By 1990 I’d written and drawn 18 minicomics on my own and contributed to quite a few minicomic anthologies published by other folks and I was feeling deluded enough to think I was ready to do a “real” comic. In my case a “real” comic was something printed rather than photocopied, that had a color cover and that would get distributed in comic book stores. I had two ways of going about it – I could self-publish (something quite a few artists were doing at the time) or I could find a publisher. I figured I’d see if I could find a publisher first and go the self publishing route if that didn’t work out.

I’d done eight issues of The Highly Unlikely Adventures of Moe and Detritus minicomic and had gotten fond of the characters. So I put together a proposal – a cover, two pages of a cast of characters, 4 pages of sample story and a back cover. I found that proposal recently while sorting boxes so I’m presenting it here.









Lord, that lettering is tiny. If you click on the above images you can see larger versions but the writing will still be almost illegible. And those images have been enlarged from the original proposal.

I don’t remember how many publishers I sent the proposal to. I know I sent one to Piranha Press, DC Comic’s alternative comics imprint. I’m sure I’ve got the rejection letter from Piranha somewhere in my files. It was a personal note suggesting that I try for something a bit less ambitious than a 30 issue limited series.

If I sent the proposal to anyone other than Brave New Words I no longer remember who they were. I definitely didn’t get any other replies. BNW picked up the series and we managed a run of five issues in a little over a year before we mutually agreed to cancel it. The four pages of sample story saw print as the first four pages in the first issue of Misspent Youths.