Jon Malin (Cable, Thunderbolts, Jawbreakers) after smashing crowdfunding records by raising over half a million dollars this year alone with his Jawbreakers and Graveyard Shift crowdfunding campaigns and wrapping the year with a surprise release on Christmas Eve with the audio drama ‘A Christmas Carol’ which he directed, edited and produced by bringing together, in secret, many of the best voice talents of “Comicsgate” creators such as Cecil, Mike S. Miller (Game of Thrones, Injustice, Lonestar), Doug TenNapel (Earthworm Jim, Big Foot Bill), Antonio Brice (Brand), Captain Frugal, Nerd Wonder (Graveyard Shift (Ashcan)) and more , as a present to fans, continues to spread the holiday cheer! This time he and Graveyard Shift co-creator, Mark Poulton (Savage Hawkman, Avengelyne), are pleased to announced the winners of their talent search contest that launched in November.
Two writers and two artists were chosen to work with the duo on a series of oneshots that will be included with the upcoming Graveyard Shift Book II. The winning writers are Von Klaus and Cal Jameson, while the artists are Render Contender and Todd Mulrooney.
Artists were encouraged to submit their work through Twitter using the #comicsgatetalentsearch, while writers submitted their work directly to Poulton. One of the winning artists, Render Contender, is no stranger to Graveyard Shift. He first got noticed for his Comicsgate Cafe fan comic he was posting on social media. The comic featured many Comicsgate characters including Graveyard Shift in all out war. The other winners all have upcoming projects in the works including artist Todd Mulrooney with Ignition, writer Von Klaus with Monster M.D. and writer Cal Jameson with Shinobi Sasquatch.
Poulton stated,
“Not only are they getting good page rates, but I’m hoping this exposure will help them launch their upcoming titles and start their own businesses like Jon and I have done with Graveyard Shift.”
Malin added
,
“Mark and I are very excited to be able to put a large percentage of our Graveyard Shift profits back into the very comic book fandom, a massively growing fanbase commonly referred to as Comicsgate, a consumer revolt against bad behaviors and business practices from mainstream companies releasing in-your-face politically driven and biased mediocrity, lowering standards of art and typo laden/bad storytelling, releasing product with ever rising prices and lower quality where it isn’t uncommon for the ink to smear right off the cover and sometimes having the joy of pages falling out as you read them.
Comicsgate fans are largely responsible for super funding our first Graveyard Shift project which raised over $100,000. These extra funds will help more writers and artist to get good pay, more attention and for us will help make the next volume of Graveyard Shift an even better product adding more content for our backers.
Malin concludes:
“It’s our hope that Graveyard Shift Book II does even better so we can continue to expand not just the content but job opportunities to even more talent within the comic book fandom. Von Klaus, Cal Jameson, Render Contender and Todd Mulrooney are the first of what I hope to be many talents getting work from our Graveyard Shift project. I also want to thank the many talented people who used the #ComicsgateTalentSearch to showcase their work and would like to encourage people to keep the hashtag alive in order to help solve another issue I hear about from Comicsgate writers wanting to know where to find artists, I think this hashtag can help connect them and I’ll promote this as another creative tool on my YouTube Channel. I also would like to wish everyone a happy and safe holiday season however that may apply to you, a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! See you in 2019!”
We’ll bring you all the details as soon as we have them. After looking at several of the art submissions, I have to say this must have been a very difficult process. There were several very talented artists interested in this project and I do not envy Mark or Jon having to select just two. With that said, a big congratulations to these talented creators one and all! I’m looking forward to the finished product.
Graveyard Shift Book II launches Spring 2019 on Indiegogo.
