Fantagraphics and independent comics

[chipotle]

At his weblog Unqualified Offerings, Jim Henley writes, "annoying but valuable indie comics publisher Fantagraphics is facing bankruptcy." And indeed, Fantagraphics writes about it on their front page.

I like Henley's phrasing, "annoying but valuable," which sums up most independent comics fans' relationship with Fantagraphics. Their flagship news title, The Comics Journal, alternates between brilliant insight and arrogant diatribe. Or least it did; I haven't read it in years. For the most part I haven't read comics in years, period.

Back in the late '80s and early '90s, I read a handful of titles, mostly "funny animal" books--which back then Fantagraphics championed with multipage advertisements for their line. Since then, they not only dropped them all, they've come across as faintly disdainful of the whole genre, as if they're slightly embarrassed to have published Captain Jack, Usagi Yojimbo (still alive and well at Dark Horse) or the long-running anthology title Critters. Fantagraphics is one of the last of the Great Independent Publishers from my collecting days--Eclipse, Kitchen Sink, Mirage, and Comico are long gone, and Warp Graphics has reverted to All Elves All The Time. For nostalgia's sake--if only that, honestly--it'd be a shame to see them die.

Even so, I wonder if the problem for the field on the whole (not Fantagraphics, whose financial woes are only partially their own doing) is due to net comics. Not solely the cute but fluffy ones like User Friendly, but the damn-that's-impressive ones like Nowhere Girl, which is clearly the kind of stuff Fantagraphics would have been doing a few years ago. I'm pretty skeptical of the whole "the web will replace print" meme, but there are obvious upsides to lowering the barrier of entry in publishing.

Comments

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

I'm still reading the comics and still going to cons and such events. And I'm still reading the Comics Journal. It's still the best mag available to cover the medium, despite the occasional annoying diatribe.

There's a lot of factors in the overall decline in comics readership, not just for independent titles but across the board. The biggest one is also the most obvious: Illiteracy rates among the general population are skyrocketing. When it gets to the point where reading even a comic book is beyond the average high school student, it's easy to see why things are dropping off.

Another problem is the expense. The average title now costs $2, provides at best half an hour's entertainment, and often requires picking up multiple issues to complete a storyline. Compare that to the rental cost of the average DVD at Blockbuster, which provides roughly two hours of entertainment for $3. And given that the major audience for the spandex stuff that the big boys put out is uninterested in plot or character development, any old action flick will do.

Yes, there's webcomics out there, but over 90% of them are strip-type works, which has a greater impact on newspaper comics instead of comic books.

The Journal itself has touched on this topic before. Essentially, comics haven't really been a mass-market medium since the 60's. Even the blips of the 80's & 90's were speculator driven nonsense, not readership increases. The comics lines for the bigger publishers are slowly becoming something else: A testing ground for potential movie ideas. Just a look around the dealer's room at a ComicCon shows that.

Meanwhile, as for Fantagraphics, I'm still going to do what I can to support them, and still going to buy what they put out.