Newsgroup: it.arti.fumetti
Titolo: [lungo] Master of The Obvious #18 by S.Grant

Ragazzi scusate se non ho risposto a qualche messaggio indirizzato a
me (sono a quota meno 208 da leggere e 50 da rispondere in aumento).
Purtroppo è stata una settimana da incubo. Se ho mancato di rispondere
a qualcuno me ne scuso. Cercherò di rimediare il prima possibile.
Se nessuno in una-dico-una-settimana mi ha scritto uno straccio di
messaggio allora andate a fare in culo, schifosi
ingrati......ehm.....scusate la stanchezza...volevo
dire....arrivederci......Zot.
Qui di seguito trovate il nuovo num....ecc. ecc. ecc.
www.comicbookresources.com
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Master of the Obvious, #18 Wednesday December 1st, 1999 
A friend, out of comics for several years but now with some money and
a little free time on his hands, asked this morning, "Does it make any
sense to self-publish a new B/W comic in this market, other than for
personal gratification?" 
It's the wrong question. While currently about the best you can hope
for from self-publication is personal gratification, traditionally
it's been all you could hope for. In other publishing arenas, it's
called vanity press, but, as a publishing expert who'd spent his
career working in books and magazines noted when I brought him in on a
project c. 1990, very little in comics bears any relation to "real"
publishing. 
But self-publishing's still a relatively new concept in comics, having
only gained any ground in the mid-80s, and we still don't have any
systems set up to support it. The patron saint of comics
self-publishing is Gil Kane, whose 1968 magazine-format HIS NAME IS…
SAVAGE, a spy adventure that would easily pass for a graphic novel
today, set the "new tradition" (as stated on its cover): with only 10%
of its 200,000 copy print run ever distributed, it never saw a second
issue. Self-publishing's godfather (discounting Jack Chick, whose
ultrarightist, vehemently anti-Catholic religious pamphlets in comics
form read like mutant Tijuana bibles) is Dave Sim. His CEREBUS, begun
in the mid-70s and still marching toward a long-planned conclusion,
broke all kinds of rules. With its eponymous funny animal barbarian
hero, it ran roughshod over genre distinctions, and Sim was one of the
first to carve a niche without servitude to a New York publisher. He
has also relentlessly proselytized for the self-publishing cause,
often downplaying the serious pitfalls. 
The 80s rush to self-publishing was triggered by the unexpected
success of TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES, long before it became a
widespread cultural phenomenon. The rise of the direct market saw a
corresponding rise in small comics companies to take advantage of the
new distribution system, but most were conceived along traditional
lines; publishers were less concerned with self-expression than with
creating empires. Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman only wanted their
comic published, and ended up (briefly) with an empire. Small
publishers and self-publishers rushed to imitate the Turtles, starting
a craze for black and white comics that ruinously collapsed some
months later, and distributors, actively encouraging the flurry in
hopes that lightning would strike twice, missed the point: despite
obvious influences (TMNT nicked Frank Miller's DAREDEVIL the way
CEREBUS originally nicked Barry Smith's CONAN), Eastman & Laird worked
from inspiration and generated something that hadn't quite been seen
before. 
Image, of course, is the story of the 90s. It looked like
self-publishing for a time, from the point they tore away from Malibu,
but, as pointed out elsewhere, Image was about seizing the reins of
marketing, not about allowing the creators to express themselves
unfettered; the Image branches were conceived as media companies, not
comics companies. Too quickly they were expressing themselves only via
business decisions, as they mostly converted to a Marvelesque
structure of editorial offices producing books on a work-for-hire
basis. As TMNT triggered a kneejerk rush of profiteering imitators,
Image got the same result, with everyone imitating the Image style and
focus: licensing and merchandise über alles. (The rule of thumb of the
comics business: nothing exceeds like success.) Crushed in the
onslaught was anything different, anything that didn't fit the
short-lived weltenschauung, including most self-publishers. 
This isn't Image's fault, but the result of the "hot" mindset that
plagued the industry (and continues to plague it, despite nothing
currently being particularly hot). Where the few marginally successful
self-published comics exist in the 90s, many migrate to "real"
companies, like Dark Horse or Homage or the reconstituted Image,
which, as its branches fall away, has rebuilt as functionally a vanity
press. While once competing distributors gave self-publishers some
leverage, the collapse to a single distributor has had repercussions.
