Comic Book Resources

Let’s just ponder that hypothetical for a moment, and then remember that that describes Icon and move on.

That's a bit of a strawman.
The image founders totally left Marvel, and made it so the only place you could get their work was at image.
Also, they stuck to doing books in the genre they were famous for - the Icon guys are doing books that are different to the books they are popular for.

I think at this point, comics will defnitely live on, if for no other reason than as development properties for movies (unless we start to see more and more "Hancocks", which could make comics less relevant as development properties).

Really your scenario sounds just like Gorilla Comics years ago: Mark Waid, Kurt Busiek, and George Perez striking off on their own to do the books they always wanted with some great talent (Barry Kitson, Stuart Immomen, and, uh, George Perez).

The problem was without a marquee thing to grab the audience, the readers just didn't come. Maybe if there was more adverting it would have been different, who knows. Lord knows great reviews don't help all that much because Empire and Shockrockets got all kinds of good reviews, just no one listened.

My anecdotal evidence says the keys to a successful creator-owned project are having a publisher that believes in the project, that will allow it to run for at least a year before canceling it, and having a consistent schedule. It took Walking Dead and Invincible a little bit to find it's audience, just like 'indie' favs like Hellboy, The Goon, or Powers.

Frankly that's what happens for me. Someone may come out with the next big thing in comics, but it always takes a good six issues for me to find it, catch up, and then start spreading the word.

Really your scenario sounds just like Gorilla Comics years ago: Mark Waid, Kurt Busiek, and George Perez striking off on their own to do the books they always wanted with some great talent (Barry Kitson, Stuart Immomen, and, uh, George Perez).

The problem was without a marquee thing to grab the audience, the readers just didn’t come. Maybe if there was more adverting it would have been different, who knows. Lord knows great reviews don’t help all that much because Empire and Shockrockets got all kinds of good reviews, just no one listened.

Gorilla Comics fell apart because their financial backers pulled, and so the creators were left self-funding the books, which they hadn't intended to do, and at that time in the market, a creator owned book wasn't the best thing to have, as the market was still on the comeback from a slump.

Once upon a time if you created a character similar to someone like Superman, DC would sue you out of business like they did with Captain Marvel. However, things have changed and even an obvious Superman knock-off like Supreme can be published with little fear (and Moore's Supreme was great).

In that light, I don't know why a creator would chose to give up their intellectual property. You love Superman? Make your own. Love the X-Men? Create your own. No editorial influence saying you can't use Jean Grey because she's currently dead. No continuity problems. I'm sure that money is a big part of it but I really am surprised that so many creators who have been in the business for so long keep working for the man and have nothing to show for it but a paycheck.

The Image phenomenon was driven by artists whose work had a certain aesthetic that plugged into what young teenage boys wanted in their entertainment. McFarlane, Liefeld, & Lee drew hyper-stylized, sexualized, violent, superheroes, with lots of "details" (that's how some of us saw the million extra lines per face and complicated costumes) and moral ambivalence. They came to prominance at a time when many super-hero comics sold over 100,000 copies per issue. Speculation ran rampant.

The best super-hero writers and artists of today can't seem to replicate the early-'90s vibe that drew in so many kids. They can't bring the market up to where it was in '92. The speculators aren't coming back. I would love for Criminal or Casanova, with much better writing and art than anything from the early Image days, to sell hundreds of thousands of copies. I just don't see it happening.

On the other hand, even if Marvel & DC go under, comics will survive. With the internet, we won't even have to search very hard to find them.

No editorial influence saying you can’t use Jean Grey because she’s currently dead. No continuity problems.

No continuity problems? But what would Geoff Johns do? And how can Busiek write anything without drawing on decades of history -- or, in the case of Astro City, the illusion of decades of history?

To tell you the truth, IMO, it doesn't matter if the books are creator owned or comes from the "big two", the day of the large sales of monthly comics are long gone. We won't see what occurred at the DM shops in the 1980's or the Image driven early 1990's ever again.

No, comics aren't dying, I mean the form comics aren't dying, but the monthly "pamphlets" are. They've priced themselves away from an easy, (disposable income) purchase to what we have today. An incredibly overpriced reading piece of entertainment.

If a "hot" current writer or writer/artist team decides to go out on their own and tell stories of creations they begin and own, sure it will cause some buzz for awhile. But the current economic structure of a "monthly fix" can't possibly last, like it could have years ago,

The best bet for a writer or creative team these days would be to publish books of the creative owned work. Perhaps one or two a year. This not only makes more sense creative wise (better structure to tell the story) but it's better then churning out some over priced slick paged ad filled pamphlet every month.

Making a 'knockoff' Superman or X-Men seems like the quickest way to lose all audiences. People who want to read X-Men comics aren't going to want to read some other version that's kind of like them, but without the characters they like, and people who don't want to read about the X-Men aren't going to read it at all. Yes, it would let you save your intellectual property, but that property would probably be useless.

I'm all for creator owned work, be it from Morrison, Moore, Ellis, or Ennis, their best work is definitely original stuff. But, I think there's also a merit to creating characters within the shared DCU that people don't really think about. Sure, you lose control, but at the same time if you put your new superhero character into the DCU, people could be writing about him for decades. You may not get to tell the 'definitive' story of this guy, but he could live on long after you're gone, and that's not going to happen if you put him in your own little superhero book.

