SPACE WARP April 2019 © Pat Mills

SPACE WARP 1 (of 5)

If you’ve ever wondered what it was like to create a comic like 2000AD, now is your chance to find out. To experience the highs, the lows, the creative jamming with artists, the excitement of breakthroughs and the disappointments when things go wrong. Then the satisfaction of overcoming those problems, getting the art right, the stories right, the thrill of seeing amazing new artwork, the knowledge that we are facilitating great new talent who, otherwise, might be stuck in some boring job. And, finally, the thrill of viewing the finished, awesome comic.

So pull up a ringside seat, because that’s what I’m intending to do with SPACE WARP. Space Warp will be a one-shot anthology, popular culture SF comic featuring new, or lesser-known (not established) artists.

Drawn to professional standard, it will be for the equivalent of 2000AD’s original core readership: a comic that was enjoyed by all age groups.

I want Space Warp to be a similar age-buster. Just like Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who, Harry Potter and James Bond. Such great fiction can be enjoyed by anyone, any age.

It will be available as print on demand and digital, and it will be creator-owned by the artists and the writer.

It’s written and drawn with payment by royalties. See the next blog post on monetisation. It won’t be crowd-funded.

The stories will be showcased in Storyteller on the Millsverse website as work in progress.

The stories can also springboard into their own collections to be sold as print on demand via Amazon and bricks & mortar stores, and digitally on platforms such as Comixology.

Later, there’s the possibility of new writers coming on board with more Space Warps.

To make sure we aren’t operating in a vacuum, we shared our Space Warp plans with a number of Storyteller readers for their thoughts. These include regular fans, writers, artists, a small press publisher, a school, an art college, universities, and parents with boys who’ve long, long looked for a suitable publication, like the fantastic comics they grew up with.

We absorbed their feedback and now we’re putting all the final information on Space Warp on this blog: everything you want to know about price, copyright, monetising, deadlines and more. Together with summaries of the stories for new artists to select and draw a sample sequence (coming soon). I will include a full artist briefing so you know exactly what I’m looking for.Space Warp is in the tradition of classic SF comics, like 2000AD in its early years, but updated for 2019. It’s not satire or homage to the past, it’s new stories with something new to say. It’ll be black and white. No colour. And the artists must be of the same high standard as the original 2000AD. Not cartoon style and not fanzine art.

I believe this is possible. Judge Dredd artist Mick McMahon had produced no major published work before he started on 2000AD. The same is true of Simon Bisley and Glen Fabry. Angela Kincaid had never even drawn a comic before she created Sláine and she had a number one hit with the readers.