They completely ignored my submission, so nope!

No advice on the Image proposal, but if looking for alternatives, this can be a valuable resource... Definitive List of Comic Publishers' Submission Guidelines

It was complied at the end of 2016, so it's mostly up to date, but as others have said, blind submissions often wind up in the slush pile and if looked at, take forever to get a response. You said you had Kablam print a copy-have you printed enough that you are selling them on your own and building an audience-at places like Indigogo or at cons? There are places you can sell digital versions of (even Comixology submit) or print copies, and try to garner some word of mouth about the book before you take it to an established publisher.

Most often the big break in comics is the culmination of lots of little breaks along the way, and perseverance, hard work and a willingness to do what it takes to get the book out there on your own are what lead to the little breaks.

-M

I highly recommend the Octal process: www.facebook.com/groups/OctalComics/

It's an anthology of short pieces which also works as a prospectus for potential publishers. My comic did not get picked up through Octal, but I am certain the work I did putting together a professional-level pitch package drew the attention of the publisher who eventually expressed an interest.

All your feedback and comments are extremely appreciated at a time that is naturally tense for us. Albeit being rank amateurs in the comic publishing world, we do have extensive experience in another arena that might be even more difficult from a break-through point of view. We have many years experience in the film world where the budget for a 12 issue comic book series design, production, launch and marketing, wouldn't even cover the development cost of a smallish film project. I can't tell you how many times we have faced rejection from producers, sponsors and investors and kept on pushing, sometimes for years, until able to attain some of our goals. In the creative business, heartbreak and discouragement come with the turf and must be dealt with on a daily basis.

With our comic series project “TORRES”, we have devoted a certain amount of time and effort to fully develop the story from a narrative point of view to the point where we have a twelve issue “season” complete story arc ready for production. We decided that rather than preparing a pitch deck and a few pages for submission, we went ahead and produced the first 22 page, color, first issue, which we felt would be a better tool for publishers and/or investors to evaluate the viability and appeal of the story.

We are fully aware that the most probable scenario will have us self-publishing, but if that’s the case, we’ll look to do it in such a way that we can at least publish a six issue mini series. We won’t publish one or two issues and leave people waiting for a never arriving resolution. We are also committed on producing both print and digital versions, although we understand the times and technology, we feel that our love for comics is deeply invested in the actual physical print copy. In the end we just feel that our story and characters are really interesting and hope that we’ll be able to share them broadly.

We appreciate and thank you for your time and interest in listening, commenting and advising, all input is valuable.

Regards,

Luis

Yes, Kickstarter has become a sine qua non for self-publishers. We talked with a published author who told us that besides the funding aspect, she found Kickstarter particularly useful as a path to finding an audience. It seems some really hard-core comic fans monitor every comic book project launched on Kickstarter and when they like one, they give it their allegiance, helping by word of mouth to get it known.

Our only caveat regarding this, is our worry not to launch a one issue project that could become an 'orphan', if we do a Kickstarter, we want to be sure that any backers will have the option, in the end, to collect a full story arc (maybe a three or six issues mini-series) and won't end up with only a single issue of an unconcluded story.

I've heard good and bad with Ka-Blam. The Studio used them for a few books and the results were decent, but shipping costs to get the books to them killed what little margins there may have been for the books. I guess it depends where you are in relation to their hq's, but it can get expensive. They looked for other local alternatives and there are a few around here that the local creators swear by, so if I ever get back to self-publishing, I will look into those.

There are other alternatives to offer digital copies too, Comixology Submit being a big one, but there are others. If you do self-publish, and are on facebook, check out the group ICC (Independent Creator Connection) it's a pretty good resource of people involved in slef-publishing willing to offer insights form their experience as well as talk about their projects and such.

-M

That does look like a pretty slick book, very professional.