Indie Comic Research | Illustration

The third research that was chosen was to find comic strips within newspapers, magazine and comic book/graphic novels, this research was conducted by a group on the topic of indie or independent.

We searched in bookshops separately, which included Waterstones, WHSmiths, hoping to find as many indie comic books as possible. We struggled to find some indie comic strips in newspapers and in magazines, but found only two comic strips from newspapers, Snow found ‘Rupert Bear’ but as in a collection book, and also I found ‘Calvin and Hobbes’, as well as in a collection book. Mainly we found some comic books/graphic novels…

We worked together on our findings to judge whether they were independent.

The two comic strips I found were The Walking Dead and Calvin & Hobbes. Two of my group, Snow and Lowri, collected Blank Slate books, Daytripper, The Unwritten, Indie Comics magazine, and, of course, Rupert Bear – A Bear’s Life.

Firstly, I founded The Walking Dead, as a graphic novel, in Waterstone. This is a black-and-white American comic strip, it was begun in 2003. I explored around this comic; the writer of The Walking Dead is Robert Kirkman, with an artist/illustrator Tony Moore, for first 6 issues. He was then replaced with Charlie Adlard. Although Tony Moore still worked with them, exclusively to continue to do the covers through to issue #24. The Walking Dead comic is published by two sister comic companies, Image Comics and Skybound Entertainment. I thought the style of this illustration is contemporary, with strong contrast.

Lastly, I remembered that I have kept the old book of Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary, a gift for my dad. I have loved and enjoyed this book since I was a very young girl. It is like a book collection of comic strip from newspapers. All in one, Bill Watterson is an American writer and illustrator of this comic strip, also a cartoonist. It ran from November 18, 1985 to December 31, 1995, his comic strips were featured in The Los Angeles Times, which is one of America’s major newspapers. Eventually, Calvin and Hobbes comic strips were spreading outside the United State. With the style, I thought the strip layout he uses were so out of the ordinary, but still, work well in this way.

Most of our comic strip findings were aimed at children and young adults. We expected to find more indie comics in newspapers, importantly.