so what is an independent comic?

ztoical

It was mentioned on this thread that the what comic are you reading thread seems to be focused on independent comics. Looking through the last couple of posts on the that thread the only independent title that really jumped out at me was "the last bus". So it got me thinking - what exactly do people class as an
"independent" and what as a so called "mainstream"? this comes up alot in Manga with people very divided over wither the OEL mangas [original english langauge] should count as real manga or not as they are not japanese in origin [theres quite a number of very heated blog and forum posts on this around the web]

Looking through the what comic are you reading thread I tend to see alot of titles like Fables, Y the last man, 100 bullets, the Umbrella academy etc come up alot and I'm wondering do people see these as mainstream or independent comics? Do people class publishers such as IDW, Dark Horse, Oini, Slave labour graphics, Top Shelf, first second books, fantagraphics and so on as independent, mainstream or something else? Hands up who thinks of mainstream being only Marvel and DC or being only superhero themed books?

What about manga? is that a totally different kettle of fish? Or BD's [bandes dessinees or french comics]? I would never count BD's as independent as there are some massive BD publishers in France that make the likes of Marvel look small.

Saruwatari

Well, obviously Marvel and DC are mainstream. I'd probably go as far as saying Dark Horse and Image are as well, though both were fairly indy only a few years back now...

Fysh

Heh, talk about cat among the pigeons. For my money independent means not through an established publishing house, but that's just me. There seems to be a lot of support for the idea that "mainstream = superheroes" but that's inherited from the north-american view, I think. To me certainly, mainstream comics encompasses the likes of Tintin, The Beano, The Dandy (or Dandy Xtreme as it's known now), 2000AD, alongside anything from any of the big publishers (which includes all the ones you mentioned and a whole bunch more). I'd consider the likes of Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly alternative rather than independent, but just like in music there's an assumption that mainstream and independent really are reliable indicators of the content whereas the reality is anything but.

Jack B. Badd

Fysh wrote: »

but just like in music there's an assumption that mainstream and independent really are reliable indicators of the content whereas the reality is anything but.

Damn him, Fysh just stole my argument while I was typing my post and still managed to put it more concisely than I.

I'd ask for a definition of "independent" in relation to comics but I get the feeling the answer would annoy me as much as service providers' definition of "unlimited" :rolleyes: As far as I'm concerned "independent" is independent of the major publishing houses (not just Marvel/DC).

magwea

I see three different meanings of independent being used in comics: simply as a synonymous self-publishers or small solo boutique publishers; as Saruwatari said anything that isn't from the big two and might include Image and DH whish is probably the most common view in comics; any comic that doesn't have men in tights, the comics mainstream in the north American tradition. Most of the time its easy enough to tell which meaning independent is being used, its still a pretty useless way of describing a comic, though thankfully at least not on the scale of the graphic novel.

Some quick questions of my own.

Can anyone name a someone who calls themselves an independent cartoonist, artist, creater, writer?

Anyone know how the French categorize their BD?

Did the ISER not do a show on this topic, anyone remember the show number, night be relevant.

ztoical

magwea wrote: »

Can anyone name a someone who calls themselves an independent cartoonist, artist, creater, writer?

In what context do you mean? I know alot of people who would called themselves and independent artist even ones that have work published regularly by one of the big two.

magwea wrote: »

Anyone know how the French categorize their BD?

Do you mean categorize in the way that manga is categorized into all the sub groups or something else?

magwea wrote: »

Did the ISER not do a show on this topic, anyone remember the show number, night be relevant.

Do you mean indie spinner rack? They did a show recently on distribution which covered a little bit of this or is ISER a different podcast [or am I way off and your not taking about a podcast at all]


I guess the reason I asked the question is that I find most people on here seem to put anything not Marvel or DC into the independent cat and I was wondering how many people would put the likes of manga, BD's, and none superhero comics into that group. I heard someone recently refer to the Flight books as independent but they are published by random house which is the largest book publisher in the world. Is it just something we've got into a habbit as using in the generic sense to describe anything thats not marvel or dc?

brianthebard

Good thread op.I agree with what fysh said although i have to add another category of independent comic;the webcomic!Indeed these are often more truly 'independent'than most since they don't depend on a 3rd party publisher.Agree/disagree?

ztoical

brianthebard wrote: »

Agree/disagree?

yes and no - I think most webcomics would count as indie but you've the subscription sites like Modern Tales or GirlAmatic which have editors for the site who pick the comics.

livingtargets

Ah I don`t think all superhero comics are all the type comics made by the "big boys" .Sure,look no further than Rob Curley and Will Sliney`s Atomic Rocketgroup 66 for proof.

