Broken Frontier

“In order to be very successful in the comic book industry, I believe that people believe – and so it becomes true – you need to have your series done before you solicit it. You need to be able to show people, you need to be able to give people confidence in the product, and then you need to be able to pay your bills anyway if they don’t have confidence and they don’t really want to support it. Of course what happens there, is that there’s no way to run a company like that. You just can’t do it. Nobody has money like that. Even with millions, like CrossGen, it couldn’t be done. So, if the multi-millionaires don’t have money to be able to run a company like that, what hope does anybody else have?”

Those are the words of Adam Fortier, founder of Speakeasy Comics, which this week announced it was shutting its doors.

I am not going to discuss the Speakeasy collapse. I never read their books, and I don’t know anything about the company. I am just not well enough informed about the company and the circumstances that led to its downfall to say any more about it.

However, I want to look at what Mr Fortier had to say, and I want to declare today, the day of Speakeasy’s fall, Independents’ Day.

If what Mr Fortier says is in fact correct, what hope is there for the hundreds of eager-eyed amateur creators cranking out their web comics, the black and white ’zines or their own full-color comics?

If CrossGen couldn’t do it, if MV Creations couldn’t do it, if Speakeasy couldn’t do it, can we?

That was a rhetorical question, as I am not certain that I know the answer. However, right now I want to get back to the title of this column: Today is our Independents’ Day!

More than a play-on-words from the Independence Day film, I am writing this column as a call to action. There are only two groups who can save independent comics, and I am not talking about the Avengers and the JLA.

The two groups are the creators/publishers and the fans.

Speakeasy is not the first well-meaning independent to bite the dust. Unfortunately, we are reading about this all too often. We can stick our head in the sand, as a lot of people do, or we can stand up and do something about it.

Last year, I had a major change in my collecting habits. Up until the second half of the year, I considered a book from Image to be an indy book. Many people still do, as do I, but the point that I am making is that my sum total exposure to indy comics was Image, one of the Big Four.

Who are the Big Four? According to Diamond’s stats for January 2006, Marvel controlled 42.17% of the comic book market, DC 37.35%, Dark Horse 3.7% and Image 3.18%. 

If you do not accept Image as an indy publisher, and if you imagine for a moment that the comic industry is one big sand pit, that doesn’t leave the rest of the industry a lot of room to play in. To be precise, the rest of the industry is fighting over 13.6% of scraps.

Between the hundreds of small studios out there, 13.6% doesn’t go very far at all. So what is the point? Can an indy survive on the crumbs that fall from the table after the Big Four have taken their bites of the pie?

Obviously, some do. There are a number of strategies smaller studios can pursue. Alias Enterprises, for example, through its Community Comics, seeks out religious audiences. Other studios pursue online sales. The Dabel Brothers seek to produce adaptations of fantasy properties with existing fan bases.

Other companies build awareness and loyalty through viral marketing, using tools such as newsletters, posting on message boards and fan street teams.

Huge comic conventions like San Diego Comic Con are great avenues for smaller companies to get noticed.

But they are all still fighting for pieces of the same pie. So, help to grow the pie!

On Independents' Day, take a stand. This coming New Comics Day, give up your copy of Uncanny X-Men or Adventures of Superman and consider instead Coffee and Doughnuts Graphic Novel, Elsinore, Free Fall, Lexian Chronicles Full Circle, Red Sonja or Wall After Wall.

All these books are shipping this week!

If you like any of these books, tell a friend, tell 10 friends. Jump on the net, go to 10 different message boards, and start a thread explaining why you enjoyed the book and why you think others should give it a go.

If you have a blog, or you write for a website, or you are a popular person with plenty of friends, spread the word. Most indy companies don’t have a lot of money to splash around on promotion; they rely on word of mouth (these days, do we call it “word of keyboard”?).

If you hate the book you tried, pass it on to someone who might like it.

Try to do this every week. If you can’t, do it once a month.

In the last year, I took a chance on books like Super Real (Super Real Graphics), Free Fall, Jenna and Wall After Wall (Narwain Publishing) and Elsinore (Devil’s Due). I enjoyed most of them. Some of these I love passionately. Some I don’t. But it is worth a shot.

Set up comic swaps. Arrange for you and a friend to buy a different indy book, one you wouldn’t usually try, and after you have finished with it, swap. You could get lucky, with both of you discovering a previously hidden gem.

If you hear the buzz on a book, and your local comic store doesn’t carry it, order it. Sometimes this sucks, as you have to order two months worth of books from Previews before you get the first one you ordered, but if the book is terrible, at the end of the day you have lost $8. It probably won’t break the bank.

You might love the book, so it could be a gamble worth taking. If you do enjoy it, you have opened yourself to new worlds, new stories and new storytellers, and that can’t be a bad thing.

There are two parties to the saving of independent comics – creators and fans.

I am one of the countless creators, just another faceless dreamer, hoping to break in. All I can hope to achieve is to tell a good story that you might want to buy.

However, at the end of the day, you have the power.

Your wallet can save a comic!

Declare this coming New Comics Day your Independents’ Day. You might enjoy the book, and you just might help to secure the future of this industry that we all love.