While Diamond isn't openly hostile to self-publishing, its promotional
tools and retailer discounts strongly favor large companies, and
barely a month goes by without word of one self-publisher or another
being dumped by the distributor. (Not that this is either criminal or
unexpected. It makes fiscal sense for Diamond. What would you rather
deal with, given manpower and time necessities: a single large account
or a thousand small ones? Diamond, like most businesses, is in
business to earn a profit. And that's the problem.) 
We're a very schizoid industry when it comes to self-publishing. On
the one hand, we do everything we can to discourage self-publishing.
On the other, self-publishers are frequently lauded as the true heroes
and true artists of the industry, doggedly pursuing their unique
vision against all odds. Which is a very romantic view, but in
practice it doesn't break down so neatly. 
Among the cherished myths of our culture is that "independent" somehow
equates to "inspired" or "artistically superior to mass market
productions." This is a spin-off of the romantic myth of the artist
creating masterpieces in a drafty garret with empty cupboards and
coldwater plumbing, suffering for his art, the passion for excellence
driving him above all else. I've noticed it's rarely artists who
cherish this myth. 
A couple of months back, I started getting digital cable service, with
hundreds more channels than I had before. Two attractions of the
service were the Independent Film Channel and the Sundance Channel,
both focusing on independent cinema. What two months' viewing has
taught me is that most independent films are just as bad as most
"system" films. It's the same with most independent/self-published
comics - puff about "artistic freedom" aside, most aren't noticeably
better than the average Marvel or DC comic. Many are openly derivative
of big company product, their most noteworthy feature being the
absence of enough quality to interest the majors. 
That's not an argument for the majors. As Hollywood now keeps an eye
on independent filmmakers, watching for successes to lure into the
fold, the majors also watch independent comics, hoping to score The
Next Big Thing. Marvel even touts independent and self-published
comics as a way to catch their attention. (Prior to the 80s, this was
the function of many fanzines: a place to hone talent in hopes of
reaching The Show.) This inverts the 70s concept of self-publishing as
an arena for talent to develop their own ideas unfettered; it reduces
it to a feeder system for work-for-hire. 
There are plenty of reasons to create on a work-for-hire basis, but
ultimately they come down to money and publicity. (There used to be a
level of job security as well, but that's all shot to hell now.) While
many initially want to work for Marvel or DC (or Archie, or whoever)
because of an attraction to company-owned characters, this appeal
doesn't last long for many. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with
work-for-hire - it has its place in the food chain - but the history
of comics is littered with talented creators who spent their careers
living hand to mouth and ending up with nothing while publishers
endlessly capitalize on their creations. (If Jerry Siegel's heirs are
correct, copyright laws may yet give creators - their beneficiaries,
at least - the last laugh, but that's still uncertain.) To free talent
from work-for-hire was the ostensible promise of the independents
pre-Image, but many of the contracts were disguised work-for-hire
deals, giving talent ownership in name only, and placing creative and
marketing control firmly in the hands of the publisher, with
prohibitive reversion clauses. As Image became the sales center of the
business, most publishers dropped even the pretense of publishing
creator-owned comics. When Dark Horse, one of the last great bastions
of creator-owned comics, which had built itself as the place where
talent can come publish what they really want to do and own it too,
which once was able to credibly argue that working with them was like
self-publishing without having to deal with the hassles of publishing
because they were there to do it for you, threw its energies into a
company-owned line and shifted focus to marketing to Hollywood instead
of the comics market, you could pretty much kiss off independent
comics as a creative outlet. 
That's why self-publishing remains the promised land to many in the
comics business, a place where talent can create, own and control
their work theoretically unhindered. It's hardly surprising that
publishers don't encourage this. Publishers maintain a love-hate
relationship with talent as it is, always worried that talent becoming
stars on their watch will leave at the crest of their popularity and
profit someone else instead. (The major companies go through cycles of
first courting talent, then ostracizing it, terrified the talent might
become more important commodities than the properties they're working
on. More often than not driving them to other companies right at the
height of their popularity. The company view of talent isn't exactly
paranoid; many talents do approach working for Marvel or DC as a means
to gain notice, a springboard toward their own situation where they
call the shots.) Why would they welcome the prospect of talent
becoming direct competitors, when they're still stinging from the
disruptions Image caused? Companies have their own agendas. Sometimes
broader creative freedom fits the agenda, sometimes it doesn't. 