And also(even if this strays a wee bit off topic...)I think it`s unfair to say every Marvel/DC comic is crap.There are many fine comics and talents being shown by these publishers(check out any Detective Comic with Dustin Nuygiven`s art to see what I mean.)

Fysh

livingtargets wrote: »

Ah I don`t think all superhero comics are all the type comics made by the "big boys" .Sure,look no further than Rob Curley and Will Sliney`s Atomic Rocketgroup 66 for proof.

It's fair to say that there's a lot of variety within the genre of superheroics. I think it's more the case that because the Big Two made their name in superhero comics specifically, and are explicitly associated with them, that people seem to think "Superhero = marvel/DC". It's not helped by the way a lot of Image's early stuff was basically knocked off from Marvel but with more violence and stylised content, or the way so many superhero comics are commentaries/satires on comics from the Big Two. But on the other hand every now and again you get a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen which gives you a different context for the whole idea...

livingtargets wrote: »

And also(even if this strays a wee bit off topic...)I think it`s unfair to say every Marvel/DC comic is crap.There are many fine comics and talents being shown by these publishers(check out any Detective Comic with Dustin Nuygiven`s art to see what I mean.)

One thing we've been blessedly free of for the most part recently is the "superhero comics are crap"/"indie comics are for self-obsessed losers who never get laid" level of debate about the relative merits of different genres.

I think (maybe that should be hope) that most posters in the forum realise that neither genre nor publisher indicate quality - it's pretty much a matter of taste. Hopefully we'll continue to be free of that level of fanthink. Having a personal preference for, say, Marvel over DC is one thing - insisting that a comic published by DC must be awful because it's not published by Marvel is another thing entirely, and a pretty stupid one at that.

Back to the webcomics thing - I'd say that in a certain sense they are independent (except where provided via subscription services as ztoical mentioned) although depending on the level of the creators and their regularity of publishing they'd probably be a more comfortable fit in the "small press" area.

ztoical

livingtargets wrote: »

And also(even if this strays a wee bit off topic...)I think it`s unfair to say every Marvel/DC comic is crap.There are many fine comics and talents being shown by these publishers(check out any Detective Comic with Dustin Nuygiven`s art to see what I mean.)

I don't think its been said anywhere in this thread that Marvel/DC comics are crap [god knows I spend enough money on them] I think all areas of comics have their good and bad points. the thread was started simple to gage what people viewed as being independant comics when they use the word as it gets thrown around alot and there does seem to be a difference in what the word actually means.

magwea

ztoical wrote: »

In what context do you mean? I know alot of people who would called themselves and independent artist even ones that have work published regularly by one of the big two.

So like a freelancer then? I apologize for being unclear, however i still can't name of a single creator that calls themselves an independent and what would it mean exactly anyway, a glorified freelancer?

ztoical wrote: »

Do you mean categorize in the way that manga is categorized into all the sub groups or something else?

Apologizes again for being unclear, what i was trying to get at here was do the French have the same divide between "independent" and mainstream, or is this even an issue at all. I know Trondheim, Sfar along with a few others formed a collective to publish their more experimental books, were these guys seen as independent.

ztoical wrote: »

Do you mean indie spinner rack? They did a show recently on distribution which covered a little bit of this or is ISER a different podcast [or am I way off and your not taking about a podcast at all]

Sorry again for my confusion, I know Indie Spinner Rack did an early show were they set out there manifesto. I can't exactly remember what there definition of independent was, and it would be interesting to know, in the end the show is mostly about comics and artists that they like regardless of being seen as independent or not. And i thought ou were a listener.

ztoical wrote: »

I guess the reason I asked the question is that I find most people on here seem to put anything not Marvel or DC into the independent cat

I'd agree, this is the most common way that independent is used in comics, and i don't really see anything wrong with this per say, I'm no Eddie Campbell

