Breaking into the comics industry is never easy. Breaking into it solely as a writer? That’s a true challenge. Most comic book companies – especially in the independent world – won’t even glance at the bundles of unsolicited scripts writers send to them. Publishers want to see sequential art. If you can’t draw? You better find a talented artist if you want comics publishers to consider your work.

Frank LaPerch found that artist when he hooked up with Ash Jackson. Together, the pair has created their own independent action/horror/comedy series, Eve: Vampire Diva. The series, published by top independent company Arcana, will hit shelves this December. You can see samples of it at www.vampirediva.blogspot.com.

Firefox News recently spoke with LaPerch about Eve, the long process of breaking into comics writing and the excitement of having his own graphic series.

Firefox News: What can you tell us about your new series, Eve: Vampire Diva?
LaPerch: First, it’s a very character-driven story. Eve is a celebrity of sorts, but sort of an aging celebrity, one who’s falling out of the public eye. She’s known mainly as a pop singer, but no one knows she’s also a vampire. All the late-night talk show hosts joke about her using plastic surgery to look so young. But her real secret is that she’s a vampire. We also focus on an entire governing council, a council that oversees the vampires, werewolves and zombies, the whole supernatural world. Eve operates outside that governing council. We are trying to do a day in the life of Eve. We’re not doing an origin story. We’re showing how this celebrity balances life, avoids the paparazzi and fights monsters at night.

FFN: Why did you go with an independent company like Arcana to publish Eve?
LaPerch: I don’t know what a mainstream publisher would do with a story like this. Most don’t go with creator-owned property. With Arcana, Sean (O’Reilly, the publisher’s owner and operator) immediately liked the idea. He never asked us for any changes. He let us cut loose on this. We ended up going longer in the issues than you see in most comics. Each issue is 28 pages, so the reader gets more.

FFN: How exciting is it to know that your first published comic will be in stores this December?
LaPerch: You’ll see people, whatever their ages are, whether they’re in their 20s or 40s, breaking into comics. You always wonder how it happened, how they got there. Now I see myself getting a comic. People are e-mailing me and visiting our Web site. It’s your first work out there, but it’s far from your first work. I’ve been trying to get into comics writing for a couple of years now.

FFN: How long have you been writing?
LaPerch: I’ve been writing ever since I was old enough to write something worth reading. As far as trying to get into comics, I think it was in 2003. Marvel at that time had opened its Epic line to submissions. You could send them anything. That really opened my eyes. I thought maybe I should try writing for comics. At that time, I was mainly writing novels and screenplays. I was doing them for fun, not with the eye of getting them published. So I submitted to Marvel and I got what I think was the good rejection letter. Marvel was sending out a lot of different rejection letters. A lot of them were standard form letters. The version I got, though, encouraged me to send in more work. So I kept doing that. After two or three times, I got the idea that maybe I should start writing my own comics, instead of writing scripts on spec. Marvel obviously didn’t go forward with anything I sent in. I started delving deeper into how to bring my comics to life.

FFN: It’s never easy breaking into comics as a writer. It’s still hard, but less of a challenge, if you can either draw or can partner with a skilled artist.
LaPerch: That’s one of the great challenges. They tell you that the best way to break in is to do what a lot of other guys did. They went and started their own publishing companies. They published their own comics. Guys like Brian Michael Bendis did this. You keep at it long enough, you’ll get noticed. But I had no idea how to do that. I didn’t know anyone who was good at drawing.

FFN: Finding a good artist to partner with is a challenge all its own.
LaPerch: I went to some Web sites set up for writers and artists to find each other, places like Penciljack and Digital Webbing. I did about two projects, paying different artists their commissions. I got good feedback on those projects, but never did connect them with publishers. Then I started working on Eve. Ash, the artist, had responded to one of my online want ads looking for an artist. We put together a seven-page submission and eventually got interest from Arcana. We went forward from there. Really, you need a how-to manual to make it in this business as a writer. If you’re an artist and you’re really good, you can put pages together, approach publishers at conventions and at least get an immediate response. The way comics work, if you have a great visual look, if the art is really good, someone will look at the story. If the art’s not great, even if the story is great, they won’t look at it. The artist definitely has the advantage. You have to seek out an artist who likes your stuff and who is patient enough to stick with you through the process.

FFN: How difficult was it to find the right artist for Eve?
LaPerch: I found a couple of guys who liked some of the stories I was doing. Almost immediately they sent me covers and character sketches. It was great. But then when it came time to actually work on a whole comic, or even just the submission pages, all the great action scenes, the talking heads scenes, the Coke can way in the back of the scene, they trailed off. The commitment wasn’t there.

FFN: Do you think your experience of breaking into comics is typical for writers?
LaPerch: I do. Virtually everything that I have experienced, that I have read about other writers who come up through the independents, is similar. I hear the same stories. I’m a nobody right now. There will be tons more for me to experience. But so far, what I have experienced matches up with what the other writers will tell you.