Much to the chagrin of comic book fans across the nation, the distributor of basically every mainstream comic out there announced that they are not going to be shipping comics on the last week of the year. That’s right – Diamond Comic Distributors are not going to be sending stores any new mainstream titles (besides Blackest Night #6!), sending many comic fans across the nation into depression fueled by comic withdrawls.
Alas, all is not lost. Seeing an opportunity to capitalize, a most excellent grassroots effort has risen as a group of people have declared that week “Indy Comic Book Week“.
The concept is fairly simple, and is best said by the ICBW organizers themselves:
This vacancy allows independent and small press comic book creators to claim this week as their own.
We challenge writers and artists to self publish new material for this week, and offer it to their local stores. We ask for retailers to take this as an opportunity to showcase local independent talent on the new release shelves. We encourage fans to break from their buying habits and try something new.
Raise your fist and proudly declare that comic books are more than an industry, more than a handful of corporations — it is a creative outlet for independent-minded artists and storytellers. This last week of 2009 belongs to you. Power to the people. Right on.
If you’re on twitter, use the hashtag #indycomicbookweek when promoting your site.
There you have it. This is an excellent opportunity to support your favorite comic creators of tommorrow. What can you do to help?
- Talk to your local store about this and see if they are interesting in participating
- Are you a creator? Create a comic for this special day!
- Once you create it, get it to your local store
- Join ICBW and promote, promote, promote!
While Matt, Gil and I are ourselves are not creators of any sort of comic book, we’ll look to see if we can do anything we can to support this excellent event. If any creator wants additional publicity, be it via interview, review of your release, or anything else of that sort, contact us and we’ll gladly support you. Besides that we’ll assuredly be at our local stores, pestering store owners into submission. Let’s make this Indy Comic Book Week a huge success!
