Greetings from Iraq,

We have a lot of support from the Army, including a link from their main site. We're also getting much support from several established veteran's groups because of our desire to specialize in helping veterans of the desert wars. To draw service members to our endeavor, we have conceived a cartoon strip to be called 'The Misadventures of Sgt Scorpion'. This will poke fun at life in the Army and the war in Iraq. Not anti-war in any way, just having fun at some of the silly things the Army makes us do here, and making light of the hardships of duty.

Please let us introduce you to Sgt Scorpion:

Sgt Scorpion in Full Battle Rattle...ready for combat.

 

We are in need of an illustrator to create our comics. We want him to be a half human-half scorpion military soldier. Strong, but not a superhero…just a normal soldier. We've chosen the scorpion to represent the desert here. We intend to do an on-going monthly cartoon, and if things go well, we may increase that to weekly.

Therefore…we have our plan; all we need is an artist, which is hopefully the reason for your visit to this page. For our Sgt Scorpion comics, we will do the creative part, writing the scenarios and trouble he gets into, and tell you exactly what we require for the comic. You'll just have to do the art work. We want it to be a single-scene comic in black & white and have the look & feel of a newspaper's political cartoon.

We put out some feelers and had several dozen illustrators contact us wanting the job. Most of these were patriotic and were very excited about working on such a project. In fact, we became overwhelmed with the replies and excitement about this endeavor. As we went through the online portfolios of these wonderful Americans and even a Canadian…we realized it was going to be too arduous to pick one. We were also thinking about the financial burden of this venture. The quotes we've received thus far have been between $50-$80 cost for each comic. The problem is will be getting started; we really need 10 or 15 comics up to make the site presentable. That would be $1000 right off the top. This is completely funded by soldiers serving in Iraq and we have no outside money, nor income from the site yet.

Sgt Scorpion in the Army Physical Fitness Uniform (PTs)

Therefore, we came up with a solution which we hope will solve both the problem of picking an artist, and that of getting the page started. We have decided to run a contest to pick the regular artist. What we ask of you is to email us for an assignment. We'll give you a Sgt Scorpion scenario and let you take off with it and create the comic.We'll post each one along with your name and a link to your site. Starting 1 November 2005, we'll allow visitors to the site vote for their favorite artist. On 1 December 2005 we will tally the votes and announce the winner. The winner will receive $100 and the permanent job. All other entries will be considered donated work and we will offer a $100 donation receipt for your tax purposes upon request.

You may request more than one Sgt Scorpion story line and enter the contest as many times as you wish.

The artists that donate a comic to us can take satisfaction that they are bringing a much needed smile to the faces of the troops here in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan even if they don't win the final prize.

With your help, I'm sure we can make Sgt Scorpion something very special to all us soldiers.

Thank you for your time.

Wayne Foster
Co-Founder: DesertVets.org
SgtFoster@DesesrtVets.org