Speaking of Campbell, started reading The Fate of the Artist yesterday. A delicious quote Hayly Campbell being interviewed about her father might be relevant.
Hayley:All the time he'd rant in his head about some internet f***wits. Sometimes he'd even meet one at a convention, or correspond by e-mail and arrive at an agreement regarding the imagined offense. But then he'd forget he'd done that and start getting pissed off all over again.
Interviewer:When you say he fell out with certain parties, what kind of disagreement are you referring to? Personal criticisms?
Hayley: Oh, nothing so sensible. It was usually about he definition of words. He'd say there was 'an absence of intellectual rigor and logical discipline'. So he'd just resolve to just use the words according to his own definition and f*** everybody else. Once you start doing that you're on the road to becoming a crank, or Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass.

Fysh

magwea, I think if you start talking about the individual creators being "independent" it becomes even harder to nail down a valid definition, given that people can work on more than one project at a time. I think that the general notion of "independent x" (where x is essentially any medium of art and/or entertainment) only really has meaning at the level of publication and distribution, because in that case the principle is to bypass the established mainstream publication and distribution companies in order to avoid the perceived restrictions that are assumed to be imposed on all projects moved through those companies.

So while I have no idea if Alan Nolan or Ian Whelan consider themselves "independents" as writers or artists, I'd safely say that Sancho is an independent comic. Ditto Bob Byrne's Mbleh and Mister Amperduke.

I don't like the idea of "independent = non-Marvel or DC" because, frankly, it suggests that comics still revolve around those two companies. Some independent comics are vying for the same audience with the same sort of material, but then you've also got a lot of stuff in independent comics that is completely different to what the Big Two are publishing and aimed at different audiences. A Mostly Marvel fan is hardly the target audience for Jimmy Corrigan or Black Hole, and likewise an Adrian Tomine/Daniel Clowes follower is unlikely to be considered the prime audience for DCU continuity-heavy comics. (Which is not to say they couldn't enjoy them, just that a publisher would be foolhardy to rely on their support when assessing the demand for new titles).

magwea

Fysh wrote: »

I think if you start talking about the individual creators being "independent" it becomes even harder to nail down a valid definition, given that people can work on more than one project at a time.

I'm with you there, seems like a misnomer to me.

Fysh wrote: »

I think that the general notion of "independent x" (where x is essentially any medium of art and/or entertainment) only really has meaning at the level of publication and distribution, because in that case the principle is to bypass the established mainstream publication and distribution companies in order to avoid the perceived restrictions that are assumed to be imposed on all projects moved through those companies.

Good definition, this sounds sensible and logical to my ears, but is this really the way most people use the term independent in comics.

Fysh wrote: »

A Mostly Marvel fan is hardly the target audience for Jimmy Corrigan or Black Hole, and likewise an Adrian Tomine/Daniel Clowes follower is unlikely to be considered the prime audience for DCU continuity-heavy comics.

Speaking of Random House and giant corporations who is it again that is publishing these cartoonists?

I like the Adrian Tomine/Daniel Clowes zing, intentional or not.

Fysh

magwea wrote: »

Speaking of Random House and giant corporations who is it again that is publishing these cartoonists? I like the Adrian Tomine/Daniel Clowes zing, intentional or not.

Re: Random House, Jonathan Cape etc - that's probably a better point to make in the context of the "Big Two = mainstream, independent = !Big Two" argument. The top selling TPB of 2007 is unlikely to have achieved sales anywhere near the top selling book from Random House. So it's a curious example of cultural isolation to have so many fans state the "independent = !Big Two" idea as though it were a self-evident fact.

I confess I'm not sure what you mean about the Tomine/Clowes zing - care to elaborate?

magwea

Fysh wrote: »

Re: Random House, Jonathan Cape etc - that's probably a better point to make in the context of the "Big Two = mainstream, independent = !Big Two" argument. The top selling TPB of 2007 is unlikely to have achieved sales anywhere near the top selling book from Random House.

Cultural isolation or ghetto.

Fysh wrote: »

So it's a curious example of cultural isolation to have so many fans state the "independent = !Big Two" idea as though it were a self-evident fact.

You got me confused there. Chris Ware and his cohorts are more succesful with the major publishers then say most direct market cartoonists.

Fysh wrote: »

I confess I'm not sure what you mean about the Tomine/Clowes zing - care to elaborate?

