Alternative
by
The term alternative comics implies opposition: an alternative to something. Its meaning depends on the ever-shifting context in which the opposition is staged. While comparisons to other oppositional forms (say, indie music or film) are helpful, the term is rooted in comics’ distinctive culture, where it performs work not quite analogous to that accomplished by, for example, “alternative rock.” In truth, defining alternative comics has always been a matter of position-taking within comics culture rather than any single aesthetic formation or genre. Broadly, alternative comics overturn familiar commercial formulas—beyond that, defining them is tough. Historically, the label alternative comics has served to claim cultural capital for comics marginalized in Anglophone commercial production. Though alternative comics cannot be corralled into one type of story, still they constitute a distinct outsider genre: the “mainstream” comic’s shadow self, using the same form yet insisting on thematic and ideological differences. In the sociology of culture established by Pierre Bourdieu, alternative comics would be a field in which capital, or prestige, is inversely proportional to commercial clout; indeed, fans often affirm the artistic seriousness of alternative comics by highlighting the genre’s economic precarity and combative anticommercialism. However, after Spiegelman’s Maus (1986, 1992), the commercial and...
This essay may be found on page 15 of the printed volume.