All of those comics look like Ukulele music is playing in the background

I worked in a bookshop for 7 years, and in libraries for over 10 years. This is so spot on regarding modern publishing practices! Thanks for this excellent perspective - I love the podcast too!

Just following trends is always bad in the long run and the indies seem to be feeling that right now. But it's never wrong to scoop up some elements from other sucessful comics and properly implement them into your own work. One just shouldn't make a wholesale copy of it. I personally blame manga for the pervasiveness of slice-of-life comics since the genre is an relatively easy money maker there, so western publishers wanted to copy that. Like slasher movies in the 80s. And the manga industry is 10000000% aware of their shovelware business model. They definitly operate more on a pulp-novel basis to this day.

The current Isekai (another world) wave is a good example of Japanese light novels, manga and anime having a similar problem. The gimmicks which are used to differentiate themselves are getting weirder while also reusing familiar fantasy backdrops.

Several of the books you've used for the image are the product of crowdfunding projects. If they've handled it properly, they don't *need* sales beyond fulfillment. Everything else should be gravy. And some of them (Catboy, for ex) were webcomics. I read a lot of webcomics, and they crowdfund trades all the time because it costs them nothing and puts some spare cash in their pockets sometimes as a windfall. The content's already been produced and the fans are paying your printing and shipping costs. It's a no-risk proposition if you do it right - which admittedly, not everyone does. Overreaching on a crowdfunding project, underestimating costs, unexpected production issues, those can kill you. Some of the others aren't even kind of slice of life. Bury the Lede is a journalistic crime drama. Gender Queer is an autobiography - which is a slice of A life but not the ensemble cast that term usually refers to. Dead Endia is only slice of life if you ignore all the supernatural stuff, and that raises the question of where that subgenre/style ends. It gets mashed up with other genres all the time these days, which is part of why it's so prevalent. You may be right about indies following an oversaturated trend, but I'm not sure "slice of life" is even a meaningful description any more given how often it's mashed up with other subgenres. FFS, everything Jane Austen wrote is "slice of life" by any definition and the same goes for a fair few other "classic lit" authors.

Indies certainly didn't invent running a successful idea into the ground.

I remember the black and white Indies of the 90s where it seemed like everybody and their Aunt Ethel was putting out an adequately drawn "autobio" (supposedly) comic or a badly drawn porno comic! The Marketplace decided and titles like LOVE AND ROCKETS, STRANGERS IN PARADISE, THE CROW, SIN CITY, OPTIC NERVE, OMAHA, BONE and various MANGA rose to the top! Today's marketplace will do the same when it comes to separating the makers from the fakers!

I think this same phenomenon can be observed in modern animation.

I find the 'slice of life' stories really mundane. Like some dross sitcom from the 90's. A tired and stale genre indeed.

I don’t agree with many of your opinions but I do agree on this one. I’m on the younger side (22) and the whole slice of life indie comics are just way too many in number and I’ve been getting bored of them recent years. They need to change things up!

I think part of the problem is that creators read something they like, get inspired, but they don’t always know how to regurgitate what they’ve read back into something new and fresh. One book inspires another person to do something like it, and so on. So there ends up being a lot of lesser quality clones. What separates the stand out creators is the ability to tell the same old stories in a unique way-bc all the stories have been told. Crossed by Ennis was, I think, an interesting twist on the zombie apocalypse genre that was in vogue at the time with so many indie books. Idk. I guess I don’t read many indie books these days. Vertigo used to scratch that itch back in the day. I find myself rereading a lot of those old books.

Aside from the fact that nothing is really original (the human brain is a remixer, it doesn't make anything from scratch), there are good indie comics, it's just a matter of sifting through the junk.

I do not know a single comic of those that appear in the image.

I'm digging Gideon Falls, Fire Power and Descender. Concepts fresh but familiar and art in those books are great and fits the tone. Do you or anybody have any other recommendations?

Those covers that I can see all have very unattractive art even before the premise of the story is made clear (it's not even clear in the cover art either). Equally with all having the same unattractive art, they all merge into an amorphous blimp that increases the lack of interest. In fact the art there looks clumsy and basic, and in the toddler section of a bookshop within the kids' section. They all look better suited to free online art or the equivalent of freeware, than a compeitive commercial product: Sharp in every single detail to stand out or to be clear to THOUGHT OUT !

I would also recommend the recent arcs of Spawn from issue 294 they have gotten so good and I will say it's better than Batman atm.

Back in the day everyone was X-Men or JLA, in 2020 everyone is Steven Universe or Gravity Falls.😆

"Too many comics out there that do the exact same thing"? You mean like superhero comics? More seriously though - this is a big problem in all kinds of industries. Imitation in search of success.

