Contact

For questions about buying comics or merchandise, or information about the website, please email shop.underfire@btinternet.com

Underfire Comics seems to function in a number of different ways and while we are always interested in meeting new artists and writers you may find it useful to know a few things about who we are and what we do before getting in touch.

Artistic Support Group

Primarily, Underfire Comics are a group of like-minded comics creators who mostly live in Brighton and function as a writers’/artists’-circle-come-support-group. Which is to say, we get together and talk about comics in the pub. If you live in or near Brighton and want to get involved then by far and away the best thing to do is come and join us – bring some work along for feedback, or just bring some ideas and see what people think. If you fancy coming along send an email to the address above to find out when the next meeting is happening.

Incidentally, if you live in the Brighton area you may also be interested in Cartoon County, who stage a monthly pub meet for comic book people in the South East – individual members of Underfire occasionally make it to that too so we might see you around.

Rapid Fire

More formally, and with the recent relaunch of the Rapid Fire anthology, we are looking for writers and artists to work on stand-alone short stories for inclusion. Scripts and art samples, or even finished comics, should be sent to editor Bob Molesworth (specialattak@yahoo.co.uk) who will get back to you as soon as he is able.

There are no content guidelines as such for Rapid Fire – only that your idea is an idea worth having. Underfire Comics was started by inveterate rulebreakers who had only one rule – ‘no superheroes’ – and in the intervening years we seem to have taken that as a challenge rather than a guideline. Length should be in the five to ten page region, and self contained stories are better – while we may consider ongoing strips there needs to be a really good reason for us to include it. We’re interested in good stories by people who genuinely want to improve and are willing to challenge themselves artistically. We’ll give advice where we can to make sure that everything is the best that it can be, and we’ll do our best to find artists for scripts and scripts for artists so feel free to get in touch even if you are not yet part of a creative team.

Rapid Fire is not a paying market by any stretch of the imagination – this is comics for the love, not for the money. We hope to be able to maintain a publishing schedule of twice yearly.

Bigger Projects

The Rapid Fire anthology is intended as a showcase for all the good ideas that don’t normally make it into comics – small press or otherwise – because comics as a medium is all too often focused on the grand narrative, the never-ending story arc and the world shattering event (that curiously leaves the world much the same in its wake). The thing is, we’re all comic fans ourselves – so we can’t help but want to write those sort of stories too.

Within the Underfire auspices we’ve published a number of creator owned series as well as working on larger, group projects. These include:

Dreamtime
Operation Black Jet
Mountain Rex
Frequent Flyers
HDKD! and Tokyo Gonzo
Rock Night

The group projects are something we tend to come up with, plan and write as part of the artistic support group function of the collective and as such we probably won’t be interested in submissions or grand ideas, although we do sometimes need extra artists who have a proven track record. However, the best way to get involved with Underfire is with Rapid Fire in the first instance to get a feel for the way we work and the sort of stories that we like to tell.

Unfortunately, much as we’d like to be, Underfire is not a publisher in the commercial sense, and we can’t print your comics for you. If you like us, and like the things that we’re doing, and want us to help you out with any of the technical, marketing or quality control stuff for your own series or stand-alone then we’d be happy to give advice as best we can. Ultimately however, you will have to pay for and print your own comics.

If we don’t have money then what we do have is a massive belief in self-publishing, in the principles of the small and underground press and in the joys of telling the best stories you can precisely because you can. For more information about going it alone read our guide to self-publishing in comics [link coming soon].

Oh yeah. And about that ‘no superheroes’ rule. We’re about to break it. Properly.