Although these more economic imperatives are constantly evoked in the essay collection, they are the main concerns of the last contributions. For example, having demonstrated the shameful and derisory relationship that Futuropolis had with the calculating and rational aspects of the comics business, Benoît Berthou(6) recalls a happy experience in the history of alternative and independent comics, namely that of the Comptoir des Indépendants. This is an organization which mutualized the circulation of independent publishing houses and which wanted to create a new relationship with the bookshops in terms of circulation. The Comptoir gathered together the most influential publishing houses in the Franco-Belgian field from 1999 to 2011 when it ceased its activities. In so doing, the Comptoir  demonstrated that, after all, in order to exist, publishing houses were not obliged to depend on large distribution organisations. “Mechanisms of cooperation appeared in all the links of the book chain, explains Tanguy Habrand, with profits being sometimes higher than for those who suggested more traditional strategies. For example, at the time when publishing houses such as L’Association were formed, many authors struggled to be published.  Their work did not interest the existing structures; they had to create their own. In the beginning, this seemed indistinguishable from self-publishing, a practice which has negative connotations. These self-publishers were seen as ‘losers’, as those ‘who fell by the wayside’. But very quickly, they published other authors and translated foreign works which led to the formation of a relevant group and the symbolic revolution it seemed to represent made it easy to forget that, in the beginning, it was self-publishing”.  

Independent versus alternative

Finally, the concept of independence hides a number of different aspects and does not really say much about the nature of a work. This is because independence can first and foremost be artistic and/or political and can take an opposing view to what is being done. At the same time, it participates in the creation of a school effect and perhaps even a fashion effect. It can be economic but, once again, the idea does not hold up to scrutiny because a form of rigorous marketing is to a greater or lesser degree  a condition of  survival in a competitive publishing environment. Some prefer the concept of being alternative to being independent. The former term tolerates the relative adoption of a system of commercial marketing and the establishment of new structure-led genres followed by a new school of authors. It makes it possible to take account of the fact that a series of authors, at different moments, were able to break away from a standard followed by the majority.

Tanguy Habrand’s contribution qualifies this semantic approach. The alternative, according to the author, also covers qualitative and avant-garde dimensions, and creates effects of belonging and exclusion. The use of the term alternative separates the mainstream from what is good and brings a certain idea of discrimination with it. It is therefore not self-evident either: “The use of such terms leads to a confusion of roles: the researcher transforms himself into a critic and only retains a tiny part of the actual state of otherness”.(7)  As a balance, the researcher suggests an approach through the different uses of the term ‘independent’ in order to scientifically rehabilitate it in some way; however, he also underlines the fact that the notion of independence takes on a qualitative use from which it is necessary to become detached or  - failing this - to at least become aware of. From here, the independent label can be used to categorise some recognizable approaches which mark adhesion to an institution while at the same time distance themesevles from it, especially with regard to the structure of a publishing house, its catalogue and the way of marketing the latter, or the way a publishing house adopts a work ethic which distinguishes it from the others. For Tanguy Habrand, independent publishing is caught between an industrial market locked into its unique quest for profit and a more subversive alternative; independent publishing is to be placed somewhere between the two, “It is not a question of creating counter-culture but of expressing one’s culture with means that are free from clichés, of expressing it within culture not on the margins (…). (Independent publishing) playing the game in order to better subvert it. Put in other words, any declaration of independence implies adherence to an institution on the part of the one who makes the declaration”.(8)

Between two stools: the alternatives to the alternative

Other contributions to the work, notably through the text of Christophe Dony(9), qualify the polarisation of independence against industry, this time by the mutual influence they end up having. “The market has evolved so that the traditionally acknowledged concept of big and small publishers does not seem quite right to me anymore. Historically, the different movements and actions of dissidence, in its broader acceptance, have inevitably given rise to an explosion with regard to structures and style”. A comics specialist himself, Dony applies his premise to a precise example, that of the American label Vertigo. Vertigo depends directly on the giant DC Comics, which itself belongs to the conglomerate Time Warner. Initially, Vertigo was created by DC Comics to compile the first more ‘mature’ and ‘sophisticated’ titles published by the house. Soon enough, however, the label developed other esthetics and storytelling techniques that were on the margins of the norm that DC championed.. . 

(6) Ibid, Benoît Berhou, Pour une autre commercialisation de la bande dessinée : Étude sur ‘La Gazette’ du ‘Comptoir des Indépendants.
(7)Ibid, Tanguy Habrand, Les Indépendants de la bande dessinée: Entre édition établie et édition sauvage, page 50
(8) Ibid, page 54
(9) Ibid, Christophe Dony, Reassessing the Mainstream vs. Alternative/Independent Dichotomy or, the Double Awareness of the Vertigo Imprint