Rise And Challenge-the Exploration Of Chinese Independent Comics

With the development of Chinese economy and the prosperity of popular culture, theanimation industry is increasingly valued by our society. However, the mainstream aesthetic indomestic cartoon market is rigidity. Many people only know the comics as the concept ofmainstream commercial comics, such as traditional humorous caricature, the “big eye”commercial Manga, and American heroism comics. In such an environment, the independentcomics stand out and seem particular with its spirit of exploration and liberalization.Driven by their own artistic aspirations and the thought trends of art from mainland orabroad, the creators of independent comics make their work very different from the mainstreamcommercial comics and the traditional ones. Most of these works are in an independent mannerof publication and attract adult readership. They have a relatively strong artistic and ideologicalconnotation. However, due to the weakening of the commercial characteristics, the independentcomics’ audience is not so large. In general, Chinese contemporary independent comics are stillin its infancy. Its future is full of opportunities and challenges.Though surveying related information, analysis of literature and individual cases, theninterviewing some independent comics’ creators, this paper summarized and studied the statusand the development of Chinese independent comics. This paper analyses the process andbackground of the rise of the independent comics, generalizes the features from the followingfour aspects: the way of publication, the characteristic of business operational, the regionaldifferences and the creative of the independent comics. The emphasis is investigating thehighlights and the parts that worth learning among the themes, the narration and the art languageof the independent comics. Finally, by summing the shortages in the subjective aspects and therestrictions from objective aspects, analyze the challenges that Chinese independent comics mayface in the future. Meanwhile, this paper has looked forward to the future of Chineseindependent comics under the vision of industrial operation, analyzed the significance thatindependent comics bring to domestic original comics, explored its development path.I hope that through this preliminary exploration of Chinese independent comics can fill thevacancies in academic fields about this issue, and provide some objective evaluation andrecommendations to the development of it. At the same time, I expect that it can initiate thecomic enthusiasts in the thinking and attention to the Chinese independent comics, and causeattention of the academe.