Camera Obscura: Standing In The Shadows Of Giants

Marvel isn't the only game in town; it's just the loudest. There are a number of publishers out there producing a diverse range of excellent comics; so why aren't they shouting about it?
16 November 2001

I had a go at you lot last time for not looking at the interesting and different stuff, and sticking with all the easy choices. Yeah, I was probably being unfair. God knows, plenty of you decided to tell me I was, so I suspect that my remaining readership consists of three of you, and one elderly lady who has come here looking for a site about the history of blancmange, or something.

But anyway, I hope I was being unfair, just because it's been so easy for me to find all sorts of great new stuff this year. I no longer have to go hunting for diversity of genre - it's right there in Previews and on the web for me to find out about it and order, and more and more of it is available in good solid collections that'll last a while.

Humanoids, for example, has been a godsend to me. METBARONS, THE INCAL, TECHNOPRIESTS, MEMORIES FROM CLOUD 99. Viz, the same. SANCTUARY, EAGLE, UZUMAKI. Oni has got its place, too - BLUE MONDAY, BREAKFAST AFTER NOON, HOPELESS SAVAGES, QUEEN AND COUNTRY.

So why the fuck is no-one talking about them?

I just don't get this. I really don't. I look back over the dialogue of the last year and find that its packed with Marvel, and how other publishers are doing compared to Marvel. Todd MacFarlane pops his head up once or twice, and somewhere in the distance I can hear Larry Young shouting from the corner of a San Francisco bar.

That little lot seems to have driven the conversation for the last year.

We all know why that is, of course. It's because Bill Jemas is a bright chap, and knows that it doesn't matter what people are saying, as long as they're saying something. Like Grant Morrison said in the back of his shiny new X-MEN collection, Marvel can do what it likes to piss off its existing audience, and they'll keep buying anyway. Sad but true.

Of course, this does rather leave me wondering: why isn't DC doing this? DC has exactly the same sort of core readership as Marvel - a rough split between long times fans who'll buy the book regardless of what the actual content is, and people who're following one or more of the creative team, who will buy the book as long the content is up to their standards. Neither of these groups is disposed to giving two good shits about whatever insane gibberish the heads of the company are spouting this week, or whatever incentive scheme they've just rolled out to make retailers' lives better.

DC seems to be pursuing a policy of being morally better than the other guy. I have vivid memories of DC staff at Comics 2001 in Bristol this year trying to seize the moral high ground at their panels. Audience members suggested, fairly or not, that maybe Marvel was doing a better job of attracting new readers to its books, making an impact outside of the traditional audience, and was generally doing the job of comics a bit better than DC. The DC staffers countered every time with, "Well, we're here in the UK and they're not", which, nine times out of ten, rather failed to address the question.

It's all very well for DC to aggressively pursue a strategy of not being Marvel, but the fact remains that it seems that being Marvel works. Maybe being constantly in the headlines for doing something stupid doesn't do wonders for one's dignity, but it does increase that chance that one more person that might otherwise have missed it will hear about a book you're publishing and order it. And while the moral high ground may have lovely views, it's not exactly helping DC shift books. God knows I can't name any new DC releases outside of the ones I'm buying, and I can probably rattle off half a dozen from Marvel.

What about the smaller publishers? They don't have the luxury that the big two have. They can't afford to piss of the readers or the retailers by being deranged, nor can they afford to be dull. (Well, not unless they're CrossGen, which is a bit of a special case.)

Of the bunch of them, Oni Press seems to be doing the best job - lots of free "teaser" content available on-line, a couple of fairly recognisable on-line "faces" in Jamie Rich and James Lucas Jones. AIT/PlanetLAR is in much the same boat.

But after that, I really do start to become confused. I have to wrack my brains to come up with names of staff at Viz, Humanoids or Dark Horse. On the one hand, yeah, in a proper and sensible publishing industry, that's the way things should be. Sadly, we don't have a proper and sensible publishing industry. We still need people dancing about shouting "look at me!" like a half-bright two year old in order to get our attention focused and our wallets open.

Another thought occurs - every so often, you hear some frightening statistic about how it's something like 10% of retailers that account for 90% of "small press" sales. The thought occurs to me that this 10%, being bright enough to attract that sort of audience, probably doesn't give a shit what evil the company that publishes it is up to - if they think they can shift a book, they'll order it in. And the sort of readership that reads these small press books is the sort that just wants a good story - years of Gary Groth's legendary grumpiness doesn't seems to have damaged sales of Fantagraphics books, does it?

All of which does seem to rather lead us back to the question: if behaving like Marvel works, as it demonstrably does, why aren't more people doing it? I'm not sure I'd want them to, but then, since when does that matter?

Alasdair Watson is the author of the Eagle Award-nominated RUST.

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