Tomine is often criticized for being simply a clone of Clowes' writing and art style, the way you phrased it makes it look like they are simply interchangeable which for most readers they are. OK, maybe not very funny.

Speaking of Tomine, Clowes and Ware anyone seen the amazing new Angoulème festival guest list?

Fysh

magwea wrote: »

You got me confused there. Chris Ware and his cohorts are more succesful with the major publishers then say most direct market cartoonists.

I don't know if I'm explaining myself very well, but the essence of my point is this - the major book publishers dwarf even Marvel and DC in terms of book sales (although how you could compare sales and include the monthlies is harder to pin down) and yet the general use of "independent" as "non-Big-Two" comics would suggest that they're a drop in the ocean of comics as a whole.

This points to a bigger problem in some of the audience expectations, which is what Steven Grant recently referred to as "fanthink" - the notion that wanting something to be true and thus behaving and talking as though it were true is enough to make/i] it true. So you get superhero fans mainly talking to other superhero fans (an effect made worse by the thankfully-now-diminishing tendency of non-comics fans viewing all comics but especially superhero comics as juvenile) and gradually losing the real-world perspective that the comics fit into.

It's a lack of context or, in some cases, a wilful denial of context. Top tv shows get tens of millions of viewers, despite requiring a television and usually satellite or cable to view them - top comics get about a couple of hundred thousand in sales, and require little other than the 3-4 dollars to buy them. The conclusion to draw is that actually, the comics selling a couple of hundred thousand copies per issue aren't mainstream, at least not by the standards of the culture as a whole (although part of this is down to distribution problems caused to no small extent by a lack of vision, innovation, and business planning by both the publishers and Diamond as the chief distributor).

Comics as a whole, at least comics whose main audience buys via a local comic shop, are in fact a niche in a certain sense, as a logical extension of the voluntary genre-restrictions that much of their material is subjected to by the publishers themselves.

magwea wrote: »

Tomine is often criticized for being simply a clone of Clowes' writing and art style, the way you phrased it makes it look like they are simply interchangeable which for most readers they are. OK, maybe not very funny.

I get what you mean. I suspect that with a lot of readers who aren't versed with their whole back catalogue you probably could confound them by pulling the switcheroo, but since they're both pretty good I don't have too much of a problem with it personally.

magwea

Comics' footprint as a whole on culture as a whole is effectively none existent outside of niche groups in the west. Indeed, comics haven't been a mass media for what 60 years. On the other hand, i couldn't care less if it was a mass media or not, i only wish that the creators that i enjoy could make a respectable living in comics without having to change doing what they're doing at the moment.

I like the idea of fanthink, and its suitably dystopian reference.

Fysh

I agree, I'm not pushed about creators being heard by the masses so much as I'm pushed about them being able to make a living without having to compromise what they create.

An interesting angle to consider with comics becoming more popular as film adaptations is whether the recent spate of "faithful" adaptations will have a lasting influence in terms of licencing original material without brutally ripping it apart during the "adaptation" process...

ztoical

magwea wrote: »

So like a freelancer then? I apologize for being unclear, however i still can't name of a single creator that calls themselves an independent and what would it mean exactly anyway, a glorified freelancer?

pretty much every comic artists out there is a freelancer as no publisher keeps artists on staff anymore - the only people at the DC or Marvel offices are editors, graphic designers, random office people and interns. I have heard Chris Ware, Peter Kuper, Rob Ullman and others use the term independent. Its very common for animators to refer to themselves as independent animators rather then freelance animators so I guess that might cause some of my confusion with the different implications of the phrase.

French comics don't really divide up into "mainstream" or "independent" they have some genre divisions all right like manga does and some big ass publishers but its like the way french cinema is off in its own world away from hollywood films.

magwea

Heck, if i was a Marvel comics fan i'd be worried about the company moving into self financing their own properties for film, as they have just done with Iron man, especially since its proved to be so much more lucrative for them than their comics will ever be.

The movies have always been sycophantic of other mediums, why bother staying true to the original property when there is plenty more money to be made in adaptations for the mainstream, it certainly is what the mediums best at doing.

magwea

ztoical wrote: »

pretty much every comic artists out there is a freelancer as no publisher keeps artists on staff anymore

No doubt this is true, in that case it makes it even stranger for cartoonists to call themselves independent, especially ones such as Chris Ware who publishes work that is anything but independently published or distributed.

