How do you personally define "indie comics"?

Cafe Society
1

Whilst perusing CBR, as is my wont, I came across this article, ‘16 forgotten indie comics cartoons’.

Now, the ‘forgotten’ part is sort of a YMMV thing, and it’s pure clickbait, anyway, but ‘indie’ seems like it should be substantive.

But, to me, fully half of the list would be eliminated at first pass, and several others are iffy. The list seems to be defining it as ‘anything that’s not Marvel/DC’, which I feel a bit overly restrictive.

7 of the series listed are Image - a company founded by superstars, mostly poached from Marvel, and consistently best selling since it started.

1 is Archie, one of the oldest extant American comic book company (arguably the oldest, given DC and Marvel’s interesting corporate histories), and probably the last one to consistently have newsstand sales.

There’s 2 based on Malibu properties…now, Malibu itself was certainly an indie…but by the time either of the cartoons (Ultraforce and Men in Black) came out, the company had been bought by Marvel. I’m willing to give Ultraforce the benefit of the doubt, since it came out so soon after the acquisition, it was probably in the works beforehand…but MiB is based on the movie, which came out several years later, and bore only the most tenuous connection to the comic, so no dice there.

So, that’s 9 that I couldn’t bring myself to call indie…I’m also a bit iffy about calling Dark Horse (The Mask and Big Guy and Rusty from that list) indie, but that’s mostly based on how many of its properties have been made into movies and TV series (seriously, I think only the Big 2 and maybe Archie have them beat), which gets a tad recursive in this context.

So…yeah. Agree? Disagree?

2

This is interesting.

Indie in other areas means something like “independent of larger corporate interest.”
DC has been owned by WB for decades.
But was Marvel “indie” until it was bought by Disney? No one would say so. It was a corporate interest though.

Malibu was a small collective of creators when it was first publishing before it got bought. So they were definitely an indie press.
Size of the publisher may make a big difference in the comics world. A guy self-publishing is “indie” But there are a lot of “indie” publishers who put out tons of books.

3

If you’re one of the major competitors in the market, or owned by one of them, you’re not indie. If you’re not, then you are indie. My first reaction to the OP was that Marvel and DC were the two major comic book competitors, but now that you mention Archie, I guess I have to say that they are, too. But there’s a world of difference between those three and Image. Call Image the largest of the indies if you must, but it is certainly not a major competitor.

4

Dark Horse is another one that could be debated. They’re pretty “corporate.”

I think I’d say that Antarctic Press is “Indie.”

Good old Mu Press was so Indie, it was funded entirely by one guy.

5

The term “indie comics” started coming into use in the late 70s/early 80s. Comics were primarily sold on newsstands, but dedicated comic book stores were starting to proliferate, and small companies were starting to cater to this market by selling/distributing directly to these shops and bypassing newsstands entirely.

“Indie” in this context primarily meant not Marvel/DC. Comics publishers like Archie, Harvey, Charlton, etc were also outside the “indie” rubric. Some indies fit the traditional definition of a creator-owned publishing house that was launched to publish the creator’s comics (e.g. WaRP Graphics for Elfquest and Aardvark-Vanaheim for Cerebus). Some were more “corporate”. First Comics was run by a former senior editor at DC and their original lineup of titles was built around already well-known mainstream comic artists and writer lured by things like no Comics Code, more creative control, and ownership of their work.

The term basically has no real meaning today, though.

6

When I was a kid it absolutely mean anything not Marvel or DC (or Archie, though that one was largely irrelevant until Archie started with licensed comics based on the TMNT cartoon or videogames like Sonic). Later, Dark Horse with their numerous movie licenses (Aliens, Predator, Terminator, Star Wars, etc) were added to the list, and later still the original version of Image, when they were still made mostly by the exodus of former Marvel creators. After that and all the shit with Marvel going into self distribution, it started to get pretty irrelevant, and indie seemed to be more of a style than anything.

7

Another vote that “indie” used to mean any comic book that wasn’t published by DC or Marvel. You’d go into a generic comic book store and there would be a DC section, a Marvel section, and an indie section. Archie and Harvey comics would be in a separate kid’s section.