Marvel Comics announced this morning that it has halted unsolicited submissions while it reviews its policy.

A new submissions policy is expected to be announced "in the near future." In the meantime, company representatives will continue to recruit artists through the talent department, and conduct portfolio reviews at conventions.

Talent Liaison C.B. Cebulski had first revealed last week on Twitter that Marvel was revising its approach to submissions.

Amid a flurry of tips for aspiring creators and a mention of the new policy, Cebulski wrote, "Just so no one gets their hopes up, the new Marvel submissions policies are only going to make breaking in that much harder, folks."

In a press release posted today on Marvel's submissions page, Cebulski said the publisher found that open submissions have been the least-effective way to discover new talent: "So instead we'll be continuing with the more 'proactive' methods of artist and writer discovery that we've found so successful of late, including some soon-to-be-announced new outlets."

Just how ineffective have open submissions been for Marvel? "Disturbing but eye-opening fact: No writer or artist has been hired through a cold submission mailed into Marvel in recent memory," Cebulski wrote Feb. 14 on Twitter. That was followed by, "Upon intense review, we discovered that almost all new talent hired by Marvel over the past five years has come through 'word-of-mouth.'"