The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

I have always regarded cartooning as a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).  Along with the urge to deface any blank sheets of paper, this form of OCD also involves obsessing about and compulsively collecting pencils, rulers, pens and paper, erasers and various other drawing tools, and books and comic books and videos and DVDs and anything else that is even remotely or tenuously related to cartooning.  This form of OCD also grows and evolves over the years, and whilst most people might just buy one DVD they like, from Studio Ghibli’s collection, Howl’s Moving Castle for instance, people afflicted with this form of OCD notice that Howl’s Moving Castle is number 7 of Studio Ghibli’s collection, so they have to buy all the other DVDs the company produces – otherwise that little box with the lone number 7 on it just unbalances their entire DVD collection. Then there’s the Death Note anime.  Getting a model of Light free with the Death Note anime series, box 1, is a bittersweet cause for joy, because it adds the obsessive hunting down of all the figures so the set can be completed.

(Just one small corner of what I laughably refer to as a studio.  If I get cold-callers, they usually end up listening to Sully)

And then there’s the American Splendor DVD, which has a tiny free American Splendor comic book in it, well that leads to all the American Splendor collections and anthologies and graphic novels and comics needing to be added to the ‘must get’ list; and this throws up all sorts of additional problems because whilst Harvey Pekar writes all the stories in American Splendor, there are many illustrators, and they are now all linked in this chain of relevance on the OCD scale and their output has to be collected too.  It is easy to see how these collections -  sorry, this “research” library -  can get out of hand.

But don’t take my word for it, to test the extent of some cartoonists’ obsessions, all you have to do is go to any cartooning forum and look at the threads.  I guarantee you’ll find the inevitable posts on ‘best paper for drawing comics on’ and ‘best pens for cartooning’ and ‘how big do you like to draw your originals’ have many, many, more views and responses than almost any other threads.  Of course part of this obsessive worrying about how their own drawings size and shape up has a lot to do with the loneliness of the job that Seth spoke about in The Quiet Art of Cartooning in The Walrus, but it pops up so frequently that some cartoonists have started referring to these obsessions as ‘pen envy’.  Every so often though, the many obsessions of these strange creatures throws up an interesting debate, and one such dialogue has been the one surrounding the nature of minicomics in the face of new technologies.

For some people, a hardcore of creators and consumers out there, a mini-comic must stick to the traditional mini-comic format, with pages no larger than around 5 1/2” x 4 1/8” or around 5 3/4 “ x 4” or ¼ A4 or in the US ¼ Letter size.  This was the format I used a couple of years back when I made the mini Little Cenobites, with the rest of the KDR McKie clan.  The back and front cover below covers half an A4-size page so I printed 2 covers per A4 sheet and guillotined them in half.

(Little Cenobites, copyright, ©, 2006, KDR McKie)

For some, it is only by sticking rigidly to this format that we ensure that this egalitarian art form can be created with a minimum of fuss and a minimal amount of materials, either on a home-printer or in a local copier shop.  For others though, and there is a growing number of them, minicomics have already changed, and must continue to change and take advantage of newly affordable technologies, particularly Print-on-Demand, POD, which makes it cost effective for the first time for creators to publish as few as 1 or as many as 1,000 or more copies of their minicomic.

Print-on-Demand, POD, comic books are produced using high quality laser printing.  Because this is essentially a very high quality photocopy, rather than a job that requires expensive printing plates or negatives, the POD printers can print as few as 1 copy, which the company can produce for the small set-up fee some of them charge for the initial proof (most have now waived the set-up fee completely), or as many copies as you require.  Traditional Offset printing, which was once the only way to go, can produce each comic book for less, but the set-up fee is usually higher and you almost always have to order a minimum amount of comic books to keep the cost per unit low.  In other words the cost for just 1 copy or just 10 copies using this method is just too prohibitive.  Today, thanks to technological advances, the difference between the quality of POD and Offset are not so large, and decreasing all the time.

I have to admit, I am one of those who believes that the term “minicomics” means much more than just a “small-comic format”, or “handmade”.  My own feeling is that the key elements that make a minicomic, is being creator-owned and self-published. However, I may have to rethink the ‘self-published’ element because I think that groups of creators and small publishing firms with indy sensibilities do publish what I would call minicomics because the emphasis is more on publishing a work of art than making a profit at the expense of the creator.  With these small publishing concerns and groups, the publishing exercise is more a partnership of equals than is the case with big mainstream publishing concerns.  In order to arrive at this conclusion, I suppose I have to add as an inherent quality in respect of a minicomic would be an anticipated small readership, and the word ‘anticipated’ allows me the wriggle-room for runaway successes like Adriane Tomine’s hugely popular minis.

