Submission Guidlines

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Art Guidelines:

First and foremost prospective art submissions should be made by those with artist talent. It should be a work that you're proud enough to have posted for the public to see. Of course, what exactly constitutes good artwork is very subjective. Beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder!

General Art Guidelines:

Pictures should be of characters who have appeared on the site, be they characters we have created or those from Champions material.

Pictures can be either straight poses such as on the Biography pages, or action shots. We have no preference for either in this area. If you're really ambitious try a group action shot!

Submissions should be tasteful in nature, as in no nudity, no sexually suggestive poses or situations. Pictures shouldn't be any more objectionable than mainstream comics and ones that you wouldn't mind children seeing.

Photo-manipulations are acceptable. Unless impossible, credit should be given to the original picture.

Black and white submissions are acceptable. The paper copies of most of our pictures (and all recent) are in black and white and later colored on the computer. We can always color them in later if necessary.

Pictures should be submitted in JPG format. Almost all the pics on our site are in this format. Submission can be larger than what you see on the site in size. All our pictures start out larger and then are resampled for posting on the site.

The writing guidelines are a bit more stringent in nature. First and foremost, writing enthusiasm and ability are a must. Proper use of grammar, sentence structure, and spelling are very important. A story that has to be heavily edited to the point of virtually re-writing it is not of much use to us. Although we do expect to have to edit them. Each of our stories are edited numerous times by each of us before being posted. Do not feel threatened by the editing process, because we will make changes.

The above is not intended to sound mean or cruel. It is just a simple fact that some people have the talent to write (or draw) and some don't. Muskateer can write and draw, while I can write but couldn't draw something acceptable to save my life. We simply don't want to waste your time or our time on something that's just not going to pan out.

All stories should be set in our world and we reserve final editing privileges for any story to be posted on the site. Final editing privileges include, bit are not limited to, the following points:

Major characters are subject to complete rewrites as far as dialogue and actions go. We simply know our characters much better than anyone else and may have to adjust things to make them consistent. This happens frequently in the stuff we do as well. I might write a scene that Muskateer appears in, but he'll usually come along and adjust it to his tastes. Many times it's not what the character says, but rather how they say it that gets changed.

Some characters have stricter guidelines than others do. The more a character has appeared, the less likely that you'll have the chance to use them. Conversely, the less a character has appeared, the more freedom you would have with them. You can create new characters and heroes for your stories, but when possible existing Champions villains should be used. There are now literally hundreds of villains created for Champions and at least one should fit your needs. Creating a new a villain should only be a last resort. If you don't know of a villain that might fit what you need, contact us with as much detail as possible and we can suggest a few.

For example, if you want to write about Ms. Liberty, a heroine set in Miami; it's perfectly acceptable to create her as a new character. However, the villains she encounters should be drawn from Champions works as much as possible. This is not a hard and fast rule, but just a general guideline. New characters should be designed under Champions rules and submitted for our approval including powers and personality in advance. Characters without pictures need in-depth descriptions, but full editing option is retained by us. Muskateer does all non-existing character designs and due to the nature of the process, it is open to interpretation and changes.

Stories set in the current timeframe are under more stringent approval requirements than stories set in the past. There is a great deal of fertile territory that can be mined for stories set in the past. Please note, this can be the recent past, as little as a few days or weeks ago in the timeline.

Character availability is also something to keep in mind. A character, hero or villain may not be available for use at a particular time. This can either be due to the said character appearing elsewhere or a character that we plan to use in the near future in one of our current titles.

As an example, the supervillainess Howler would currently be off limits as she's playing a major role in Young Champions right now. Likewise the villain group PLUNDER couldn't be used, as I know they are going to be appearing in an issue of Troubleshooters in the near future.

Lastly, stories should be limited to 1 to 3 issues story arcs and submitted in TXT format (although we will certainly entertain larger stories which are done well). You can include formatting notes and even HTML code if you want certain parts presented a certain way. Issue size should be around 20-30K in length. Most of these stories will be presented under our amalgamated title, Troubleshooters.

An outline and synopsis should be submitted before doing any actual writing. This proposal should include which characters you want to use, where and when the story is going to take place, and what villains you wish to make use of. Include a rough outline of the story covering what's going to happen.

That will get the process started. From there we can fine-tune the story and figure out if certain characters you want to use are available. A few paragraphs of actual writing wouldn't hurt either.

The more comfortable we become with someone's writing style the easier the process will become for everyone. Right now you're working to earn our trust. The characters on the site are like our children and we're each very overprotective parents. We're not going to let just anyone play in our sandbox with us. This information should not dissuade someone from writing, just that we have plans and ideas for most of our characters and we will be looking to make sure that anything new fits our concepts.

It would be impossible to cover every situation and contingency on this page. If there is something that we have not covered, just ask! Also check out the Letters Page message board where other questions were asked and answered.