The business of an indie publisher in Saginaw

The Midland Daily News interviewed Travis McIntyre of Ox Eye Media, a multimedia company in Saginaw, MI who's got an independent comic publishing arm named Source Point Press, which has come to offer a number of different genres in the time they've specialized in publication. And it's most interesting to note they try to refrain from dealing with superhero stories per se:

...the company does not stray into superhero stories because then it would not stand out to audiences and grab more niche and competitive market, McIntyre said.

“There are successful independent superhero comics, but I do not want to do that because I do not think it is a good idea to try to compete with DC and Marvel,” Wright said. “Instead, (I) say, ‘Look, this is the sidestep to something else.'”

There's another reason why it's better not to specialize in the genre proper. It's been run into the ground, reduced to one of the biggest cliches in entertainment, ruined by political agendas. That the Big Two are long owned by corporations/conglomerates hasn't helped one bit. Though the interviewee continues to say:

Another factor in Ox Eye’s success may be the blockbuster successes of superhero movies from Marvel and DC Comics for the past decade-plus.

“With the massive success of comic book movies, I think you saw many people who were maybe lapsed comic readers, or were never really comic readers, get interested in the idea of what comics were,” McIntyre said. “When they showed up at the comic bookstore, they saw there were a lot more options available to them than just what they remembered as a kid, or what their assumption was in terms of like Marvel or DC.”

That success, depending on which films are in focus, and how you view the subject, is either hugely exaggerated, or is now slowly coming undone, as the Eternals movie's weak box office receipts suggest when it comes to Marvel. Of course, it's also possible that some moviegoers, if they did trip to the specialty stores and such, hopefully came out buying more indie publications than mainstream, which would make a far better choice, depending on the content, because why buy the ripoffs Marvel/DC are now putting out, with all the far-left social justice propaganda now flooding their output and turning them soggy? If independents have gained on the mainstream as a result, that's good, and certainly if most smaller publishers avoid politicizing their content by contrast.

I wish Source Point well in their venture, and they're honestly doing the right thing not to imitate superhero comics to the letter. The adventure theme is good enough, combined with sci-fi and fantasy themes.