Comic Snobbery

Comic geeks can be some of the most asinine people on the planet. There's the usual Marvel vs. DC baloney, but that's a catfight compared to Indie Comics vs. Mainstream Comics - a false dichotomy if I've ever heard one. The discussion on Time Magazine's Top Ten Comics of 2004 over at Metafilter illustrates the battle perfectly. Note that I'm using the term "Indie" instead of "Indy," to illustrate the difference between houses like Top Cow, Image, and IDW (Indy) with little houses that publish black and white stuff on newsgrade paper (Indie).

My experience with Indie comics is, admittedly, limited. For several reasons. First, I don't find a whole lot of it all that interesting. Take, for example, Ghost World. Ghost World could have been written as a novel and not gained or lost anything from its form as a comic. Ghost World made a better film than it did a comic. And frankly, I couldn't stand the ego of a writer who plugged himself in his own then-unknown book (the characters discuss how much they love Clowes the Underground Artist). Although I would hardly call this a rule, comics should offer something different than what I can either see in a movie or read in a book. There has to be a reason to create something as a comic book, something compelling that attaches story to art. American Splendor and its film adaptation succeeded (and it is, incidentally, one of the few Indie comics I think are worth a damn).

I'm not arguing that Marvel or DC books are better than Indie books - although 100 Bullets is some of the best sequential art I've read in a long time - but that Indie comics aren't as good as their fans think they are. They're kind of like independent films. Sure, the freedom not to be forced to work with a big studio does occasionally produce a decent film, but most of the time you find something amateurish, over-egoized, and extraordinarily self-important - which perfectly sums up my encounters with Indie comics fans.

When I was busy building my freelancer's portfolio back in Tulsa, I did some work for Outline magazine, Tulsa's alternative lifestyle mag (which covered everything from homosexuality to BDSM). One of the editors was this corpulent fucker. Funny, I can't even remember his name, but I want to say it was Warner or Gordon or something. The first time we met, he shook hands and he had this weak, slimy handshake. He proceeded to ask me what I did, and I mentioned that I was a comics fan. He mentioned that he, too, was a comics fan, and asked me what I read. I told him: Fantastic Four, some Vertigo stuff, whatever my comic shop guy recommended, etc. He practically exploded: he didn't read that stuff, no way. Ghost World was his favorite comic. He mentioned a half-dozen others that have been erased by more important data in my memory banks, and extolled the virtues of Indie comics in the midsummer Tulsa heat for a good ten minutes before I found an excuse to leave.

That pretty much sums up my experience with Indie comics fans. I find them to be a lot like Anime Nazis, the people who insist you watch anime with subtitles because the dub ruins it and that yeah, Miyazaki's work is nice and all, but Nubile Gundam Evangeliion Princess Fuckamech 3 is the greatest work of art since the Forbidden Palace was created and if you don't understand that then you're a complete idiot and very likely an anti-Japanese bigot. I've encountered my fair share of those folk in my life, too.

So anyway, this long and lack-of-sleep induced rant isn't really leading anywhere but to me reiterating my dislike for self-aggrandizing pricks who think that anything mainstream is instantly inferior to anything "Indie," whether it's an Indie comic book, and Indie film, some obscure anime, or a role-playing system that five people have heard of and fewer have played.