New FYC with Bryan Talbot in W27: the Collection

I’ve written about this before, but one of the best pieces of advice I found regarding writing came from Steven Grant and his former CBR column. Grant stated that one of the best things to do as an aspiring writer is to take the opportunity to write for publication wherever that opportunity may arise. If you have aspirations as a fiction writer, take the chance to write some non-fiction, or write ad copy, or whatever. Any chance to write can only help you improve as a writer, and what you learn can be applied to that expansive novel sitting on your hard drive.

To that end, I answered a call for writers at the Pulse back in early 2007.

For slightly more than a year, I contributed a weekly column to the Pulse spotlighting small press and web comics and their creators. Along with analysis of the comic, each piece included a short Q&A with creators and publishers. Not only was I filling a niche that I felt lacking on the site and getting a chance to highlight some of the great mini-comics and small press books I had discovered after my first trip to SPX, but I also got the chance to interact with some of the creators for whom I have a great admiration.

Some creators I had the privilege of interviewing included Paul Pope, Scott Morse, Marvin Mann, Dean Haspiel, Warren Ellis, and Steve Rude, among others. But when the column finished at the Pulse, there were still a number of articles I had yet to write, with unused interviews sitting on my hard drive. Now, with the new collection, I’ve had a chance to unearth one of these interviews and create a brand new edition of For Your Consideration spotlighting The Tale of One Bad Rat with a short Q&A with writer/artist Bryan Talbot. I’m very excited about this. At some point, I’ll be running the full piece here on the site, but if you want to check it out before then – and get some great comics and prose on top of that – check us out at SPX or keep your eyes peeled for when the book goes on sale here at the site after we return from Maryland.

And, to whet your appetite, here’s a short quote from the interview with Talbot:

“Persistence seems to be the overriding factor [for breaking into comics]. If you have the talent and really want to do it, don't give up. Bad Rat was rejected by every publisher of illustrated books in Britain. This is before the current boom in graphic novels, when "comics" was a dirty word.”

Thanks,
chris