It’s also in books in the genre of YA and fantasy, where we see another young misunderstood protagonist who goes to a school to specialize in a particular trade. The same with Shonen Jump, a majority of them are a loud mouth overly hyper young boy who wants to be the best Pirate or Ninja or Magic user. He then has a cool calm collected friend/rival, the token female and all have a season that ends up in a tournament for some reason.

tbh I've never been impressed with our indie scene, maybe that's just me. Underground comics of the 70's were inventive and fun, but the later legit indie scene was hipster-centric, the comic book equivalent to New Yorker cartoons. One acclaimed title to me seemed like so much wallpaper.. Angst wallpaper.

Tbh Superhero comics are the most repetitive. It's the same old Batman vs joker, Superman vs brainiac or invasion stories from Marvel and nothing else. Indies atm like take Criminal by Brubaker or Williamson's Nailbiter or Birthright or whatever Remender or Mark Millar do they are so good and have new ideas and they have long run on those titles.

To be fair independent doesn't mean new. It just means made alone instead of substantial studio funding

Very motivating. Working on a comic that I've been having some doubts about and I'm only 6 pages in. I've been worried that I'm too off the rails on my comic and it's going to be so different that no one will receive it well. But... every phenomenon is born out of some concept that is incredibly unique at the time it's launched. I have a feeling it's a gamble though, either a truly unique concept will flop hard or if it succeeds it will REALLY succeed. Maybe I'm wrong. But time will tell. Wish me luck, and thank you for this video.

There does seem to be a glut of the same type of book out there. When Image started, I totally knew that Wildcats were an Avengers/ X-men clone but I read it anyway because it was creator owned and was relatively more violent than Marvel’s versions. That made it different enough to stand out. Japan makes their manga compete. Only the ones that are popular with audiences survive.

to me the indies prove their standing the test of time spawn, sin city, bone, Usagi yojimbo and ninja turtles have stood the test of time (oh hellboy, the tick and youngblood too)

Slim down, abandon the glut-the-market approach, reach out to new and veteran comic book creators, and treat people (customers, creatives, editors) with respect. The first company to do these things will have a much better product: interesting comics that consumers will want.

Thank you for the video !!! I’m new to the comic world (again). I was a heavy reader as a child and you caught me up with the important subject matters in the community. Your advice helps me when I create my own work.

Everything that exists that's created by humans will always have the slow phase, something will become so crowded until it bursts; Like fashion, older things tend to come back around in time. Sometimes, it needs to become unbearable until people look for something refreshing, not just a life phase there in.

There is tons of amazing different smaller press comics this is just a small slice of what out there

I blame academia for this mentality, this explains the rise of the ya graphic novel bubble. As an indie comics artists myself (I'm doing something different check it out instagram.com/sophiagaia/ ) I saw firsthand how librarians and part time college professors positioned themselves as tastemakers in the comics scene in my hometown of Columbus Ohio (home of the buckeyes!) most of these ppl probably couldn't win a comics category on jeopardy, but saw comics as the next big thing and took advantage of the low standards. They didn't like me because even though my work is experimental I'm an unrepentant devotee of superhero comics, which they hate for clearly elitist reasons(appreciate you pointing out that not all superhero books are the he same). These ppl are in it for clout, but the sad thing is they influenced a lot of young artists to go the "slice of life" route without giving them any real insight into the market, setting them up for failure. This is why so many ppl get upset when their books don't sell, academia is COMPLETELY disconnected from comic book fandom.

This is one thing i've been worried about with a comic im still working on getting started (ive got the characters, story, and setting down, havent started it yet as its still only a few months into development) is making sure my story is original. I think it is but im always worried that it might be kimd of generic despite what people i know are say and me believing its original. It is a comedic dark fantasy comic set in a somewhat germanic mideval world. The only fantasy race here are these mushroom people who usually live underground, and are pretty chill, easy going kind people. The title so far is Freakshow, and it starts off with our 3 main characters , a human named Hans, a mycelian (mushroom dude) named Weed, and a tiny mushroom guy named Twig who is kind of the r2-d2 to Weed's 3po. It starts with all 3 as part of a freakshow act, as weed& twig are mushroom people which no one ever really knew existed, and Hans has inhumaly pale skin and large, orange eyes that reflect light like some kind of wild animal which give him a rather freakish unworldly appearance. He also suffers from sleep paralysis and schizophrenia, leading everyone including himself to believe he is a cursed man. After he as well as weed & twig escape in the middle of the night they all kind of searce for anything that may be able to cure Hans of his "curse", which usually involves a lot of walking, survival, and trying to make some money by doing jobs for people kind of like a Witcher or something. He wears a metal mask he made out of some metals and a bucket he stole to hide his appearance. He also ends up getting caught up in stuff that is way out of his league, they all accidentally kill some powerful people and get a target on their heads from many people. All these guys want is to be able to live in peace, and Hans at this point just wants a good nights sleep.

Indie comics could be more like manga, several genres for all tastes.

I liked some of these kinda stories by Sean McKeever but after that I can do without them.

