Broken Frontier

Last month Visionary Comics Studio announced its existence to the world and so far the response has been amazing. “VCS’ Online Submission Forums have filled with extremely talented creators seeking the kind of unique experience only Visionary can offer.” C. Edward Sellner, VCS’ Creative Director stated. “We’re now approaching 40 creators who have come from all over the world to hone their skills and actively work in developing projects and seek work for hire.” Sellner is quick to remind not all of these folks represent books. “VCS is going to be about producing a wide diversity of material, some aimed at print, some digital, some online, while other creators are just wanting to break into the work-for-hire market, and we’ll be helping them.”

Portfolios…
As mentioned earlier, part of Visionary’s goals is to represent our many talented creators for work-for-hire. To that end Visionary formally and publicly announces the launch of Visionary Freelancer Services. Online portfolios featuring our talented creators are now live and available for review. “These easy tools will enable studios and publishers who are seeking out new talent to easily be able to scan what we offer and ensure their needs are met.” Stated Charlie Hall, VCS Business Manager. Each portfolio focuses on a specific role in comic production and lists all available talent, their page rates, preferences and availability. “With a single click studios, publishers and others can find a whole roster of talented folks to work with. Most importantly they know our creators will be mature professionals, ready and willing to work.”
Queries are already coming in from established publishers and studios.
Interested?  Email us at CSellner@visionarycomics.com.

Promotions…
Visionary announces its first internal promotions. Chris McCay (Offspring and Midnight Run) and Paul Ridgon (Mamluks) have been promoted to Submission Editors, now overseeing the Submission Forums on VCS’ main site.
Check it out at www.visionarycomics.com

Visionary also announces the first additions to our Senior Visionary staff, expanding our roster of established comic professionals to our growing team in order to continue to improve the VCS experience. In that spirit we welcome Lou Manna, artist on many comics over the last quarter century, including DC’s Young All-Stars and Infinity Inc., T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and more recently Moonstone’s The Phantom. Likewise, we welcome A. David Lewis, creator and writer behind the award winning Lone and Level Sands from Archaia Studios Press as well as several other projects through his own imprint Caption Box. Finally, we welcome artist Jose Aviles, C.S.I. Miami, Star Trek Classic. Of course, we also want to salute our own Brian Augustyn, our Senior Editor, and also creator and writer of one of Wizard’s Top Ten most memorable comics ever…Gotham by Gaslight. VCS is showing its strength not just in new talent, but in already shining stars! “Most of our established folks are not only working behind the scenes to mentor our new talent, but developing their own projects with VCS. We hope to be announcing more additions to this roster very soon” smiled Sellner.

Partners…
Visionary Comics Studio is proud to announce its partnership with Microfilmmaker.com, the online resource for independent filmmakers. VCS was prominently featured in an in-depth article in the April issue of the resource magazine which expounded on the history of comics and will be the sole focus of another in-depth article in the next couple months.

So what is Microfilmmaker? Jeremy Hanke, Editor at MFM fills us in: 

“The goal of Microfilmmaker Magazine is to simply help no-budget filmmakers make better movies and become better filmmakers. While we aim to help all filmmakers, we have a special focus on filmmakers who are making films for $30,000 and below, as they are the ones who have the most to lose yet are given the least help from the filmmaking community.”

Why comics you might ask? Jeremy Hanke answers that question as well:
“Our goal of working with comic creators is twofold: to give comic creators the ability to have their comics made into films by filmmakers that will actually preserve the integrity of their comic and to give filmmakers the ability to shoot a script that has already been written and carefully storyboarded.  Because this fusion represents such mutual benefit, we desire to streamline this process so much that the gap between comic creators and low-budget filmmakers is closed smoothly and simply.” 

Why Visionary comics you might ask? Once more, Mr. Hanke:

“By working with Visionary Comics, we have the ability to showcase multiple, high-quality comic franchises to our filmmakers and increase the likelihood of pairing the right filmmaker with the right comic creator.  In addition, because Visionary is willing to work directly with our filmmakers to help them create original films through a bidding process with their talented writers, our filmmakers have an ability to make far more original films than they would have on their own.  The mutual benefit for the comic creators and Visionary is the ability to help shape all new films and to create brand new comic series based on these new films.”

“We were thrilled to hook up with MFM for one of our first Venture Partnerships.” C. Edward Sellner, Creative Director for the studio added. “It seemed natural, MFM is about helping new and aspiring film makers, and we’re about helping new and aspiring comic creators. By tapping that synergy and excitement in both mediums, all the better the chance the resulting product will shine. We hope to announce our first projects within the next month.”
For more on Microfilmmaker, check them out at www.microfilmmaker.com

Possibilities…
“We’re obviously excited that things are going so well for us.” C. Sellner commented. “And if we’re excited now…just wait its only going to get better.” VCS has launched an exclusive sneak peek of a very popular VCS title in development, a dramatic series set inside the world of professional wrestling, entitled Headlocked. “I’ve been watching the comics market for some ten years now and I have never, simply never seen this much excitement about a new book not even on the market.”  Likewise, in the very near future VCS will be announcing its first reprint deal of a classic 1980’s comic series, with an exclusive new cover from one of the biggest names in comics, and hopefully our first movie licensed comic coming out of Microfilmmaker.com’s partnership.