Top Cow's annual Talent Hunt is back for a third year, and the company's President and Chief Operating Officer Matt Hawkins is once again looking for budding writers and artists to add their talents to the publisher, a partner studio of Image Comics founded in 1992 by Marc Silvestri.

This year's Talent Hunt seeks to hire two writers and two artists to contribute to Top Cow in 2015 or 2016. Writers and artists must not have had previous work at a major publisher. The full rules can be downloaded via this link, along with five sample scripts for artists to use and the submission agreement.

This year, the CBR Community will be hosting the official Top Cow Talent Hunt discussion thread -- the one linked to in this post -- for those participating looking to converse about their entries, or to ask questions directly to Hawkins.

"Getting published in comics has never been simultaneously easier and harder than it is now," Hawkins told CBR. "The barrier to entry is lower than it ever has been for self-publishing with digital, crowdfunding and print-on-demand technologies, but this is a hard road to make a living at."

Last year's Top Cow Talent Hunt had 1,500 entries. For Hawkins, the program -- which has yielded multiple stories over the past two years -- is a unique opportunity within the comic book industry for both creators and publishers.

"On the other side of the more established publishers, most are closed shops without a means for new writers to submit material for review," he said. "TV studios have writer programs to bring new blood in. Film execs have people to read spec scripts. The comic industry has nothing like this. I love our talent hunt and see it as one of the few options a new writer has in getting their work read. We look forward for doing it for years to come."

A full list of published work by Top Cow Talent Hunt winners -- including long-time CBR columnist Hannibal Tabu -- follows:

  • Artifacts #33 - Written by Kenny Porter, Art by -ROM- Darkness et Folly
  • Artifacts #34 - Written by Eugene Ward, Art by Martin Gimenez
  • Artifacts #35 - Written by Hannibal Tabu
  • Witchblade #175 - Backup Story written by Ashley Victoria Robinson
  • Aphrodite IX/Cyberforce #1 - Backup Story written by Joey Cruz
  • Artifacts #38 - Written by Devon Wong, Art by Isaac Goodhart
  • Artifacts #39 - Written by Raven Heisenberg, Art by Gustavo Brocanello
  • Witchblade Case Files #1 - Backup story written by Jed McPherson, Backup Story art by Mike Crawford
  • Artifacts #40 - Written by Steven Foxe (backup story by Jim Mitchell), Art by Adalor Alvarez (backup art by Fabian Quintero)
  • Magdalena: Seventh Sacrament #1 - Written by Tini Howard, Art by Aileen Oracion, Backup Story art by Phillip Sevy

Top Cow's Talent Hunt opens today, and runs through March 15.