At last year’s San Diego Comic-Con, Thrillbent held a successful and much-talked-about contest, an open pitch session for writers. The winning story, Four Seconds, is awaiting publication later this month, and it’s good.

This year at San Diego, we’re looking for artists—and just as we did last year, we’re offering the best one the prize of guaranteed publication. I will personally write a script for the winner to illustrate, our story will run on Thrillbent, and I will work with you to figure out the best kind of story to show off your talent.

Same as last year, you have to be in a certain place within a certain time. If you happen to be attending San Diego Comic-Con this year, we will be holding this open portfolio review for artists at our Digital Comics Coalition booth on Saturday, July 11, 2-4 pm, Booth 1221. During that time, I will be reviewing art portfolios and looking for potential Thrillbent artists. If you’re good, we want to know about you. Moreover, we will choose ONE ARTIST for whom I will personally write a one-shot story that will run on Thrillbent later this year. Thrillbent will pay for lettering and coloring; the winning artist will share the rights to the story with me 50/50 and will be entitled to his or her share of any revenue the story generates in any form, in perpetuity. This isn’t work for hire, nor is it an attempt to get you to work for free. It’s guaranteed publication using a high-traffic showcase to demonstrate your talent.

Anyone is welcome to participate, absolutely anyone, but there are some ground rules:

1. You must be physically present to show your artwork.
2. Anyone who is in line by 2:00 will be given a ticket that guarantees a review. The line will be monitored and capped at 2:00. If you want to get in line after 2:00, we can’t promise you a ticket, but I will do my level best to see you if time allows.
3. Be ready to show approximately four to eight pages of sequential storytelling. Not pin-ups, not covers, but professional panel-to-panel storytelling so I can see how good your story skills are. Look at any chapter of anything we have up on Thrillbent.com or the Thrillbent app and you’ll get some sense of how comics storytelling works.
4. You must have a “leave-behind” —photocopies of your samples with your contact information written on them. At 4:00 when I’m picking a winner, you want me to have your work in front of me. You don’t want me to have to be trying to remember what it looked like.
5. Inked or inked-and-colored samples only. I don’t have the time or resources to teach a penciler how to ink his or her work professionally, nor are we interested in matchmaking pencilers with inkers—that’s an alchemical process much more difficult to do well than you can imagine. Black-and-white samples are actually preferred, but if you think you’re a knockout colorist, I’ll take a look.
6. Landscape or portrait format, either one, is okay.While the default Thrillbent format is landscape (check it out), all we really care about is whether or not you can draw and tell a story. I’m not penalizing anyone in the least for showing me the same portrait-format samples you’d show to any print-comics publisher.
7. This is not a critique. This is an audition. There will be a line. You’re probably going to get about 30-45 seconds of my time, max, if that. As nice a man as I am, given the time constraints, I’m not going to have extra time to dole out a whole lot of constructive criticism or career advice. I know the level of craft I’m looking for, and I’ll recognize it when I see it. If you show promise, you may get a brief critique and I may ask you if we can call you later for a future assignment if you show promise.
8. We retain the option to put more rules on the table before showtime if need be or if we realize we’ve not covered our butts legally on something.But the first seven are the important rules.

We will announce a winner within a half-hour after the portfolio review ends (probably sooner). We’ll make the announcement at the booth and through Twitter (@Thrillbent). At that point, I’ll set up a time to talk with the winner after the madness of San Diego is finished and we’ll begin the collaboration, shooting for late fall/early winter publication.

See you in San Diego!