Your comic should be complete by now. You have all of the pages laid out; any ads that you are going to place in it should now be arranged. Call up your local hair barber and tell him to get his lazy ass up and write you a check. Producing a comic isn't cheap!

You're proud or your idea, the plot is good, the characters were created well. The comic cover could catch anyone's eye, even at a comic convention. You have great hopes for the sales, and you're ready to publish. But before publishing, you need to make sure you copyright your work.

What a shame it would be if you sent out your comic to many people and you forgot to copyright it; and a person came along and took everything from the comic that you had worked so hard on and claimed it for themselves. To copyright something, all you have to do is simply place a notice on the first page or so stating, "Title Of Comic is copyright The Date to Your Name, all rights reserved." Now (filling in the variables), that's a perfect copyright. But to go even further, and to make it official, contact the copyrighting association for American work. (Go to a search engine and look up copyright) It costs about $50 to make it official. Of course, simply claiming a copyright on your work legally will work.

You should have contacted the printing press from last tutorial and have set up a date to print your comic. If all dates worked out to plan, then that date should be pretty soon after completion of the comic. Take that loan from the bank and head down to the publisher, don't waste time either.

Distributing can be a tricky part for any comic. Your best bet is to promote your work, as discussed in the last tutorial, and submit your comic to Diamond Distribution.

It's been a long journey, and you didn't even think you could do it. But you followed the little tips and tricks to good comic development. You pulled your finger out of your buttocks and you didn't waste your time, letting another year slip by. You should be proud of yourself, even if you comic doesn't sell good.

Good luck on great sales and a successful comic career. Check back soon for more tutorials on comic creating. Get more tips on keeping your comic alive, adding new spicy twists to the plot and more.

- Joseph Lookabaugh