Don’t forget, there are two open invite minis with deadlines just around the corner! (But we all know that you never start a project until the week before the deadline anyway, so it’s time to get crackin’!!) We think these are two totally fun projects and hope that you’ll agree. Feel free to submit something for either - or both - projects!

Official deadline is October 1. Click here for the complete details and submission guidelines.  If you want to participate, but know you’ll need a couple extra days, don’t stress out! Just email me (Corey) and let me know which project you’re participating in, and when you’ll have it ready. We’ll work out the details. Also email me if you have any questions about these or other projects.

The entries we’ve received so far are awesome as usual, so don’t miss out on participating in these two cool minis!

For more comic making fun, don’t forget to check out 52 Comic Challenges each Monday!

We’d like to personally invite you (and everyone you know!) to be a part of What’s In The Box?: the sixth annual Open Invite Group Project from Young American Comics!

Write and draw a two to six page comic that involves an unopened box with mystery contents. It can be any sort of box and a part of any type of story, as long as the contents of the box remain unknown to the reader.

Deadline: January 21, 2008

Click here to download the official WITB Invite. We encourage you to print, copy and distribute as you see fit! Invite contains complete submission guidelines and some helpful hints.

Despite our name, we welcome submissions from all over the globe. You may work alone, or team up with others.Stories will be judged on artistic merit, overall story and originality. We love a variety of unique and traditional art and writing styles and encourage you to experiment within the comics medium! We look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Sincerely,
Tod and Corey Marie Parkhill
Young American Comics

As you have undoubtedly heard if you’ve come within 100 yards of me for the last couple months, we are getting ready to do something really exciting.  On August 6 we will launch 52ComicChallenges.com -  weekly exercises and short challenges for artists and writers and anyone who makes comics.  Ok, not letterers.  Sorry, letterers, we can’t think of any challenges for you.  (Um, why don’t you go transcribe Moby Dick.   In Times New Roman.  6 pt.  We’ll wait.) 

It is completely free to participate, although if you like, you can purchase the book that will contain the whole year’s worth of Challenges, in case you want to work ahead or keep them for posterity.  You don’t have to do every week, but we hope you will!  We will also be launching new forums, including a spot for people participating in 52ComicChallenges to post their work and get feedback from others.

We hope you will also post the challenges that you complete in your blog or journal, meme style, and encourage others to participate as well.  One of the main focuses of 52ComicChallenges will be to build some much-needed community in the Small Press Comics arena.  We always see the same awesome people at the conventions in the Small Press Ghetto, but then we say good bye and don’t see them again until the following year.  Come on, people, it’s 2007 and most of our phones can get online at this point.

Our other focus is to encourage people to push their limits and work outside of their comfort levels.  Some of these challenges will be hard.  You’re assuredly familiar with our stuff enough to know that we tend to do weird experimental comics anyhow.  But these smaller challenges will hopefully be just that — a challenge!  As we received the entries for small town/BIG CITY this year, we realized that some of our contributors have been participating in our group projects for the last four or five years!  When you compare their recent work to their older work, it’s jaw-droppingly-awesome to see how much everyone has improved over the years. (Which is not to say any of them were less than amazing to begin with.)  We hope that by offering weekly exercises, we’ll encourage people to try new things and tone their comic-making muscles.  And we’ll be right there beside you, doing cool challenges and getting buff.

To kick off 52 Comic Challenges and get you excited about this year’s Large Scale Open Invite Group Anthology (to be announced  July 26, 2007!),  we have put together two mini group projects:  Lost Lunches and Crash!Boom!Bang!

Click here to download the invite flyer for these two projects, or visit us at San Diego Comic Con or Wizard World Chicago!  We encourage you to print this flyer, steal some copies at your school or job (we won’t tell) and distribute to your artist & writer friends, bring to your local sketch night, pass out at school, or leave at your comic shop.

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Thank you to everyone who submitted! Here is the final list of accepted submissions. small town/BIG CITY will be officially released in mid-July and debut at the San Diego Comic Con. We were completely blown away by many of these entries and are very excited to be putting out this book. Cities from across the world are represented in this book, by some of the most talented artists and writers in small press comics. Give yourselves all a pat on the back and keep your eyes peeled for more group projects from Young American Comics.

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