Back on Wednesday evening (Aug. 2), comic book scribe Warren Ellis, in one of his "Bad Signal" emails, announced his involvement in a new webcomics venture called "Rocket Pirates."  Created by Joey Manley, the site had an open submissions policy.  Ellis (whose recent work includes Fell from Image and Nextwave from Marvel), announced that he would edit the site.

However, just two weeks later, Ellis sent another Bad Signal informing the comic book world that he'd received more than twice the number of submissions he'd expected.  Because of that volume and his current work load, he's "temporarily" stopped accepting submissions for Rocket Pirates.  The full text of the Bad Signal annoucement follows:

ROCKET PIRATES Update: SUBMISSIONS CLOSED

I didn't want to have to do this, but I've now received something over
600 submissions, which is more than double what I expected.  It's insane.  Twenty more appear every time I open Gmail.  And it's now preventing me from getting on with the business of opening the site.

So I'm declaring a temporary but open-ended closure on submissions. 
I'll open submissions again in a few months, probably, but I'm in danger
right now of losing crucial work time to sorting through submissions, and, with half a dozen comics projects and two tv projects of my own, I can't afford to do that.

This doesn't apply to people I've already spoken to individually about
work.  Misha/Leslie, this doesn't apply to you either.  Everyone else, I'm
afraid, is going to have to wait until I've got the place up and running.

I'm aware there are a couple of hundred people still waiting for
responses from me -- I'll get to you eventually, I swear.  In at least ten cases, it's your own fault for sending me 15-meg zipfiles.  But now I need to get on with the process of assembling the site and proceeding towards launch.  Which is the point, after all.

Please spread this far and wide.

-- w