Kids Comics Pitchfest Showcase
Comics creators from around the world submit their unpublished projects to be previewed online by editors and agents. A panel of judges (click here to see the juror list) select the top pitches. Projects are archived here so that industry pros may view them and discover new talent.
Out of This World Things I Saw in Strangerwood
Max Turner prefers playing games on his phone to playing baseball. When his teammates gang up on him and break his phone, he runs off into Strangerwood to escape. There he meets an overly friendly dog and rescues an alien goat thing from vicious living meteorites. The goat thing turns out to be Capricorn, a Zodiac Lord, ancient defender of Earth. He’s in a weakened state and needs Max’s help to escape the meteorites and return to the other Zodiac Lords. Luckily, Max has his baseball bat. And luckier still, Emily from school arrives in time to save them both—and her dog. They discover that an eccentric billionaire’s Space Elevator, being built in the middle of Strangerwood, is sapping the earth’s atmospheric defences, and must be destroyed.
Age Range:
Middle GradeGenre:
Adventure, Mythology/Folklore, Science FictionPage Count Estimate:
180
My Why:
Strangerwood is inspired by my teenage son (who, like Max, prefers his phone to sport), my daughter’s pet goat (who, like Capricorn, is a weird little guy), and our shared love of nature. We all explore nearby forests (the goat comes too), and marvel at the amazing biodiversity of the natural environment. But while we’re there we also have fun breaking old branches and rolling boulders down slopes! This real life experience and sense of adventure and fun helped Strangerwood win a manuscript consultation in the 2021 Book Links Mentorship, and is the reason it has been called ‘fantastic’ by my mentor, Ben Hatke (creator of Zita the Spacegirl).
Louis Decrevel
Louis Decrevel lives with his family in South Australia, where he helped colour Ben Hatke's Eisner-winning graphic novel ‘Little Robot.’ In 2022 he won an ASA Mentorship and a KidlitGN prize. In 2021 he won a Faber Writing Academy Scholarship, and was runner up for both the Book Links Mentorship and the New England Illustration Prize. For his Master of Illustration at UniSA, he wrote a thesis exploring the interplay of text and image. He likes piña coladas and getting caught in the rain.