This little essay is a response I wrote to a message board posting. Here’s the original post:
I think the reason people assign themselves to being mainstream or the reason they don’t give Indys a fair chance is because, and I may get a lot of backlash for saying this, but there aren’t that many quality books to be found in that sector.
I think there is a reason the big two are the big two. Marvel and DC put out the most quality books.
You’re looking at Indy publishing with rose-tinted glasses, they only have a relative few successes and some cult hits.
The big two provide more quality books in a month than Indys do in a year becasue the sad truth is by virtue of the fact that they are the big two, they have the resources to provide for a book:
The most talented writers in the biz
The most talented artists in the biz
and the bigest one that I think is a key to this whole argument:
Editors.When a writer moves on to the mainstream, their work is edited most likely for the first time. As an Indy, they have to do it for themselves, part of what makes them Indy! And of course, editing makes a better book.
I’m not bashing the Indy sector, I think its very important creatively, it puts out a lot of good stuff (note I say relative few above) and it’s where the future’s mainstream writers will come from. I’m just saying there is a reason it is an entity in and of itself and most writers that fit in that category would probably hope it’s only a stepping stone for them. Then, when they’ve gained the necessary experience there, shown real potential to a mainstream company and get signed and edited and paired with a star artist by them, we hail them as the next Brian Bendis!
…and here’s my response:
It’s a fool’s pursuit to argue taste with someone, particularly in the cliquish world of comics—and that’s inevitably what any defense of independently published comics in an indie vs. mainstream debate would amount to. However, your post brings up something that I’ve always found somewhat peculiar about these sorts of discussions: the use of the term “mainstream” by fans of books published by Marvel, DC, Image etc.
The dictionary definition of the word “mainstream” is “…the prevalent attitudes, values, and practices of a society…” As a lifelong fan of comics, it strikes me that there are few entertainment or artistic media in contemporary American culture to which this description less applies than the modern fantasy genre comic book. While this may seem like semantic nitpicking, this particular confusion is emblematic of a larger general conceptual myopia that seems to be shared by many fans, creators, retailers and industry-types involved with the so-called “mainstream” comics business—an inability, or unwillingness, to see the larger picture of comics in the context of other print media and other media in general which has, I believe, contributed in a big way to the rapid and continuing decline in readership of comics.
While fans of mainstream comics perceive non-“big three” publishers as a sort of “farm team” system for aspiring fantasy genre writers, as in your Brian Bendis example above—and any indie-published book that manages to appear on their radar screen as a “cult hit”—a quick glance at the world beyond the comics shop door reveals a drastically different picture. For example, take a look at this week’s bookscan numbers for graphic novels (http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/6914.html): forty of the top fifty titles on the list are Manga, and not a single book in the top ten is published by Marvel, DC or Image. Of the non-Manga titles in the list, two are published by Dark Horse, both of which are movie tie-ins and neither of which is a superhero book. The other non-Manga title is by Robert Crumb.
Similarly, the comics which have been recently reviewed or have recently made appearances in the best seller’s list of the country’s most widely-read literary guide, the New York Times Review of Books, are exclusively out of this supposed mainstream. (I’d post a link to a few, but to view any online content, NYT asks for your first-born child.) Off the top of my head, recent books have included Epileptic, In the Shadow of No Towers, The Complete Peanuts Vol I and Persepolis.
The point here isn’t that sales equals quality, or that media attention equals quality—frankly In the Shadow of No Towers and Persepolis are both vastly overrated books in my opinion. Rather, my point is that the idea that the output of Marvel, DC and the like is somehow at the top of some sort of “comics quality pyramid”–with all the non-mainstream publishers and creators below desperately trying to claw their way into mainstream work—is simply false. To the readership at large—meaning to people who read books of any variety, the literal “mainstream” reader—mainstream comics apparently generate little interest. It’s a vicious cycle; the only way “mainstream” comics can really be said to be mainstream is by means of a recursive definition: mainstream comics are the comics read most frequently by people who read mainstream comics.
I’ll never disparage anyone for his or her personal tastes, and I’m not trying to mainstream-bash (I’ve read tons of mainstream books, and still do when these publishers put out good work), but this idea that the world of independently published and self-published creators is inhabited by folks whose real desire is to work for the big three, and that these creators’ work exists on the fringe while the output of the big three publishers is front and center on our cultural radar is ill-founded.
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