50-GIRLS-50 winner announced

Comic book publishers are quick to take your money on a weekly basis. I mean, it's not like they're evil entities or anything, but it's refreshing to see a publisher that gets the fans involved more. Or artists such as Frank Cho. Announced at San Diego Comic-Con, Cho mentioned that he and writer Doug Murray were looking for an artist for their upcoming work 50-GIRLS-50. Inspired artists were encouraged to send in their perception of a page from the comic and the amount of entries was overwhelming. "The number and quality of the submissions really blew me away. I mean, I knew there were a lot of talented comic artists out there, but I hadn’t expected so many to try this out," Murray said. "Judging was very difficult. We had to grade the entries on multiple counts: the fidelity to the model sheets produced by Frank, the story-telling displayed, the quality of the layouts—all of these factors came into play. We managed to pick the final four artists, but choosing a winner out of the four was extremely difficult since each artists had what we were looking for in terms of quality and clear storytelling skills. Frank and I went back and forth till the very last minute on who the winner should be, with Axel beating out the competition." The reason I'm telling you all this is because a winner has been chosen for the book. And the winner is... ...Axel Medellin. Medellin will be illustrating the book next year. He'll be working alongside Cho, using his characters and world designs. He won't be doing the covers as Cho will do those, but still, he gets to work WITH Cho. How awesome is that? Cho added, "Thank you all for the time and effort you put into this. Also for the simple humanity and kindness you showed each other within the various threads of the 50-GIRLS-50 blog. I was as impressed by that as I was by the artistry of your entries." The first issue is due in stores in early 2010 for $2.99. Full press release below. PRESS RELEASE - FRANK CHO AND DOUG MURRAY ANNOUNCE WINNER OF 50-GIRLS-50 TALENT SEARCH! LIBERTY MEADOWS and NEW ULTIMATES illustrator Frank Cho announces artist for upcoming series co-written by THE 'NAM legend Doug Murray! 3 November 2009 (Berkeley, CA) - For the past several months, LIBERTY MEADOWS creator Frank Cho and THE 'NAM writer Doug Murray have searched for the artist to illustrate their all new miniseries, 50 GIRLS 50. Today they're proud to announce the search is over with winner Axel Medellin! "The number and quality of the submissions really blew me away. I mean, I knew there were a lot of talented comic artists out there, but I hadn’t expected so many to try this out," Murray said. "Judging was very difficult. We had to grade the entries on multiple counts: the fidelity to the model sheets produced by Frank, the story-telling displayed, the quality of the layouts—all of these factors came into play. We managed to pick the final four artists, but choosing a winner out of the four was extremely difficult since each artists had what we were looking for in terms of quality and clear storytelling skills. Frank and I went back and forth till the very last minute on who the winner should be, with Axel beating out the competition." Axel Medellin will be illustrating next year's 50-GIRLS-50 based off a story conceived and co-written by Cho and Murray. In addition, he will be working alongside Cho as he works off the NEW ULTIMATES illustrator's character and world designs. Cho will also be providing covers for every issue. Cho added, "Thank you all for the time and effort you put into this. Also for the simple humanity and kindness you showed each other within the various threads of the 50-GIRLS-50 blog. I was as impressed by that as I was by the artistry of your entries." 50-GIRLS-50, a full-color 32-page comic book for $2.99, will be released in early 2010. Image Comics is a comics and graphic novels publisher formed in 1992 by a collective of best-selling artists. Since that time, Image has gone on to become one of the largest comics publishers in the United States. There are currently five partners in Image Comics (Robert Kirkman, Erik Larsen, Todd McFarlane, Marc Silvestri, and Jim Valentino), and Image is currently divided into four major houses (Todd McFarlane Productions, Top Cow Productions, Shadowline, and Image Central). Image comics and graphic novels cover nearly every genre, sub-genre, and style imaginable, offering science fiction, romance, horror, crime fiction, historical fiction, humor, and more by the finest artists and writers working in the medium today. Visit www.imagecomics.com.

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