Does it simply refer to a creator who works without an editor then.

Fysh

I'm going to be rude at this point and say that I think we've safely established that no profound insights are going to emerge from discussing whether or not cartoonists, artists or writers can be "independent" in any meaningful way, so we may as well leave that part of the conversation to die a natural death.

magwea

Fysh wrote: »

I'm going to be rude at this point and say that I think we've safely established that no profound insights are going to emerge from discussing whether or not cartoonists, artists or writers can be "independent" in any meaningful way, so we may as well leave that part of the conversation to die a natural death.

No no no, where would comics be without beating dead horse. Well, i suppose their are independent film makers -whatever that means- why not have independent cartoonist as well.

As to profound insights, i've read plenty of good comics but have yet to find a single profound one, with certain peanuts strips being the closest.

Edit: This Nancy panel maybe also http://jimwoodring.blogspot.com/2006/07/greatest-nancy-panel-ever-drawn.html

Fysh

Profundity is in the mind of the reader, I'd have thought - thus anything from Batman Strikes through to How Loathsome could be profound (or pretentious) depending on who's looking at it. Although I daresay that if you've never found profundity in a comic, you can't have looked very hard...

magwea

Fysh wrote: »

Profundity is in the mind of the reader, I'd have thought - thus anything from Batman Strikes through to How Loathsome could be profound (or pretentious) depending on who's looking at it. Although I daresay that if you've never found profundity in a comic, you can't have looked very hard...

Obviously, its all about the reader in the end, should have put a personnel disclaimer on the end of my snark.

Honestly, though i find comics to be tiresome, yet i'm still addicted to them, this great untapped potential. Sure there are brilliant moments of pathos but profundity...

Might be interesting to see a personnel list, if only for the inevitable insults generated.

Fysh

I think Calvin & Hobbes is probably the first comic where I ever found profound moments, which were all the better for being very well-meshed with the generally kinetic and whimsical nature of the strip overall. For example, the series of strips in which Calvin finds a dying animal of some sort (a bird? a squirrel? I can't remember) and rushes it home to his mum as "mums know how to fix everything" or something like that. The animal dies and Calvin's dad has to explain to him that he tried his best but it was too late; there are a couple of strips showing Calvin being upset at the animal's death and musing about it, and it ends on a wonderful note of Calvin getting angry at the apparent meaninglessness of it all, leading to the following exchange:

Calvin: "It's either mean or it's arbitrary, and either way I've got the heeby-jeebies!"
Hobbes: "Why is it always the middle of the night when we talk about these things?"

Other examples? Well, I suppose Ghost World, Epileptic, or Summer Blonde. I'm not looking for profound statements or revelations as such but more a certain level of honesty in the writing; I want characters that are emotionally fleshed-out and have flaws, and to see how those flaws shape the characters...

magwea

My blanket statement yesterday was far to brash, so i admonish myself.

This is definitely an interesting subject, stumbling across this online http://strippersguide.blogspot.com/2008/07/strippers-guide-bookshelf-willie-and.html, a rare and mostly forgotten example of the huge importance that cartoons had for millions of people not to long ago, is a reminder. The funny thing is I've got this collection at home and its great but i can barely understand it.

ztoical

Stopped by the Indie spiiner rack forums for the first time in two weeks and found a what is an independent comic thread started there at almost the same time this thread was stated - some interesting points brought up in. The same poster also asked the question over at the CGS forum

Fysh

Wow, that CGS thread was basically a bunch of Marvel/DC heads insisting that the world does in fact revolve around them, wasn't it? I particularly liked the folks claiming that every other publisher in the world other than Marvel & DC were "independent", because of course Marvel are bigger in the publishing world than, say, Jonathan Cape...

magwea

Fysh wrote: »

Wow, that CGS thread was basically a bunch of Marvel/DC heads insisting that the world does in fact revolve around them, wasn't it? I particularly liked the folks claiming that every other publisher in the world other than Marvel & DC were "independent", because of course Marvel are bigger in the publishing world than, say, Jonathan Cape...

The direst market comics world from where the Marvel/DC heads come from does revolve around them, they have 80% plus market share, calling everything else independent seems reasonable. Excluding manga, comics have barely any significance in the publishing world at large.