Research Task: Contemporary Comics

For this research task, I had to take a look at several publishing companies and do an quick research on their style of comics and genres; once done, I then had to look into which publisher (in detail) would better suit me and my art style.

Dark Horse Comics

This publisher is well-known to many for it's comics and for it's art-books, a lot of their comics/novels relate to TV/Movie/Games franchises as well as their original stories too. Because of this their genres range from Thriller to Sci-fi, Fantasy to Mystery-- many fictional works.

The art style varies a bit from another, to best suit the story artistic direction, an example of this is with the middle-grade reading comics that have bright colourful pages with lots of round edges to suit the narrative. On the other hand, the mature reads are darker, lots of scratchy textures and moody colour scheme. 1

I have one comic (tattered, unfortunately due to a puppy incident), The Last of Us: American Dreams that had the classic cartoon style with lots of dark colours and sketchy style.

Drawn & Quarterly

This publisher is your typical cartoon comic who specialise in comics of fiction, non-fiction, memoir, manga, kids and "forth-coming"; they're known to publish stylish comics by the Time Magazine, where independent voices can be heard and shown.

The art style is always artistic and vary to it's individual story and mood, each story has it's own unique style; memorable comics are made special with this in mind, a fresh breath of air as you read their original stories. 2

Dynamite

Dynamite comics isn't one I've heard of to me, but their comics are popular to it's titles, picking up franchises like Game of Thrones and The Boys; their genres aren't as range as other on this list, mainly adventure, action and superheros. This company has a focus on their page (which I noticed initially) of their character ownership, not just owning the story but having rights to characters.

The style is similar to what you first think of when you think of comics, it's classic inking style with tapered lines and bold colouring, some comics using airbrush techniques whereas some with the "classic" colouring (digital colouring). 3

Fantagraphics

Fantagraphics specializes in everything-- classic cartoon strips, mystery, erotica, medicine, horror, manga, politics and young adult; much broader genres than previous publishers. This company celebrates the art of cartooning with it's wider variety of styles and topics.

The styles is completely dependent to it's artist/author and it's story topic, but they're mostly in "cartoon" form with stylized characters and scenes; which can help detach from some real life stories they tell, telling it in an artistic but truthful way. 4

Myraid Comics

This publisher is well-known for it's literary fiction, non-fiction and graphic novels; the type of graphic novels they publish are fictional, medicine, memoir and non-fiction.

Their styles of comics is very diverse and independent to it's story and both artistic and stylized; on observation, looking through the graphic novels and it's samples, they really dependent on the story and author tools of choice, some being traditional mediums and some using digital cartooning. 5

Titan Comics

Titan Comics are well-known for publishing franchises of Movies, TV Shows and Video games, as well as original titles-- also publishing manga's and young adult comics too. Their genres range from sci-fi, adventure, fantasy, mysteries, crimes, action, superhero, and horror.

Their style --like most on this list, resembles that of the genre of comic, one comic I have from this publisher is 'Rick and Morty', rounded cartoon scenes and colourful pages suit it's sci-fi/humor genre; whereas The Barbarian comic is dark, gritty and rich in colour. 6

Image Comics

This publisher (and Dark Horse), is a publisher I'm very familiar with, I have a few comics that are from this company. Image Comics has almost every genre and sub-genre you can think of, some examples are sci-fi, fantasy, romance, horror... the list could go on. 7

Style-wise, they also tend to rely on what artists and the writers would like for a style, dependent on their story and it's audience. An example I have, two different comics- same genre but different audience (and sub-genre), is 'Paper Girls' by Brian Vaughan and Cliff Chiang, and 'Low: The Delirium of Hope' by Remender and Tocchini. Paper Girls has a brighter colour scheme (pinks, brighter blues and purples) with reasonable about of texture. On the other hand, Low has a more unusual colour scheme (oranges, reds and blues) with lots of texture.

Which company best suits me?

I had to ask my Dad what best suit my style because I was really drawn to Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly at first because of their unique storytelling styles, but after sitting down and looking through my work with my Dad, we both said Image comics best suited my style.

Image comics changed the game with comics and especially comic ownership, very few companies do it-- but Image allows for the creators of comics to have full control of their own creation, that way whatever sells (comic or merchandise) the creators have their own profits from it; moving away from the 'work for hire' schemes.

Not only that but big names like The Walking Dead series (a popular comic among Image Comics), has gone on to make TV shows-- more recently Paper Girls. The Walking Dead has since expanded more on TV/Movie due to it's success. 8

Below I've attached some of my work and the two examples I used for the research, you can see they somewhat resemble another with the brush-pen style and the

Image Comics

Paper Girls (9) & Low (10)

My Work

Reflection

This research task has been getting me very inspired, it reminded me of doing my visual communications unit last year-- looking back at companies I've previously research after improving with my art has got me itching to do more art and some comics.

By looking at the variety of different publishers and their stand-point on genres and styles, tells me that it's something that I could consider myself doing in the future-- that I don't have to be this big extravagant DC comic artist with years and years of experience before I can make my own comic. As long as I have a story to tell and the artistic belief to do it...

And I've done just that-- sort of.

This particular research task inspired me to create a 3 page (mini-comic), a birthday comic! It's not perfect and it's on digitally (instead of my preferred traditional) But, here it is:

1 U/A, DarkHorseComics, U/A. https://www.darkhorse.com/Comics/ Accessed April 9th 2024.

2 U?A, Drawn & Quarterly 'About us', U/A. https://drawnandquarterly.com/about/ Accessed April 9th 2024.

3 U/A, Dynamite, U/A. https://www.dynamite.com/htmlfiles/ Accessed April 9th, 2024.

4 U/A, Fantagraphics, U/A. https://www.fantagraphics.com/pages/about-fantagraphics Accessed April 9th, 2024.

5 U/A, MyraidComics, U/A. https://myriadeditions.com/book-categories/our-books/graphic-novels/ Accessed April 9th, 2024.

6 U/A, Titan Comics, U/A. https://titan-comics.com/comics/ Accessed April 9th, 2024.

7 U/A, Image Comics, U/A. https://imagecomics.com/ Accessed April 9th, 2024.

8 EEMC, Medium 'Image Comics and Creator Ownership', Apr 26, 2023. https://medium.com/@1111MusicConsulting/image-comics-and-creator-ownership-ee41fad59955#:~:text=Today%2C%20Image%20Comics%20continues%20to,model%20for%20comic%20book%20publishing. Accessed Apr 9th, 2024.

9 M Johnson, The Comics Journal 'Paper Girls' June 2, 2026. https://www.tcj.com/paper-girls/ Accessed April 9th, 2024.

10 Ignited Moth, Ignited Moth 'A Look at Low, Volumes 1 through 4', Jan 21, 2018 https://ignitedmoth.wordpress.com/2018/01/21/a-look-at-low-volumes-1-through-4/ Accessed April 9th, 2024.