This is not an anti-superhero rant. I like superheroes. I grew up with them, and when done well they can make for sensational reading. I’ve reviewed lots of small press superhero titles in the past – some of them were good – and I probably will in the future. This is about the marketplace.

The first mini-comic I ever made was a superhero comic. It was 1993, and Image Comics was still dominating the market with their ill-conceived NewCyberBloodDeathForceCATS books, which were making money more on the strength of the cult of personality surrounding the superstar creators more than anything else. I was determined to make a book that was the antithesis of all that, one which emphasized character above all else. I was young and had dreams of glory in my head. I went to art school and some of my friends were getting work at Marvel and DC and I wanted a piece of that pie. I put everything I had into my book. It got some critical acclaim. I took it to retailers. I took it to shows. But it never sold as big as I hoped it would, not even when I graduated to a full-sized standard edition. Why should Joe Fanboy buy my no-name black-and-white bi-monthly (at best) comic with halfway decent art when he could buy Batman?

That’s the thing that most self-publishers either don’t realize, or in my case back then, don’t accept. When you make a comic and you get it out in the marketplace, you’re not just competing with your other mini-comic or webcomic buddies. You’re going up against Spider-Man and X-Men and Superman and Batman. I worked in comic retail for a year. I remember struggling to get people to read even second-tier superhero books like Dan Slott’s She-Hulk. And if a book like that had difficulty surviving, what do you suppose the chances are of your derivative and uninspired little Teen Titans knockoff getting anywhere? (Not that my comic was derivative, I don’t think, but it did mine Watchmen’s hero-with-feet-of-clay territory.)

If doing superheroes is really what you wanna do, fine. If you wanna become the next Robert Kirkman, however, stop and think about this for a moment: What does your superhero comic have that makes it different from anything else out there now? He’s black? Big deal. So’s the Black Panther. So’s Luke Cage. So’s Mr. Terrific and Static. Joe Fanboy can get those guys every month in full color, plus they have followings that date back ten, twenty, thirty years.

You need to bring something more to the table. A book like Charlie Goubile’s Blackbird is as straightforward a superhero book as you can get, but it’s drawn in a beautifully streamlined, kid-friendly art style, the kind that Joe Fanboy tends to sneer at these days. Plus, its back-to-basics approach flies in the face of the grim-and-gritty sensibility that has dominated the Big Two for years and continues to do so, without any immediate signs of letting up. Goubile has serious, dark moments in the book, but they do not dominate the story; they provide balance. And the hip-hop and kung fu flourishes help make it his own; they give it a distinct identity.The Davis Brothers’ Blokhedz is another good example of this.

Marvel and DC flood the marketplace every week with material – a lot of it crap, yeah, but it gets international distribution, it has a built-in fanbase that will blindly buy it no matter what, and it gets spun off into ancillary merchandise which makes tons of money for the suits in charge. What does your superhero book have that can compete with that? If the answer is nothing, then I strongly recommend you either rethink your superhero comic completely…

…or work in another genre. There is no shortage of small press superhero comics in the world, all of them competing for attention and/or money. But Marvel and DC will always have the upper hand, in every category across the board. Working in other genres means you stand a better chance at recognition. Brian Michael Bendis made his reputation with crime comics like Torso, Jinx and Goldfish before coming to Marvel. Ed Brubaker started out with a semi-autobiographical comic called Lowlife, in addition to making mystery comics. Judd Winick was a TV star, true, but even he used to make comedy books like Frumpy the Clown and Barry Ween.

Think about the territory that’s unexplored or under-explored, no matter what genre you work in. Think about how you can exploit it and make it your own and nobody else’s.

And don’t make it suck!