[ Posted by shortfatsteve on Dec 21st, 2006 9:18 PM ]...

Here's a sampling of what I mean by "the rich 90s' indy comics scene" : Eddie Campbell's Bacchus, Gary Spencer Millidge's Strangehaven, Colleen Doran's A Distant Soil, Peter Bagge's Hate, Dan Clowes' Eightball, Mike Allred's Madman, Paul Pope's THB, Jay Stephens' Atomic City Tales, Jim Woodring's Jim and Frank, Jeff Smith's Bone fer chrissakes... then there's various works by Seth, Chester Brown, Joe Matt, Evan Dorkin, Los Bros Hernandez (this being post-Love & Rockets v.1 by the time I hitched on). Publishers like Kitchen Sink Press, Tundra Comics, Fantagraphics. the list goes on... See what I'm talking about?

A lot of people these days tend to see the 90s as some kind of hodgepodge time, but when it comes to comics it is one of the defining decades--for the worse certainly, but also for the better. The list above is just some of the cream of the 90s indy scene, but there was also all of the great Vertigo Comics, from Sandman to The Enigma to Transmetropolitan to Kill Your Boyfriend. And what about Valiant's (early) efforts? Or what Valiant and Image, Dark Horse and even Malibu represented in the 90s : real competition for the Big Two, and the flowering of creative talent that was now able to reach a big audience outside of the restrictive formulas and formats that the Big Two favored.

I think it's too easy to turn your back on the 90s for all of it's hologram, die-cut, multiple variant covers, it's bloated, pointless crossovers, and it's insipidly dark and brooding heroes. The 90s still had a lot to recommend it, and even it's darkest clouds, like the exodus of A-list talent from the Big Two and the speculator-fueled crash, had silver linings to them, not least that the Big Two were forced to seriously rethink their respective strategies in regards to creator rights and the audience's tolerance for being fleeced.