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The Florida Review is looking for Comics Submissions....

  
 
garyancheta
13:48 / 06.03.06
My name is Gary Ancheta and I am looking for the best comic works for the next issue of The Florida Review.

Just a little background about our magazine: The Florida Review is a national journal of prose and poetry, funded both by The University of Central Florida and The Florida Arts Council. For 30 years, we've published some very reputable names in the literary world, from National Poet Laureate Billy Collins to David Foster Wallace, as well as interviews with Mark Doty and Lorrie Moore. Our writers have been acknowledged in several volumes of the highly popular Best American series (published by Houghton-Mifflin...and now featuring a new addition to the series, called "Best American Graphic Narratives").

The Florida Review is one of the first university-published literary magazines to explore comics as a "literary genre." Prose and poetry can tell incredible stories, but comics--like film--have an ability to take the story one step further. How much can just a single panel, a single drawing, a single line of text, tell us about a character or about a story? In the past year, we've published work as diverse as editorial cartoons, comic memoirs, and visual poetry. If we can open up literary magazines (and universities) to comics as a literary genre, then artists and writers might have hundreds of more submission opportunities (nearly every university sponsors one).

I would love to invite any and all submissions to our magazine, whether you feel most comfortable with single-panel/single-page comics, silent panels, or multi-page graphic narratives. Currently, we can only accept black-and-white comics, with an ideal length of between 1 and 6 pages (though we are open to longer submissions), and we pay in contributor's copies. Published work is reduced to 6x9 to fit our current magazine. We do not publish previously-published pieces (excerpts from upcoming work could be considered, however, as well as work that has only been published online), and we reserve only the first-publication rights. Upon acceptance, we ask for the work on CD, as a tif file, at a minimum dpi of 300 (this is our printer's requirements. We also accept submissions for cover art, with no restrictions on color or size (check out our web site for some examples).

I'm very excited about our magazine, and about the potential that a comics section can offer for emerging writers and artists. We've published some great work in our last two issues, and I'm excited to see where we can take this genre of storytelling in the academic world.

Sincerely,

Gary Ancheta (gancheta@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu)
Assistant Co-Managing Editor
The Florida Review
Department of English
University of Central Florida
Orlando, FL 32816
http://www.flreview.com
 
 
garyancheta
20:28 / 06.03.06
To bring this topic more towards Barbelith standards, rather using this thread a shameless plug for my own product...

We were inspired by McSweeney's #15 to put comics in our literary journal. Our editor saw McSweeney's and fell in love with the comics format. I came on as editor because I love comics and I know how it should be published.

But I do have my reservations about comics publishing in literary journals...sort of that awkward fit between literary journal, design journal, and gallery collection.

What do you think about literary magazines having comics sections? Do they belong in academia next to poetry and prose? Does comics lose it's outlaw status as a medium when academia supports it? Does legitimizing comics make it a museum piece that withers and dies under glass?

How do you see comics fitting in academia?

- Gary Ancheta
 
 
sleazenation
21:24 / 06.03.06
I think it depends largely on the comics in question.

McSweeney's anthology (wasn't it issue 13 rather than 16) appears to comprise of a certain, nameless subset of comics. This is perhaps comes from the circumstances of its genisis. It is a reflection of the tastes of its editor, Chris Ware, it is also a reflection of the theme Ware attempted to stamp on the volume; cartooning in North America (never mind that it exdplores the work of the Swiss Rodolphe Töpffer as the originator of the form). Finally, as Ware was unable to offer much in the way of financial recompense to the featured comics creators, much of the work McSweeney's features is reprint/preview material...

I really like McSweeny's anthology, it is a beautifully designed and produced package, as you'd expect from Chris Ware, but I'm not sure that it is a particularly apt prototype for what literary journal could or should be...

All this probably sounds a lot more negative than I intend it. But I'm kind of wondering what particular style of comics are you looking for? A two page Batman strip? A couple of pages on a specific theme? A few preview pages of an upcoming larger work? none of the above?
 
 
garyancheta
22:06 / 06.03.06
>>>> McSweeney's anthology (wasn't it issue 13 rather than 16) appears to comprise of a certain, nameless subset of comics. This is perhaps comes from the circumstances of its genisis. It is a reflection of the tastes of its editor, Chris Ware, it is also a reflection of the theme Ware attempted to stamp on the volume; cartooning in North America (never mind that it exdplores the work of the Swiss Rodolphe Töpffer as the originator of the form). Finally, as Ware was unable to offer much in the way of financial recompense to the featured comics creators, much of the work McSweeney's features is reprint/preview material... >>>>

Ware's work seemed like a way to expose comics to a different group of people that normally wouldn't read comics. I used Ware's book in a class as a way to give my students a sampling of different comic art that normally wouldn't be available in an anthology.

>>> I really like McSweeny's anthology, it is a beautifully designed and produced package, as you'd expect from Chris Ware, but I'm not sure that it is a particularly apt prototype for what literary journal could or should be...>>>

I agree McSweeny's isn't perfect. What captivated us was the design of the book itself. But as a prototype of a literary magazine, it doesn't seem right. It had all the right stars, but it really didn't flow well as a whole book because the complete stories were few and far between. The editorial control seemed to be dictated by what was good rather than how to fit together as a cohesive whole (if that makes any sense). That's a valid way of organizing, but it seemed like "everything and the kitchen sink" editing.

>>> All this probably sounds a lot more negative than I intend it. But I'm kind of wondering what particular style of comics are you looking for? A two page Batman strip? A couple of pages on a specific theme? A few preview pages of an upcoming larger work? none of the above? >>>

We're kind of new at this, so we're looking for everything and anything...then we'll think of how to fit it all together in a coherent way. We can't publish Batman because of copyright issues. We can't publish reprints, unless they're self-published or you hold sole publishing rights. And we're not necessarily looking to fit the work to a theme, because the theme usually comes out of what we receive for each of the sections.

What we are looking for is new and individual voices that are just about to break out...and I know that sounds vague, but it's what we publish for Florida Review. 1-6 pages tends to be the upper limit for page count, but if you really want to get published, a good one-pager will work well in your favor. Personally, I'm looking at old 2000 AD anthologies and various Vertigo anthologies as guidance for editing this section.

- Gary Ancheta
 
  
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