the vynsane asylum

Why aren't there more original stories instead of all this licensed stuff?

I'm not complaining, and I know that licensed material can potentially sell better due to the name recognition. But sometimes I think there's Marvel, there's DC, there's Image, and everything else out there is a publisher that only (or mainly) licenses other ideas and properties.

Just seems odd to me.

It's easier to get noticed and stay in business.

Yeah, I know that much, but it sort of seems like none of them get beyond the licensed stuff, or they move from creator-owned works to licensed.

It seems a bit odd, since you don't think about people aspiring to work on licensed properties. Some people do it, and do it well, but you don't see interviews with, say, Alan Moore, where he says, "Fuck, dude, I just did V For Vendetta to get noticed. What I really want is to work on a Knight Rider comic!"

No, you'd think it'd be more of the reverse - buddy does some good art on Spidey then does a bazillion issues of Spawn or Savage Dragon type thing..... but you're right - there hasn't been that Indy book hitting it big for some time now. What was last, Fables? Y The Last Man?

What's Vertigo putting out these days? They were usually a bastion for at least something awesome and original.... but I haven't heard a peep in years.

i'd say invincible is probably the most popular indie book at this point. that said, there's kinda two different variations of "indie" publishers - the image model, being a bunch of independent creators being published by one corporate entity, or the devil's due version that begins a company, gathers some properties and then hires creators to do books. dark horse originally went with the second route (x, ghost, the other "comics greatest world" properties), but then went to a consortium of independent creators with mike mignola, frank miller, arthur adams, etc...

Ennis' The Boys is a great, original comic, which is published by Dynamite, not one of the big 4.
Then there's Brubaker's awesome Criminal from Marvel's Icon imprint. Even though it is one of the big boys it is still creator owned.

I hadn't heard of Icon. Is that kinda like Epic was back in the day?

It's Marvel's Creator Owned imprint.

Icon Comics is an imprint of Marvel Comics for creator-owned titles. It was launched in 2004 with Michael Avon Oeming and Brian Michael Bendis' superhero/detective series Powers, and David Mack's Kabuki moving to the imprint, both from Image Comics. In June 2005 the imprint's third title, J. Michael Straczynski's Dream Police was launched, followed in September by The Book of Lost Souls, also from Straczynski. CRIMINAL by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips is an ongoing crime comic also published by Icon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icon_Comics

Okay, so yeah. Cool to see they finally brought the idea back.

I wonder if they thought Icon sounded better than Epic, or if they lost the trademark to it.

it kinda sucked because it was originally going to be more of a "testbed" for really small/unknown publishers doing their own stories set inside but not necessarily cohesive with the marvel U proper, but ended up being what is described above. i was excited to see what could come out of it, but it really just ended up being a way to exclusivize contracts with bendis and mack.

In other words, it allows Marvel to reap the rewards of Kabuki and Powers.