arc of Skullkickers I started posted tutorials on my site about breaking in, pitching, and scripting as well as some economic articles about creator-owned comics. Those went a bit viral and caught the attention of Hank Kanalz, who at the time was editor of DC's digital comic division. He liked my upbeat attitude about making comics and hunted down some samples of my work, then asked me to pitch a 2-part Batman story for Legends of the Dark Knight, a digital-first anthology series they were doing at the time. The success of that led to more pitching, and a slow climb up the ladder of projects at IDW, Dark Horse, and eventually Marvel. Along the way I attended a lot of conventions and continued to make friends in the industry.

Check the Bio on my site and you'll see how the projects are quite slow and spaced out at first and then build up in terms of momentum:

http://www.jimzub.com/bio/ 

From what I've experienced, it's not about one project or one right move, it's a constant effort to build your own work at a professional level while putting yourself into social situations and being a part of the broader creative community. People say that it's about "being in the right place at the right time", but the only way to find that "right" one is to generate lots of places and times with work that's on par with the publishers you want to work with.