The Four Color Media Monitor

The AV Club interviewed Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, the authors of Love and Rockets, and the latter had the following to say about the state of the medium and audience reception:

GH: I might just be in a bubble, but here’s the trouble I see with the independent comics: We’re the only guys—maybe there’s a couple of others—that put out comics out on a regular basis. Everyone else puts them out five to 10 years [apart] now. It’s just gotten really bad. So that’s why there’s no beachhead, no swell of indie comics that people are making a big deal about. But at the same time, the mainstream seems to be surviving on the fact that there’s great, big Hollywood movies based on the products, and the actual comics aren’t a big deal anymore. That’s what I see. I’m not there. I’m not going to the comics stores and seeing how well they’re selling or how wonderful everything is with mainstream comics, but you hear people are leaving DC in droves. That kind of stuff. And I’m thinking they’re having a little trouble there. The movies are doing great, because The Avengers was a movie, this and that. But I don’t know what’s going on with them, but I do see a very serious attention to, “Well, the new Charles Burns book is out.” Or the new Dan Clowes book. Or the Chester Brown book that came out. That kind of thing. And I see that as [being] taken more seriously and attention to that. Unless it’s just the areas I’m going to. I might not know what else is going on. We don’t get the “pow zam” stuff so much. We get more now, “Well, you’ve been doing this for 3,000 years, so you must be old and tired. What are you doing next?”

So there's someone from the field who's confirming what DC's own inner circle's unlikely to - they've lost plenty of audience (and story contributors), and it doesn't take much to figure Marvel has too. But the upside is, they'll surely go over to check out Hernandez's creations.

Labels: dc comics, indie publishers, marvel comics, sales