Who Wants to Be a Rocket Pirate?

Who Wants to Be a Rocket Pirate?

This is all over the place, so you may have seen it already. Warren Ellis has started a Webcomics National Collective site, powered by a soon to be released webcomic publishing product of the same name. The illustrious Mr. Ellis's site will be called Rocket Pirates, which is great and all, but what the Dragon is really interested in is this "Commercial Product." ? Digital creation and distribution of comics has long been a case of driving nails with screw-drivers and pulling them out with wrenches. (Magna Studio being a notable exception.)

But really a platform for serious amateurs to release their works under the umbrella of approval of Warren Ellis is intriguing.


The submissions system is simply this: email your materials to me at warrenellis@gmail.com. I want to see at least three completed pages and an overview of what you intend to do. No need to be formal -- rambly emails talking about the central concepts and what you want to achieve are fine.
I'm open to anything -- series, serialised graphic novels, single panels, self-contained shorts, newspaper-style strips -- in any style, from manga to clipart to whatever the hell you just invented in your basement. No limits.
I'm open to any kind of content. You're going to have to work pretty hard to get me to accept a superhero project for the site, but if you've got something that knocks me flat, I'll take it. But, seriously, I want to eventually curate something that takes in a wide breadth of what comics can achieve. Surprise me. Give me something straight out of literary mainstream fiction, give me a warped genre, give me something I've never seen before. That's the "theme" of the site, the glue that holds it together. It is quite simply "stuff Warren really likes."
The submissions process is open to everybody. I don't care if you only decided you wanted to try and make a comic ten minutes ago -- I'll look at it. I'll warn you in advance that the chances of my being able to provide detailed and constructive rejections are slight, but I'll do my best.
(Also, if the site turns out to be all-male because only guys submitted, I'm going to be very pissed off, and will infect you all with this lung disease my girlfriend seems to have passed to me over the weekend.)
I'd like to be up and running by the end of the month, but I won't kick the site live until I have enough work of quality. The submissions process will remain permanently open. Unless, you know, I change my mind. I am unpredictable and I drink a lot.
That's all I've got. Please feel free to pass this unedited post on anywhere you like.
-- Warren Ellis