Burrows on Larsen on originality

For those of you who have been reading Erik Larsen's column on CBC, he mounted a soapbox yesterday to give "creators everywhere" a piece of his mind. In short, he's addressing stifled proliferation of new and original characters over the last few years, and he's calling everyone in the industry to task to churn out something someone hasn't already done before and done better.

"Look at "The Walking Dead" and "Invincible." Those comics are selling more and more copies on a monthly basis! And the trades, which collect these comics, are going into third and forth printings! These books are building an audience. There are plenty of others who are building an audience as well."

Jacen Burrows chimed in over on his blog yesterday about Larsen's comments, not that too much of what Larsen was saying applies to Burrows' contracual home at Avatar Press. And he gives some insight into the demand out there at the moderately sized presses for fresh material:

You screw the retailer who takes a chance on the book, you screw fellow self publishers or creator owned properties because you take their shelf space (which is always a rare commodity when your book doesn't say Marvel, DC, or Image) and you establish that creator owned stuff is just hacked out retreads of mainstream stuff in the eyes of the consumer who won't try out something else because you cost him $4 and gave him garbage. That's why books like FINDER don't make it in the non-tpb game.

This whole discussion brings up a bolder issue that's been on my mind quite a bit the last year, which is, "When is this 'renaissance' fad going to finally flow away?" Obviously various shades of retro are always going to be new again, but reinvention seems to be overstaying its welcome as the security blanket of choice out there in New York these days. Of course it's nice to see Moon Knight on his way back, but where exactly are the new characters who've been absent of late, at least up in the big offices?