You've got a good point, that's how I feel about Marvel and DC as well. Do more than just superheroes. As much as I love them as a kid, these IPs are old and stale, stories mostly derivative except for the exception of a few. The reason why people look at old comics so fondly is not because it's better, it's because they were new and fresh back in the day when they picked it up. Just like indie needs to come up with new ideas and genres, Marvel and DC need to get some new IPs. Do other genres outside of superheroes.

as so often you nailed it. to much repetition, no interest. but you know it better than i do, when something trends a lot of people try to bank on that, other people are totally into it and wrap themselves into it, all their friends love etc and hence they do not register that there ist actually a very limited market for such things. and this goes for most products/creations. at one point, market is saturated, but the ones living in it, creating and most honestly loving the genre so much do not register, that it might only appeal to a relatively small number of people, comparetively. Or poeple operating in a more popular subset might not see that even though very successful as a genre with a pretty big audience, even that big audience can become fatigued by to much identical and sometimes lackluster product.

you can say the same thing about TV and movies, I mean look at how many cop shows and lawyer shows are out there. Plus, majority of these stories are crap, just like other forms of media. They should bring back Outlaw comics.

Strongly agree. In fact we're seeing the same thing in crowdfunding. Ironically it's a lot of retro 90's Image books. Too many people chasing the big cash grab.

I kind of also notice this with some action movies lately

One big issue with the Image teambooks is that most artists repurposed their X-men ideas. And no team was blander than pre-Warren Ellis Stormwatch. I believe publishers are doing what they know best: They find one thing that sells and do it to death.

I've been very lucky to have gathered a diverse bunch of creators with just as diverse line up of stories.

There were some people I'd went to college with that were big YA novel fans. I kinda found them boring to be honest. When you got to go to the library and experience hard core Vampire Romance novels then try to get into movies like Twilight? It's like trading a homecooked meal for a TV dinner though no knocking YA. Garth Nix wrote a really good necromancer series and Brian Jacques' Redwall are lovely.

I’m working on my super hero book, hopefully it’s familiar and different enough that people will like it. But that’s something that’s in the back of my mind all the time.

Good artists borrow, great artists steal, bad artists commit plagurism and that's a crime.

You abdolutely right

Thank you foR shaRing this video

Now a days alot of the webcomics are either badly written LGBT comics. Boring slice of life comics, boring or awful female protagonist, and the stereotypical manga inspired comics. Dont get me started with all the SJW and PC crap that makes up a majority of web comics.

Formulaic comics are an issue for me too.

I think this could explain the big twos big obsession with Diversity and slice of life characters. If the market has so many of these types of books thier target audience is only going to stick with the ones they normally pickup, especially if thier just clones. This could also explain why the crowd funders felt threatened by Keanu. Most of those books only appeal to a niche audience who aren't going to pay extra for the same type of book or Novel. Also what's stupid about this is when I was younger i bought certain comics because i liked the Action and the quippy dialogue from the hero when they were battling the villain. Slice of life to me would have been boring and a yawn fest. They mainly sit around talking in a rather confusing Dialogue that they expect everyone to relate to. Most People don't and find it easier to relate to Peter Parker or Tony Stark. Also with such a small niche market thier actually competing more for a smaller slice of the pie than with regular comics. So they should want to keep both.

FACTS!.💯🎯

This makes me think of the "be different and you'll always stand out" meme gif. On another note, why do you think European comics aren't succeeding like manga is?

Manga creator - “manga ka”

I used to enjoy indies, but the last few years I have struggled to enjoy them. Too political and ugly. Or the art is horrible.

I read dc only for vertigo and Batman. Otherwise I support image or dark horse

This guy seems to have a chip on his shoulder too.. among all his anecdotal evidence I couldn’t see him as a fan on the craft at all

Les dejo un nuevo comic que acabo de subir a consecuenciastudios: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rJ9-gM6fld_ZeKM.html&ab_channel=ComicsConsecuenciaStudios

Yup feel like that's whats about to happen a bit with the spiderverse movies, ppl inspired gonna possibly put stuff out somewhat like it and I just hope it doesn't turn into a minion situation o.o so much of the same ppl start to hate on it then

There's really no such thing as original

I love some intime, but i am very picky, Image was only for Spawn, the chrome and claws brigade des just Marvel copies and i dont like it. Dynomite for Thé Boyz, i never like any badly drawn or that Dogman style. Gold Key had Magnus, Turock, and others filled my list just cause they looked good, writen good and where different from the rest. LOL i loved the Deadpool movies but zero interest in his comics, already knew him from apperences in other comics. Manga not for me. It is all about me when i spend my $$ on comics. Others would hate my comics, its all about taste and not buying 123 x men comics cause they have 123 covers. Too old to play that and its not 25 cents anymore

All young girl indie comics have all the same exact drawing style and premise. Same with any LGBTQ comic they all look the same and nothing is new.

You mean like the 100 superhero comics Marvel and DC put out every month?

I like the 80’s /pastel s**t 😊 Im fine with lgbt… But not sjw lol

Gender role comics..... puke.

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