Why does Indie apparently automatically mean good?
By jointron33 3 Comments
Why has the Independent company status of Comic Book Publishers somehow been equated to instantly show signs of quality work? Look, lets face it, the Big 2 do some dumb things, but to instantly declare that each and every book of theirs is not of good quality is the most ignorant blanket statement I've ever heard. Of course, this elitist hipster mentality expands to many different mediums, not just comics. There's the "Foreign/arthouse films are automatically better" crowd who will except the most idiotic, acid trip schlockfest, thinking it's "high-art" or some crap like that. This of course is evident in comic fans. Whenever Grant Morrison transforms into "insano acid trip writing British guy" his fans will start singing his praises to high heavens, talking about how "those two-bit hacks from other companies couldn't POSSIBLY write something so INTELLIGENT and ARTSY!!!!!" I feel the same way about a lot of acclaimed work from Brits. Neil Gaiman's weird emo goth version of Sandman is praised by people who haven't even read it, and yet reading it myself, I couldn't stand it. It seemed like much of the praise was just about how "cool, different, and edgy" it was, which is the same excuse I heard for LIEFELD'S initial popularity. And apparently, when a pretentious Brit blatantly takes existing characters and does "edgy, smart" writing moves like making the World's Finest analogue gay, adding "teh secks and teh bludd and gotts!" it all of a sudden becomes "intelligently written" and something "the Big 2 could only hope to ever publish." Let's not even get started on how early Image comics, ya know, the king of Indie publishers, just pillaged characters from Marvel and DC, and then promptly wrote them far WORSE than the Big 2 ever had. Despite this, they acted like they were God's gift to mankind, like they were just creative visionaries in a world that had lost creativity. In actuality, they and a lot of other "Indie" are about as creatively bankrupt as Liefeld....See what I did there? BLANKET TERM!!!
3 Comments