Top Cow announced this week that they will be conducting a new Talent Search where in they will be looking for 4 unpublished writers and 4 unpublished artists that will then get paying work from the company. Another 10 runner-ups of each will get the chance to participate in an anthology. There is a seven page rule book/pdf that you can download here from CBR.

The rules are quite extensive but I'll go over some of the big ones.

Writers – You have to come up with a 22-page comic book story. That's 22 comic pages, not word document pages (they stress this in the rules.) They want it self-contained with a beginning, middle and an end. The story should be about a previous or future wearer of one of the articfacts and it should be narrated by either Sara Pezzini or Jackie Estacado and should have a brief appearance of one of the two who is narrating.

The thirteen artifacts you can choose from: The Witchblade, The Darkness, The Angelus, Heart Stone, Wheel of Shadows, Coin of Solomon, Ember Stone, Pandora's Box, The Glacier Stone, Spear of Destiny, The Thirteenth Artifact, The Rapture or The Blood Sword.

Artists – You can be a penciller, do pencil and inking yourself or work with an inker and or colorist… Inkers and Colorist do not enter the contest alone. You can submit your stuff directly to Top Cow or you can team with a penciller. There will be sample scripts posted on-line for artists to use.

Unpublished – they are very serious about the contestants being unpublished, so much so that they have created a list of publishers that if you worked for them then you are published to them. The list: Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Image Comics (all imprints), Dark Horse Comics, IDW Publishing, Dynamite Entertainment, Boom! Studios, Valiant Comics, Zenescope Entertainment, Oni Press, Viz Media, Avatar Press, Fantagraphics, Aspen Comics, Random House and Hatchette.

The contest is open form September 2nd, 2013 to January 31st, 2014… so you have plenty of time. Don't rush.

For full rules and details download the pdf file.