Welcome to Small Press February!
Small publishers have played an important part in the comics industry since the sixties, but their efforts are typically overlooked until well after their initial impact. In an effort to correct this oversight, we’re going to spend all month spotlighting the small comic press’s contributions from the past and present.
You may be thinking, doesn’t Multiversity already review a good number of indie books? Well yes, I like to think we do, and it’s encouraging to know reviews for books like “Duffman” #1 and “Rachel Rising” #22, get read almost as much attention as reviews for mainstream books like “Amazing Spider-Man” #3. If nothing else, you readers are doing your part to hear about the small press books. Still, we have a finite amount of time to write reviews, and lots of good books (both mainstream and indie) come and go without remark.
Multiversity isn’t the only website about comics, however, and the good ones are able to cover some indie titles we miss. Still, there’s a cumulative lack of coverage because while a wide variety of small press gets reviewed somewhere, books like “Batman” get reviewed everywhere. Using the three examples from above, here’s the number of critics aggregated by Comicbookroundup:
“Amazing Spider-Man” #3 – 20 reviews
“Rachel Rising” #22 – 3 reviews
“Duffman” #1 – 0 reviews (I guess they missed ours)
See the problem?
Small Press Month is an effort to correct this imbalance by raising awareness of the small press through histories, long form articles, and more every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday in February. In addition to the regular reviews, there will also be a new column called Small Press Spotlight which will give background information on a book, its creators, and its publisher. I already have a list of books I hope to cover, but feel free to email me suggestions or share your favorite small press titles in the comments.
The first piece, which looks at who qualifies as small press, will be up later today. Enjoy!
