SUPERHEROES
As many of you may or may not know, 1First Comics tends not to do superheroes. We don’t hate them like Pat Mills or Garth Ennis do, but we are reluctant to have anything to do with them. Our reasons range from the practical to the artistic, but the short of it is that if you have a superhero comic, don’t bring it to us.
We don’t mean to be rude or dismissive… even if in rejecting your superhero book outright we are being rude and dismissive, but as noted, we have our reasons.
For one, Marvel and DC do an amazing job with superhero books. You may hate them or think they pander or whatever… their market share says they’re doing something right. Taking them on in a superhero on superhero fight wouldn’t necessarily be a losing proposition, but it would be a little like pitting The Porcupine versus Superman… one of them is going to win and it ain’t the washout in the spiky suit.
Next up is the artistic and the practical: with so many superhero titles out there already, why not give those non-capes and tights comics a chance? As so many indie creators have proven, you don’t need colorful outfits and godlike powers to craft and tell a compelling story and we here at 1First Comics like to give those industry outliers a platform to have their voices heard… or more accurately, their comics read.
And lastly, there is an artistic reason for this: almost every superhero story that can be told has been told. How often has Batman been “broken”? How many versions of “evil” Superman can we take? How often can Phoenix come back from the dead to herald some new universe-shaking threat? Superhero comics, for better or for worse, tend to fall into two categories: iconoclasm or imitation… it’s either Superboy (but he SWEARS!) or it’s Superboy (but he’s VEGAN!)
Superheroes may transcend the limits of reality and credulity, but they rarely transcend themselves.
Now, we’re not hating on superheroes or their creators. We publish a few ourselves, Mike Baron’s BADGER and Nicola Cuti and Joe Staton’s E-MAN being the two most notable examples. What we are saying, however, is that it will be a hard sell. Yes, we know we said don’t bring it to us, but if you made it this far, you deserve something for your efforts. Just know that superheroes are incredibly difficult to sell and even harder to sustain in a market dominated by the Big Two and that most of the time we will reject your superhero comic for that reason alone.
However, if you gave up every time someone told you it couldn’t be done or that you couldn’t do it, you wouldn’t be here, would you? So keep on creating. Do what you want to do, write what you want to write, draw what you want to draw. After all, it’s your time, talent, and ideas! Don’t let us or anyone else stop ya!
https://www.facebook.com/1FirstComics/posts/812704737531740
About Author
