What is this?

Perfect Crime Party is going to be a light-hearted anthology about committing the perfect crime. What is the perfect crime? That’s up to you! It could be something over-the-top, like a Clue-style whodunnit. It could be an elaborate heist. Or it could also be something more down-to-earth, like a teen’s first anxiety-wracked shoplifting, or environmentalists illegally planting native flora on city property.

Who’s involved?

We’ve already got some great creators conspiring with us on this book!

What we want

Perfect Crime Party will be a full-color, all-comic anthology. Each story will be between 4 and 20 pages in length. The desired contents are:

Campy whodunnits like the movie Clue.
Cozy mysteries like Miss Marple stories.
Elaborate heists like an episode of Leverage.
Teen hijinx involving petty crime.
Acts of protest that are technically illegal.

Just keep thing lighter in tone!

What we don’t want

Submissions from creators under the age of 18.
Pin-ups and prose submissions. This anthology will exclusively feature comics.
Excessively graphic content. Submissions to the anthology must be equivalent to a PG-13 or soft R movie rating. No frequent “hard” profanity or erotica will be accepted.
Proposals from incomplete creative teams. If you’re an artist without a writer, or a writer without an artist, please find a partner before submitting your proposal. Iron Circus Comics can’t play matchmaker. (Single-creator submissions are fine. We don’t prefer multi-person teams over single creators, or vice-versa.)
Fanfic, fan art, or pastiche. Please don’t submit stories using intellectual property you don’t own, or stories that are clearly referential of such work / take place in the same universe or reality.
Copaganda. Anyone investigating a depicted crime should be a private detective or civilian. We want Murder She Wrote, not Law and Order.
True (violent) crime. While a lot of us at Iron Circus enjoy a good true crime story, its inclusion beside the lighter-toned works we imagine this book will mostly be composed of risks making a mockery of victims.
Real names/places/events. Seriously, don’t snitch! If your submission is based on a true story, fictionalize it to a fault!

PAYMENT

Perfect Crime Party will pay contributing teams a page rate of $75, plus ten contributor’s copies per creator and the perpetual right to buy copies of the anthology for 50% off the cover price for as long as the comic is in print. There will also be a bonus to page rates for all contributors if the Kickstarter campaign meets stretch goals.

CREATORS’ RIGHTS

Creators submit stories to Perfect Crime Party with the understanding that, if accepted, they are ceding exclusive first worldwide rights to the story for a full calendar year from the date of publication, and non-exclusive worldwide reprint rights in perpetuity. Intellectual property rights will remain in the hands of the creator.

We don’t want your characters or concepts, just your comics.

PRODUCTION

Submissions are opening NOW. Click here to submit!
Submissions close May 31, 2023.
Successful applicants will be announced June 30, 2023.
Final art will be due April 15, 2024.
Book is scheduled to ship Fall 2024 / Winter 2025.

If your submission is accepted, the final art must be designed to fit standard American graphic novel dimensions: 6.625″ × 10.25″. What this means for your production process depends on your choice of medium, but the following guides may be useful.

For more information, consult Blambot’s page on the subject.

FAQ

What material will we need to submit for consideration?

Submissions are open now. Use this Google form to submit. Prospective participants will be required to provide:

The names and emails of all creators involved in the story
The title of the proposed story
A summary of the proposed story, which includes the beginning, the middle, and the end
A predicted page count (estimates are fine)
Portfolio links for the proposed participants, which may also include any preparatory sketches done for the proposal, although this is not required

Each participant will also acknowledge and agree to a release, which will be part of the Google form.

What level of ability will you be looking for in submissions?

This is a professional publishing project. Writing and art will have to meet our standards of quality. Please browse our previous anthology efforts to get an idea of what we consider acceptable.

I’m not American. Can I still submit to this anthology?

Sure!

Can I submit more than one proposal? I have multiple good ideas!

Yes, but please, no more than three per creator/creative team. We want your best ideas, not every idea you have.

I have an already-finished comic that fits this prompt perfectly. Would you be willing to consider it?

Only so long as it truly fits the original prompt, follows the stated guidelines, and has never been physically published before. (online publication as a webcomic or portfolio piece is fine.)

What age group will this anthology be meant for?

YA (Young Adult) and up. “Hard” swears (F***, C***) should be limited and nudity should be non-sexual.

Is the page rate per comic, or per team member?

Per comic. If the anthology finishes its crowdfund with a $100 page rate, that page rate will be universal, regardless of the size of the creative teams. A comic with three contributing creators won’t make $300 per page.

What about intellectual property rights? Are you buying those from selected stories?

No. Participation in Perfect Crime Party cedes universal first publication rights to Iron Circus for a period of one year, and general publication rights in perpetuity.

What that means in practice is that only ICC and no one else will be permitted to sell your story in the agreed format (as part of an anthology) for one calendar year, and will be permitted to continue to sell your story in that format until the heat death of the universe, non-exclusively. After that initial year concludes, you can put your submission on Gumroad, sell it to a different anthology, stick it up on itch.io with pay-what-you-want pricing, print it as a mini for cons, anything you like.

And ICC is not purchasing intellectual property rights. If Guillermo del Toro decides he needs to make a movie out of a story we’ve published in Perfect Crime Party, he’ll have to go to you, not us. ICC exclusively publishes creator-owned comics.

CONTACT US

If you have any questions about this project which have not been addressed here, you can contact the coordinators at [email protected]. Please read this page in its entirety before emailing.