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What these disparate works have in common is that they present an alternative to the formulaic genre comics which dominate the US comic book industry (such as the superhero-themed products of Marvel and DC comic companies). Those "mainstream" comics are typically produced by a team of workers operating on tight deadlines: a writer, a penciler, an inker, a letterer, a colorist, and an editor. The subject matter and style of "mainstream" comics is in large part dictated by their publisher, who hires the personnel to produce the comics. By contrast, alternative comics are often the product of a single creator who performs all of those functions and are published whenever deemed complete by the author, with little regard for regular distribution schedules. Where the content of "mainstream" comics is influenced by corporate managers attempting to maximize sales, "alternative" comics are often published in small numbers for specialized audiences, which allows for the publication of material that many in a more general readership would likely find obscure or offensive. In all of these ways, "alternative" comics build directly on the precedent set by underground comix.
The hippie counterculture, and the comix distribution system associated with it, had largely collapsed by the late 1970s. At that juncture, the independent comic artists who had emerged as part of the comix underground found it increasingly difficult to find publishers, and those that did continue to publish found that their audience had shrunk dramatically.
Two of the leading artists of underground comix addressed this situation in the early 1980s by starting magazines that anthologized new, artistically ambitious comics. RAW, a lavishly produced, large format anthology that was clearly intended to be seen as a work of art was founded by artist Art Spiegelman and his wife Françoise Mouly in 1980. Another magazine, Weirdo, was started by the leading figure in underground comix, Robert CrumbRobert Crumb (born August 30, 1943) is an artist and illustrator who signs his work R. Crumb is a founder of the underground comics movement that emerged in the mid-1960s. Though Crumb is among the most celebrated of comic book artists, his entire career, in 1981.
Both of these magazines reflected changes from the days of the underground comix. They had different formats from the old comix, and the selection of artists differed, too. RAW featured many European artists, Weirdo included photo-funnies and strange outsider art-type documents. The underground staples of sex, drugs and revolution were much less in evidence. More emphasis was placed on developing the craft of comics drawing and storytelling, with many artists aiming for work that was both subtler and more complex than was typical in the underground. This was true of much of the new work done by the established comix artists as well as the newcomers: Spiegelman's MausMaus: A Survivor's Tale is a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman which recounts his father's struggle to survive the Holocaust as a Polish Jew, while also following the author's troubled relationship with his father, and the way the effects of war reverberate, much celebrated for bringing a new seriousness to comics, was serialized in RAW.
Another important factor in the establishment of alternative comics was the emergence in the late 1970s of the publishing house Fantagraphics. This small company, headed by Gary GrothGary Groth is an American comic book publisher, critic and co-founder of Fantagraphics Books and the Comics Journal''. and Kim Thompson , was instrumental in establishing a new audience for seriously intended comics. They created a magazine for the critical discussion of comics, The Comics JournalThe Comics Journal is an American magazine of news and criticism pertaining to comic books and strips, renowned for its in-depth interviews, often scathing reviews, and an editorial ethos that views comics as a fine art deserving of broader cultural respe, reprinted a number of historical comics that had fallen into obscurity, and they published the work of a new generation of artists, notably Love and Rockets by the brothers Jaime, Gilbert and Mario Hernandez .
Alternative comics have increasingly established themselves within the larger culture, as evidenced by the success of the feature film "Ghost World," based on one of the best selling alternative titles, Eightball, by Daniel Clowes and the cross-genre success of the book Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth, by Chris Ware, a story that was serialzed in Ware's comic, The Acme Novelty Library .