Tuesday, October 05, 2004

Bizarro world, and the real mainstream: At Newsarama, Oni Press editor James Lucas Jones argues that, outside of comics shops, "mainstream" is everything but superheroes. So, he says, there's little need for this New Mainstream talk. Instead, he discusses the Real Mainstream:

"I think it was The Comics Journal that originally coined ‘The New Mainstream’ as redefining the mainstream for comics. With Oni, we’re really saying that there doesn’t need to be a ‘new’ mainstream. There’s doesn’t need to be a redefinition. The mainstream is the mainstream. Comics mainstream needs to get in line with what the rest of the world acknowledges as the mainstream. At Oni, we really feel like we’re pushing the real mainstream on the comics populace."

He goes on to address Oni's impressive offering of "mainstream" titles, which cover romance, horror, Westerns, action-adventure, comedy and more.

"Different publishers have carved out their own little niches. IDW has carved out a really nice horror niche in addition to doing the licensing books. Slave Labor has always embraced the goth culture, and have done really well with it. For better or for worse, Oni …well, we don’t want to be stuck publishing just one genre. We’re going to do whatever we think is going to be good, and whatever we think we can market and hopefully have success with in the marketplace. Basically, ‘The Real Mainstream’ is just a reaffirmation of that. It’s latching onto the concept of redefining the comics mainstream to be more in line with the actual mainstream, and leading the charge in that attack.”