What does the label "independent comic" mean? And as a discerning fan, do you find yourself looking down on certain other branches of fandom? Blogger and forum mod Stacey Whittle aims to find out
What Is An Independent Comic (And What's Your Geek Snobbery)?
So: what is an independent comic these days? What does that mean? Much like indie music it seems to me to just be a description of the material rather than how and by whom it is produced. Can the "big" independents still be called such? Indie seems to mean anything at all that isn't a mainstream comic. "Ha ha, but then what is a mainstream comic?" I hear you loudly not asking. The easy answer is superhero comics of course. The margin between the small press and indies at one end and the gap between indies and the big'uns at the other is very narrow indeed.
You can have a big company like Jonathan Cape producing a piece of beautiful and outstanding work like Britten And Brulightly by Hannah Berry, but it looks like and feels like an Indie comic - what else could it be? Is 2000 AD a small press comic for example? And where does Murky Depths lie? At what point does a comic stop being small press and move to indie status. It's all very hazy and ultimately pointless, isn't it? It's just another label we choose to slap on ourselves.
Why do these labels even matter? And should they? I think it all comes down to geek snobbery really. Y'know the thing I'm talking about - your position on the ladder of geek. "Yes I like SF but I don't 'do' Star Trek dahhhhhlin" or "oh, I only read indies (because that makes me somehow cooler)." Does it?
I think we're all guilty of geek snobbery in one way or the other. Some of us look down on the RPG fans and gamers. Some of us look down on the toy and card collectors. Some novel readers would never, ever pick up a comic. Or read a paranormal romance. And then there's the cosplayers... some of us are not very nice about that tribe of geeks, distancing ourselves from something we've all done at one time or the other.
Margaret Attwood doesn't write Science Fiction donchaknow. Don't slap the wrong geek label on the wrong person for goodness sake, it leads to all sorts of recriminations and rebuttals and sometimes outright offense!
My guilty secret snobbery is that I find myself looking down on tie-in novels and comics. I don't know why and I completely understand why people love immersing themselves in their favourite universes... but... there is a part of me that thinks they aren't a "proper" novel or comic. The ones I find hardest to understand are things like the Blade Runner novel - the novelisation of the film which was based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? What's the point?!
I do wonder why we feel the need to put these labels on ourselves, why we have to be somehow better than the next person. Or is it about peer pressure and fitting in with your chosen geek tribe? Do we just want to be cooler? At my age I hope not!
I'm not proud of my geek prejudice, I try and fight against it (well, until I read the graphic novel adaptation of Anita Blake Vampire Hunter - "oh dear" is all I'm saying!).
Do you know what your tribe is and where your snobbery lies? Why do you think we need to have these labels? I blame the mainstreamers; they like to pigeonhole us all together under a giant geek banner and that isn't good enough for us, any of us. So we rebel, we label and we judge each other. But really, do we need to quantify our geekery?
As an SF fan do you harbour any obvious prejudices against other fandoms? Your thoughts welcome as always, in the comment thread below or on our forum.
Posted by Lee Grice (127.0.0.1) on November 05, 2009 at 01:23 PM GMT #
Posted by Christopher Ridge (127.0.0.1) on November 05, 2009 at 04:29 PM GMT #
Anyway, I think you've rather missed the point of my blog.
Posted by stace (127.0.0.1) on November 06, 2009 at 12:38 PM GMT #
When it comes to comics, it's a tough call. Obviously, the big companies are known. But there are so many "boutique" comic publishers that might be considered too mainstream for the really small press folks who fold and staple their own comics. And just because they do that and are content with it, does it make them the true independent creator? Often they look down on someone who might get a deal with Adhouse or First Second as if that person was selling out.
In a medium that can only thrive on working together and supporting one another, derision does seem to rear it's ugly head. I think you hit it on the head, we need to work on our own prejudices and let people wave their nerd/geek flag in whatever way they'd like.
I'm not a cosplayer at all. And find myself laughing at some that don't seem to realize their body type when squeezing into a tight costume. But then I think, "I'm not gonna dress up like that." So I have mad respect for their passion.
I've rambled on but I guess to answer your question: Quantifying the geekery can be fine if it's inclusive to others. Some geek tribes/groups definitely exclude others. Perhaps we'd all enjoy each other a bit more if we were more accepting. Don't see myself in one particular one.
That being said..yeah, I didn't like the Anita Blake comic either. :)
Posted by Jimmy Aquino (127.0.0.1) on November 06, 2009 at 01:15 PM GMT
Website: http://www.jaquino.com #
I think labels are just shortcuts, it's easy to use them because it's often too time-consuming to objectively analyse everything on individual merit.
And let's not forget that labels are often presented *to* us as consumers, to sell things to particular demographics, and if we're outside that demographic, often the product will not appeal.
And I think that because of that, negative use of labels does arise from positive use of labels. I.e.:
If people like some particular thing and become 'fans', then to some extent they stop objectively assessing the quality of it, so the producers of whatever that thing is will market more things to appeal to the fans, and thus their primary objective gradually becomes supplying what they *believe* the fans want, and not pure artistic credibility, and as a consequence, people who aren't fans who try some of that material and don't like it will steer clear of that kind of material in future.
If that's too vague, consider mainstream superhero comics as the precise example.
Of course none of that process is intrinsically bad, everyone just gets what they deserve really, it's only when someone tries to produce something of that type that doesn't have it's highest goal as appealing to the fans but rather to pure artistic goals. In that case, the non-fans will reject it because it seems to be labelled with the label they don't like, and the fans may not like it because it actually diverges from what they were expecting.
(To follow the superhero comic metaphor, consider any highbrow, vaguely mainstream comic which hasn't done hugely well commercially because it hasn't 'found its market').
Anyway, yes, we should all be more open minded, but I think that may involve being less automatically positive about things as well as less automatically negative.
Posted by Vader Ate My Hamster (127.0.0.1) on November 06, 2009 at 07:02 PM GMT #