Which is fine. No one's got a right to tell DC or Marvel they should
be publishing more than superheroes. It's their business, and they
live or die by their decisions. When you take work from Marvel or DC,
you can't say you don't know the deal going in. Work-for-hire has its
place, and that place is commonly to put food on the table and make
sure the mortgage is paid. But past a certain point, and often from
the beginning, most talent becomes loathe to trade away their
birthrights for a bowlful of beans; nowadays it's not uncommon for the
talent to cradle their best ideas until better times and only put as
much as necessary into work-for-hire projects. (Which isn't to say
they're doing intentionally second-rate work on work-for-hire, but
that they're reserving to themselves the ideas that strike them as
most potentially profitable.) No one wants to give companies licenses
for free anymore. Or, rather, for the stipend most companies pay for
secondary uses of the properties. Face it, it's painful to watch
companies making small fortunes off your ideas when only a fraction of
it comes back to you. 
But the business needs new ideas, as many and as good as it can
handle. We've suffered through close to a decade of comics spawned by
editorial fiat, and if that's the future it's a dead end. This is why
self-publishing remains an important concept. If you want control over
your own creative and financial destiny, it's the only way left to go.
In theory. 
The problem is in the structure of the comics business right now.
Money's a huge obstacle - while far cheaper than producing a movie,
publishing a comic book still doesn't fall under the heading of cheap,
even if all the talent costs are paid off the back end - but promotion
is a bigger stumbling block. Sure, you can self-publish, but who's
going to see it? How do you let people know it exists? Again, the only
marketing and promotion venue left in comics is Diamond, which is
geared toward the major publishers. Anything else gets lost in the
swamp of titles. Many titles from the majors get lost in the swamp of
titles. If many dealers don't even know BIRDS OF PREY is still being
published, what hope does a black and white comic from a tiny company
that produces a single title have? There's no book so good it won't be
cancelled if no one knows about it. 
Black and white is also a stumbling block. Color is a major expense,
but there's a widespread audience perception (or a dealer perception;
there's no real mechanism for discerning the two anymore, as the
advance ordering system forces dealers to order by assumption, not
actual demand) that black and white means a substandard product,
material that wasn't good enough to be published in black and white.
Some books like SIN CITY or special projects like BATMAN BLACK AND
WHITE dodge this bullet, but most black and white books die without
ever having a chance. 
What's needed is some kind of support structure for self-published
creator-owned comics: some mechanism to facilitate publishing,
promoting and distributing them, to make it easy (or, rather, easier)
for talent to produce them. We can't expect major companies to provide
it. We can't expect Diamond to. It isn't in their interests, at least
not in the short run, and that's as far as anyone seems able to focus
anymore. The web offers a possible alternative, though "web comics"
quickly seem to be veering toward sub-cartoons, not really comics at
all; its true potential may lie in marketing and distribution of
physical, not virtual, comic books. It might be a useful educational
tool as well, to wean audiences off crippling preconceptions like the
bias against black and white. Maybe. 
Again, content will ultimately be the most important factor. Many
current self-published comics are less than, um, inspiring because
they're either produced by people incapable of measuring up to the
steadily declining standards of the rest of the business, or the
creators feel compelled to make the work "salable," by ignoring their
creative impulses to do material they think an audience will be more
comfortable with. Self-publishing is such a daunting prospect at the
moment that, despite the desire of many writers and artists to
self-publish, it has become the last resort of people with no other
options. Solving every other problem won't mean a thing if the
material produced is badly (or derivatively) conceived, written or
drawn. But without a solution to those problems, content will remain
irrelevant as well. Most publishers have steered, intentionally or
inadvertently, toward being license generators rather than comics
publishers - comics are their means, but that's their end - and
self-published comics may be the last, best creative hope for the
industry. But right now the comics industry resembles the decadent,
decaying future envisioned in H.G. Wells' THE TIME MACHINE, with
self-published comics as the Eloi, the beautiful but ultimately
impotent waifs whose only real role is to be preyed upon by the
Morlocks. 
---
Hellboy
Dove c'è molta luce, l'ombra è più nera.
                                         W. Goethe
 

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