Expert: Brian G. Philbin - 1/22/2011

Question
Hi,my name is Abhishek and i am from India.
I wanted to ask,can it be that only one person can do the work of a pencil artist,inker,cover pencil artist,cover inker and cover color artist?Actually i will keep my comic book black and white inside.And is there a course to become a color artist?

And how will i ever get a publisher?

sorry if i am asking silly questions but there is no craze for comics in my country and thus i have no knowledge about it but i will become a comic artist for sure.Its my only dream.

Please reply. ^_^

Answer
Hi, Abhishek - thanks for your question!

Most certainly, there are many who have "done it all" with regard to creating and publishing their comic books.  First and foremost would be Dave Sim, who created Cerebus and self-published under the Aardvark-Vanaheim imprint.  He wrote, drew, inked and colored every item in the comic for the first decade or so of his now-famous run.

Most artists don't make good publishers, though, so it's always a good idea to communicate with publishers who make it their job to publish other people's private work.  Two such companies are Archaia and Top Shelf:

http://www.archaia.com/blog/submissions
http://www.topshelfcomix.com/contact/

Your work should be your ticket to getting published, but there are a few books available to instruct one on how to go about doing it yourself, and Dave Sim has some comments about it, as well, which you'll find here:

www.cerebusfangirl.com/artists/nftp/

Being that this is just outside of my expertise, I hope that my meager offerings will suffice for your needs.

Let me know if there are any other questions I might be able to answer!

Pax, harmonia,

Brian G. Philbin
www.metropolisplus.com