The success of Image was in big part due to the speculator boom. Did people start buying comics to read because of Image? I don't think it was that high of a number. The hype may have brought some more speculators in but Image didn't make the comic market explode to a much higher level. It was part of the bubble and then its impact popped with it. Kirkman want's new comic readers and lots of them. Creator-owned books aren't a magic formula to do that and even Image didn't do that. Mark Waid, Geoff John, and even Peter David are NOT names to people outside the comic buying community. David is perhaps the closest with his various Star Trek books and the like but names haven't helped the comics to a higher level. What about all the names from other fields that have been brought in to write comics to generate buzz (Kevin Smith, Meltzer, Whedon writer/creators of any number of random shows/movies)? None of them have brought an appreciably large number of readers into comics. Look even to the Buffy comics. If you actually were getting a decent percentage of buffy fans those books should be doing number 1 in sales by a lot per month.

@FGJ: I disagree that the Icon guys aren't doing what they're famous for. Millar is doing crazy widescreen action, Bendis is doing Powers, literally what he's famous for, and and Brubaker is doing hard boiled crime fiction. Though I agree that that is a straw man since they're still at Marvel and doing awesome MU books.

It'd be nice if more people made the jump. Simply because you can only read so many Spider-man and Batman stories.

It's a little annoying that so many of our top talents are focusing on a couple of characters at the Big Two. It'd be nice if we got more Astro City out of Kurt Busiek then most of his big two books which by and large mostly forgettable.

I hate to say it but I don't think Legend made much of an impact. Only Hellboy and Madman have published new issues in the past few years and the later is at Image.

One could make an argument about the Image founders since there are only three founding books being published now. But Spawn and Savage Dragon have made it well past issue 100 (the former with rotating creative teams). But Image as a whole is still around.

I agree the artists make the difference. I'm don't think Oeming and Sean Phillips are considered Top Ten artists (they are super talented don't get me wrong). But if Grant Morrison and Jim Lee said fuck this Batman nonsense and did a creator owned book it probably would do well.

Waiting for the WildCATs retort...

And how can Busiek write anything without drawing on decades of history — or, in the case of Astro City, the illusion of decades of history?

Well, he did Conan and Shock Rockets pretty well.

" I agree the artists make the difference. I’m don’t think Oeming and Sean Phillips are considered Top Ten artists (they are super talented don’t get me wrong). But if Grant Morrison and Jim Lee said fuck this Batman nonsense and did a creator owned book it probably would do well. "

Amongst the direct market crowd, the Jim Lee school of art is still pretty much the only way to get into the Top Ten. Bombastic, massively overexaggerated figures and layouts are what superhero readers tend to go for, and with occasional exceptions like Frank Quitely and Simone Bianchi, Wizard-style lists reflect this. If you offer the right style, you can succeed despite profound lack of talent ( the Greg Land story ).

Outside of the direct market, there are many more niches that could be filled. Much of manga, webcomics, art comics, and some of the staples of the bookstore graphic novel sections ( Sandman, Hellboy, Alan Moore's works, etc. ) feature artists who would be passed over on the JLA, but have become successful elsewhere. I might put more attention to getting the creator-owned books to the right audience, as opposed to putting popular Marvel and DC creators on their own works and hoping they'll sell as well to the direct market as the franchise works.

Well Mike Mignola is a case of an artist who wasn't a Top Ten artist who became one of the major success stories of creator owned books.

I think he created a book that fit his distinctive style so well and the he kept working on that book and made money of collections. I think if Art Adams and maybe John Byne stuck with it they might have done better. It'd be great if more people went the Mignola route. Darwyn Cooke is guy I really want to see do creator owned material.

I think if Frank Quietly and Simone Bianchi made the jump they would do pretty well. Actually WE3 did pretty well (much better then Seaguy and Vinnerama if I recall).

Also it's not shocking Romita is the only major artist that has an Icon book. He can still crank out a run on Spider-man but I don't see Marvel being too keen on someone like Bianchi doing an Icon book. Like I said before Phillips and Oeming aren't major draws.

If Grant Morrison wants to do an out-of-continuity Superman story, he pitches it to DC editorial and they call it All Star Superman.

If he wants to do creator owned work he pitches it to Vertigo and if they don't take it a million other publishers will. Worst case scenario Morrison has to sit on a concept for a while until his contract runs out if he's under an exclusivity deal.

So what's the benefit in self-publishing?

Also: as a rule of thumb artists are going to be less likely to make the transition from work for hire to creator owned series than writers because comic book art is a much more time intensive process than comic book writing and if they decide to strike out on their own they're going to have to sacrifice steady paychecks to at least some extent. If you can only manage, say, 30 comic book pages a month, the decision to devote 23 of those pages to work that most likely isn't going to get you paid except for on the back end would, I imagine, be a daunting one.

So what’s the benefit in self-publishing?

Because you don't have those options if you're not Grant Morrison?

Also, he has often had to commit to DCU projects to keep his Vertigo one's going - as was the case with The Invisibles, which he had to do JLA keep it going, and Sea Guy 2 is coming about because of 52 and such.
And I don't mean he gave them a success so they took a chance on it, I believe he has mentioned that part of the deal on him doing the DCU stuff was that they kept his creator owned stuff going.

"Because you don’t have those options if you’re not Grant Morrison?"

The writers who don't have those options aren't the subject of the blog entry. The question was can the Image Revolution happen again (with writers), and the answer is no because the superstar creators in comic books right now essentially have the freedom to do the projects they want to do on their own terms or something like them.

(That and the fact that nobody wants to read another superhero universe full of derivative crap, no matter how well written, no one in the comic book community has the popularity to carry a title and better-than-mid-chart numbers without DC or Marvel brand recognition, etc.)