Tom Scola and I were talking recently and one of the subjects was "The Current State of the Independent Cartoonist."

It was my point that there is a weird phenomenon where it feels like indie comics are dying out while there is an entire generation of superior artists at work in the form.

And yet, there's a simultaneous phenomenon where the indie comics are moving into hardback and into the bookstores. There are a number of interesting collections out now and I covet them all!

Foremost, I like An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories edited by Ivan Brunetti. This is like a particularly cool and generous mix tape of great cartooning. It's not beholden to an historical overview or a year-long time period and so Brunetti can run four different pieces by artists reflecting on Charles Schulz's influence (by Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, Seth, and Robert Sikoryak) each in a variation on the classic Peanuts style. For one example. It's just a great collection.

You can also get The Best American Comics 2006 edited by Harvey Pekar, which is another beautifully chosen set.

Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries 1900-1969 is also incredibly cool. I've always been fascinated by commerical artworks which betray a deeply personal vision. It's almost like Art Brut hidden within capitalism. The classic example would be something like Carl Barks work on Scrooge McDuck, but these are even more bent. An amazing and important collection.

I also really liked In the Studio: Visits with Contemporary Cartoonists. My favorite bits were Jaime Hernandez expounding on his outre influences (yeah, he's always liked Hank Ketcham's work on Dennis the Menace, but he really loves the guy who ghosted on the Dennis the Menace comic books), and photos of Seth's fascinating 3-D cardboard city he used as a reference for one of his books. Excellent interviews which reveal the depth of autodidactic scholarship that every great cartoonist seems to have. They're obsessed with John Stanley (Little Lulu) and obscure New Yorker cartoonists of the 30s.

Best American NonRequired Reading 2006 by Dave Eggars mixes comics with the Onion and The Daily Show and all kinds of other stuff.

And I already pimped Alison Bechdel's masterpiece Fun House.

the indie comics are moving into hardback and into the bookstores.

And online, obviously.

We talked about that too. I think Dinosaur Comics is funnier and smarter and better than anything running in the newspapers today. And there are many other examples.

Also, comics are becoming huge in libraries. And librarians are realizing they're not just for kids.

And librarians are realizing they're not just for kids.

"Pow! Wham! Bomp! Comics Grow Up!"

I would imagine a lot of folks who would be inclined to produce indie comics are moving towards making webcomics instead just because it's easier to put up a webpage and try to get people to link to it than it is to print something up and try to 1) get stores to carry it 2) get folks to buy it. I'm sure it's not the only reason for the decline in numbers, but it certainly helps.

I would imagine a lot of folks who would be inclined to produce indie comics are moving towards making webcomics instead just because it's easier to put up a webpage and try to get people to link to it than it is to print something up and try to 1) get stores to carry it 2) get folks to buy it. I'm sure it's not the only reason for the decline in numbers, but it certainly helps.

The big lesson I learned in comics/publishing when I was in it was simply that distribution was the great bottleneck. The internet circumvents that. If you can build up an online following, get some ad revenue and then publish book-store carriable collections then you might be able to make a run at it.

I don't know. Bone might be the last really successful paper-first indie comic.

Also, comics are becoming huge in libraries. And librarians are realizing they're not just for kids.

Heh. I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm one of the top comics-checker-outers in my library. Whenever they get a new TPB in that I've been wanting to read, I always thank them.

Just call me Teppy, GirlGeek.

For Teppy, GirlGeek: [link]

It's strange, though, that Girl Genius is the only comic that I'm aware of that started out as hard copy, and then moved online. It isn't really that indie comics are moving online, they're getting displaced by them.

Another thing I'm noticing is that the indie comic aesthetic is having a huge influence on contemporary art. Maybe it's easier to sell prints online than comic books.

Oh, and indie animation is the new indie comic.