Tango9: Love and War

Cardigan Comics is open for submissions of comics work to Tango9: Love and War, the next issue of Tango, the giant Australian romance comics anthology.  The above image is of course reverently swiped from the great Harvey Kurtzman's cover to 'Frontline Combat' (1952), published by Entertaining Comics.

Tango9: Love and War will be released in December 2009, as will be The Tango Collection, a compendium of stories selected from the first 8 issues of Tango.  Allen & Unwin, the Australian book publisher, will publish The Tango Collection. Cardigan Comics will publish Tango9: Love and War.

There will be more information in due course, but here are some tin tacks:

*please be someone from Australia or New Zealand in order to submit (we are also susceptible to tenuous connections to these countries, so always give it a shot)

 *the page size of the book will be 175mm wide x 240mm long (the book size will be 180mm x 240mm - 5mm is added at the centre by the creation of the spine)

*the 'art area' on each page will be 155mm wide x 215mm (this gives a good border between your work and the edge of the page, space at the bottom of the page for author name and page number)

*of course ignore the above 'art area' idea if you want to, and particularly if you want to bleed your work, that is, take the art all the way to the edge of the page.  If you do this please provide registration marks with your art files that show where the art sits on the 175mm x 240mm page.  And please 'bleed' your work 5mm past the page edge, to guarantee that your art will go all the way to the edge.

 *stories can be 1-8 pages in length.  Any longer than this, and you'll need to discuss it with me bernard@cardigancomics.com

 *black and white artwork 

 *digital format submission options and file naming protocols are as follows:

• pure black and white artwork (ie no tones, no washes) - scan as a 'bitmap' at 600dpi and save as a .tiff
• if there is tone or wash in the artwork - scan as 'greyscale' at 300 dpi and save as a .tiff
• filenaming - all lower case, no spaces, like so: (surname)(story name)(page number).tiff  (Thus the files for my three page strip 'Battlegrounds' would be called caleobattlep1.tiff, caleobattlep2.tiff, and caleobattlep.3.tiff)

 *if you intend to contribute, please let me know bernard@cardigancomics.com

 *deadline for submissions: Monday 31 August 2009

*you won't get any money for being in Tango, but you will get an author's copy of the book and for a week or so thereafter (this effect may last longer), you will glow.  Glow.

So get thinking, get drawing, get reading, get writing.  Love and War.   It's a very rich theme for telling stories in comic book form.  Enlist.  Conscientiously object. Go to town.  Enter the trenches. Go behind enemy lines. Fly the planes. Cry, kiss, roar, hug, laugh, stab, fight, run, surrender, defy, embrace.

And don't forget that Tango is a romance comics anthology. Our formula for 'romance' over here at Cardigan Comics is this: love + adventure.  Got it?  

Love + adventure = romance.

Tango9: Love and War