Jeff Smith Begins Series of Guest Essays on ‘90 Self-Publishing Movement

Jeff Smith announces that he will be hosting a series of guest essays on the self-publishing movement of the 1990s. Self-publishing in comic books was made possible by the Direct Market the same way that boutique publishing was made possible -- without returns, a creator could publish his own material without having to risk returns. This was further encouraged by a general comics press that focused on personalities and expressions of a creator's personality in a comic book tailored to that artist, in part I think due to a rejection of mainstream comics values of the '70s and '80s. During the 1990s, with Dave Sim's continuing success on Cerebus and Jeff Smith's then new-found success with Bone acting as kind of twin lights, a number of creators put out enough self-published that it could be seen for a time as a cohesive movement within comics.

An analysis of this time could be interesting for its own self -- the criticism of even smaller publishers with solid reputations like Fantagraphics and Drawn and Quarterly as exploitative simply because they were publishers was a heated flashpoint, for instance -- but also in discussing the market conditions and other factors that contributed to it not lasting, at least at that level of exposure and general interest. I remember there was one time for the sake of some snark at The Comics Journal I was able to rattle off like 15 prominent self-publishers who had moved into other arrangements in the space of a year. It's also important in that self-publishing hasn't gone away. Jeff Smith, Dave Sim and Terry Moore will all be self-publishing various projects this year, and there are still folks around like Batton Lash of Supernatural Law. On the whole, I think the option to self-publish and a chance to have a book catch on in the marketplace is a great sign of a certain kind of market health. So I'll be reading the series, and will link to the essays of interest here. Sounds like fun.

I took that drawing from Dave Sim's site and will take it down if that's not cool.
 
posted 8:55 am PST | Permalink
 

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