(Sleepwalk, © 1995, Adriane Tomine)

It seems churlish and even a little Luddite-like to bemoan the new technologies now available to us and argue that professionally printed comic books and POD books and booklets cannot be referred to as minicomics, despite the fact that they are published by the creators and marketed in minicomic venues, simply because they look either too different from traditional minis, or too like traditional comic books.  The argument appears to be that they can’t be “minicomics” not because of their format, because the minicomic format should be unregimented and free, and not because they are not published by their creators, but because they look too professional.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that hand-made, stapled, minicomics have a long and proud history, and many minicomic producers see themselves, rightly I think, as part of a long established tradition of self-publishing that embraces sedition, subversion and even revolution – especially the sexual kind.  Perhaps, for that reason, those mini-comics producers who are wary of a POD service feel that the people who provide such a service might try to proscribe the sexual or religious or even the political attitudes of the work they print.  This argument does have merit, would any POD service publish those infamous Tijuana Bibles today?  And some minicomic reviewers seem to be suggesting there is a tightening of the drawing, if not a softening of the tone or a lessening of the humour in Josh Latta’s now much more polished looking Rashy Rabbit – that, I hasten to add, might actually just be down to artistic development and a change in drawing format.  It looks terrific to me.

(Rashy Rabbit, © Josh Latta, 2008)

Meanwhile the poor minicomics, the professional looking ones, are regarded as too professional looking in some circles, and not professional enough in others.  Most mainstream publishers regard anything not published by a mainstream publisher as vanity publishing, even if the “vanity publisher” happens to be an illustrator and/or writer with years of experience and a truckload of published work to his or her credit.  Here, in Britain, the Arts Council do not consider self-published work for any grants or bursaries because, I presume, that would lead to amateurs attempting to obtain funding to produce art – Heaven forefend (they’re not overly enthusiastic about helping small professional publishers doing graphic novels or comics either – Joe).  Today, surely, more than ever, the pejorative term “vanity publishing” no longer has any relevance as many proven professionals are going the self-published route because they want to make more than the £4,000 to £8,000 per annum from their books that traditional mainstream publishing secures for them.

Not that every minicomic makes its creator money; most don’t, but the internet has played a large part in making the art form more accessible, and it has helped bring more people to minicomics.  Whilst it is still a truism, I think, that you should make minicomics because you want to participate in an exciting, vibrant, and dare I say ‘currently hip’ art form; it would be naive of us not to notice that the Internet has, thanks to sites like Rick Bradford’s marvellous Poopsheet Foundation, Whitey’s equally wonderful  Optical Sloth,  and the currently mothballed USS Catastrophe (still worth the visit to see Kevin Huizenga’s artwork in the online archive), et al,  helped, generate more interest in minicomics.  And with independent-creator friendly shops like Forbidden Planet International, in the UK, and Quimbys in the US, to name but two very important links in the chain, to say nothing of forums like SPX and Fluke, this previously underground art form has all but surfaced into the clear glare of daylight.

The Internet has also provided some creators of webcomics, who have built up a loyal audience of readers eager to get hold of printed matter, an opportunity to get their creations down from the web, and between the sheets of a professionally produced comic book well ahead of some of their “better known” print syndicated rivals.  And where many supposedly popular comic strip collections, that still command a place in newspapers all over the world, would simply appear briefly and head for the remainder bin, the POD collections of many web-based comic strips will remain on sale forever, thanks to the Long Tail business model and the increasing popularity of digital books.  Thanks to POD, comics that were once regarded as outside the mainstream, can actually straddle the divide and have one foot in the mainstream and still keep one foot firmly on independent ground.  Spike’s popular web comic Templar Arizona’s first print run was funded by donations from the strip’s eager readers and like the incredibly popular Achewood, it has not needed to compromise on its “indie credentials” in order to achieve its success.

(an example of successful minicomics – www.achewood.com)

Creative, and financial success stories like Achewood, have helped encourage the evolution of both minicomics and cartoonists themselves, because it is difficult nowadays to look at some cartoonist’s websites, and equate the people behind them with the popular myth of someone who draws well, but has little or no business acumen.  The advent of POD, along with the ability to get associated merchandise online at little or no cost, along with the increasing popularity of EBooks has certainly woken some creators up to the possibilities (and mobile phone content publishers like ROK are offering another possible method of distribution and possible revenue – Joe), and many are taking the opportunity to produce and control their own very professional-looking work on both sides of the Atlantic.

In The Changing Face of Minicomics, Part 2, we will look at examples of the new professional-looking minicomics from Gerry Mooney, Stik, Paul B. Rainey, and others.

Internationally published cartoonist Rod has a regularly updated blog which you can check out, and for more information and a glimpse at some of his many works visit Rodtoons and enjoy browsing the gallery.