Alex Heizer

Last night I received word via my Twitter friend, Erik, that I was one of the winners of a contest held over the summer by ShonenJUMP magazine. SJ publishes manga (Japanese comics) chapters in a Japanese weekly edition and an international monthly edition, to introduce some of the manga they publish worldwide. The contest was based on creating a 4-page “name” (the manga word for “storyboard”, or rough layout which shows how a manga story will flow) of the summer adventures of a 13-year old who wants to be a movie star in New York City.

Since the magazine didn’t hit the stores until today, you can imagine I was dancing impatiently all night. Even in my dreams once I settled down enough to sleep! So first order of business for the day was a trip to the store to pick up a bunch of copies. I got 6 and left the other 6 so locals could bask in our collective awesomeness.

I know what my brothers and parents are getting for Christmas this year!!

I am very proud of having my story published. I also have to give thanks to my best friend Michelle, an incredibly talented writer, for her help with a point in the plot that really turned it into a winning story, plus some dialog suggestions which made everyone a bit less nerdy!  I am also ecstatic that my story appears nestled between two chapters of Bleach! Total. Win.

There was one grand prize winner and three equal runners-up. Congratulations also go out to Sires B. Black, Ray Negron and Sarah for their great stories! While I was not the grand prize winner, the editor SASAKI Hisashi’s comments were better than I could have hoped for:

“It was a little ambitious to attempt a road movie style story that changes scenes four times in four pages, but the artist succeeded. The storyline was easy to read and understand. This is a very important aspect to manga. It made me think that it would be interesting to read a 40 page one-shot based on this story.”

I also think it will be interesting to see, and am looking forward to all of us, including Sasaki-san, seeing it as a full story.

Below is the comments page, plus all four of my original pages Like traditional manga, it reads mirror image to American comics (top right to bottom left of the page).

I just found out my storyboard for the @shonenjump Bakuman contest made it into this month’s issue!

Available early to subscribers, I won’t see it until Thursday, but a friend on Twitter sent me a congratulations. There were four winners: A grand prize and three runners-up, all of which got published. The grand prize got their entire story printed, while the runners-up got one page. Unfortunately, I’m a runner-up, but it’s still a great honor to be recognized by ShonenJUMP for my work.

I’ll post pictures when I am able to get the issue.