For instance, the nineties, to a big degree, established the viability of the serial comic book to serial graphic novel series model with things like Cerebus, Sandman, Bone, & Preacher leading the way. Sure, there were other examples of this format, like the old album sized L&R collections, but I don’t feel that retailers really invested meaningfully in the format in any sheer volume until the late nineties. I don’t attribute it to the self-publishing movement — in fact, I think DC’s aggressive work to develop a backlist program in the late 90s really turned the tide. But I also think the viability of trade paperback libraries for books like Cerebus, and Bone and SiP were a contributing factor, because they showed that it could work, while the bigger guns were still testing the waters.

Likewise, I think the 90s did a lot more to establish the commercial viability of content diversity than prior decades. I think this was seen across the board, from self-publishing to Dark Horse’s crime & horror oriented books like Sin City & Hellboy, to Vertigo, to the completion of literary graphic novel material in periodical form from guys like Clowes & Ware that would go on to become mainstays of the GN boom in the early part of this decade. And that says nothing of the late 90s tests in manga in the format we now know it in from companies like TokyoPop, or the Highwater/Non/Ft. Thunder revolution, other important touchpoints of the late 90s.

I think you can look at a lot of the formats and content that are enjoying success in today’s graphic novel market as having their roots in the 1990s. It’s not all self-publishing, but the period that I’m referring to. And I’m interested in hearing the thoughts of veterans from that period as to how the 1990s influenced today’s market from their particular vantage points.

Huh?

And I certainly saw, in a young Charles Brownstein, a lot of my own reflection from my first San Diego Comicon as a self-publisher, back in 1986.

The term “movement” started being used on the phone network and at conventions in that period as we saw a critical mass of creators try their hands at self-publishing. Certainly I was one of the culprits for putting that phrase into print when I quizzed people about it in Feature, the magazine I was publishing at the time.

I think if there was indeed a movement, it was a purely economic one, and it was about using the Direct Market structure as it existed at the time to allow creators to pursue their personal muses at their own economic risk, as opposed to the risk of a publisher. I’ll leave it to the people who were there at the start to define how it sparked, but I will say that in the aftermath of that initial spark Dave Sim was publishing a lot of very persuasive rhetoric and giving a lot of phone advice that led a multitude of creators to try their hand at it. Most of this was presented in one package as “The Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing”

There was a very real critical mass of self-published content that came out in that period, including: Bone, Strangers in Paradise, A Distant Soil, Stray Bullets, Rare Bit Fiends, Tyrant, Bizarre Heroes, Wolff & Byrd (later Supernatural Law), Hepcats, Starchild, Bacchus, THB, Shades of Gray, Too Much Coffee Man, Ballads & Sagas, Graymatter, Strange Attractors, Wandering Star, Cyberzone, Avant Guard, Words & Pictures, Finder, Strangehaven, and plenty of others that I’m certain I’m forgetting. That critical mass was composed of a big enough mix of name creators, promising talents, and promising concepts that a feeling of momentum was created that led to the sense that this was potentially a movement.

It didn’t last, of course. But, it did represent a bubble of creativity, individuality, and economic self-determination within the direct market at a time when the art & commerce of comics was becoming very polarized.

I can’t wait to read what the veterans have to say about it. Should be a very interesting look back on a time that generated a lot of the content and format models that are much more prominent today.

If Peter Laird wanted to host an ’80s generation self-publishing bunch of essays, or Wendy Pini a 1970s generation or Stan Lee a 1960s version, I’m sure people would be interested in reading those, too.