Today I was looking for freelance writing jobs when an ad caught my attention. They were offering ten dollars a page for comic scripting, eight pages minimum. Scripting comics is something I’ve always dreamed of doing so I quickly sent in a few pitches. One of the story ideas involved a prison break on an alien world. That one caught their attention and they emailed me back almost immediately. However, the response was more than a little disheartening.
Basically they told me that they were looking for a vivid setting and they thought this one could deliver. But before anything else they asked me a question that caught me off guard.
“Are there any hot girls in your story? Where do they come in?” Then they asked me for the first page of script to see my writing style.
I responded that there were girls in my story, but there weren’t any hot girls just for the sake of hot girls being there. I attached my script that introduced the main character as a prisoner serving his mother’s second consecutive life sentence. I put a lot of work into making the script and designing the setting. When I sent it in the response I received really upset me.
“The setting is vivid. Let’s make the main character a hot girl. Tell us why she’s in prison.”
I actually really liked the idea of my main character being a woman. It fit the story I wanted to tell better. Unfortunately, they seemed more interested in how she looked than what her story could be. I got a glimpse of some of their art and it was more focused on T and A than anything resembling a story.
They offered me the position but I turned it down. I can’t contribute to one of the biggest problems in comics. I want to tell stories, not provide an excuse to draw scantily clad women.
I’m not trying to put myself on a pedestal or anything like that. They’re free to write what they want and draw what they want. I just have never encountered this problem first hand. It’s been an eye-opening experience.
Agustin Guerrero 