Alternative Visions

With the rise of a new mainstream came a new wave of alternative comics. The 1980s and 1990s were indeed a kind of golden age for nonconformist titles; among them were comics that tackled topics never covered before, and which pushed back artistic expectations. They were in many ways an extension of the old underground comix, but this time they were sold from the fan shops, like the majority of other titles. Overwhelmingly American in origin, and almost always orientated towards an adult readership, they were minute in number compared to the Marvel, DC Comics and Image titles that swamped the shelves. Yet creatively, they marked another step forward for the comics medium.
It is difficult to generalize about the new alternatives because they were so diverse. The best way to define them is by contrasting them to the mainstream. First, and most obviously, they were not about superheroes. Instead, they were concerned with a wide spectrum of mature subject matter: it was possible to find genre fiction (thriller, western, horror and science fiction), autobiography, politics, satire and many others. It was the same range that one might associate with prose fiction or cinema films. The mainstream comics had professed to be 'adult', but as we have seen, this was more often than not a marketing ploy: the new alternatives were the real item.
Indeed, purely in terms of genre, the alternatives could stretch into areas that the mainstream would not touch. Often this was because the big publishers could see no money in publishing things like autobiography. But also, topics like radical politics, sex and hardcore horror were viable for the alternatives because the mainstream could not, or were not inclined to, cope with them. For this reason, alternative comics tended to be more extreme than their mainstream counterparts, and much more prone to censorship by the establishment.