Brothers, Hassan and Rachid Otsmane run the brilliant
IndieReview website which was launched last year. A breath of fresh air in terms of internet based UK comicbook journalism, the site hasn't stopped evolving since its creation and at the beginning of this year the boys transformed IndieReview into a fully functional, interactive UK smallpress resources website.
I sent 'em a few questions...
Right, first things first. Who are you and what the hell do you do?
Hassan: I’m Hassan, and I’m currently finishing up A Levels so I can get off to uni. I currently draw and write in my spare time, and I’m an avid “amateur” (read: not very good) film maker.
Rachid: And I'm Rachid, graduated from Uni 2 years ago, currently a software engineer based in Manchester.
How did you get into comic books in the first place?
H: A friend of mine introduced me to an Essential Spider-Man collection a good few years ago, and from then I was hooked. I loved superheroes, eventually moving away from them and over time I found the UK indie scene, and was in love with the creativity found in it. People like
David Baillie and
Oli Smith (and you guys of course) were things I hadn’t really read before, and I loved them.
R: Well, whilst being at university, I found I had a lot of free time which ended up being filled mainly with Japanese Anime, which in turn led me on to reading a bit of manga. I didn't really read comics until I started reading my brothers collection, and even more recently being getting into the Small Press scene (Has anyone ever mentioned it used to be quite hard to find information about?)
David Baillie's "Tongue Of The Dead"
Any particular comics, small press or mainstream, that you're into at the moment? (apart from Tales From The Flat. Obviously.)H: I love Y – The Last Man and The Walking Dead and read them as often as they come out. Apart from that, I haven’t really been following any mainstream US comics for a while. Too many bad memories with messing about with characters that I love. I’m all up for trying something new, as long as it doesn’t mess with any already made characters! On the indie front, I loved the first issue of London Horror Comic.
R: Haha, well I still have the 2
Tales From The Flat posters I got from BICS 2007 on my wall!! I'm really enjoying some of the Manga styled comics from Sweatdrop at the moment, especially loving the couple of "Cookie" comics by Fehad Said and Shari Chankhamma, very weirdly amusing. Other than that I've been working through some of the Dragonball manga I got for Christmas.
Where did the idea of doing the site come from? Is one of you more on the computery/tech/maintaining side of things while the other handles the writing chores or do you both share certain responsibilities?
H: It was an idea I had after seeing some articles about small press in 2000AD’s Judge Dredd Megazine, and then getting more interested in the indie scene. It hit me that people like I was before then (readers of mainstream comics) had probably never heard of these creators and comics before, and it seemed like a closed circle of people reading and creating the comics. So the idea was to create an inviting way of getting a lot of useful information, including regularly updated news, reviews, articles, etc to people interested in this sort of thing. Not necessarily just those who already knew about the creators and indie comics, but those who have no experience of it at all. Looking round I couldn’t really see anything like it, there was
Bugpowder and
Smallzone and the
Forbidden Planet Blog, but not much more beyond that that was concentrated and well known.
As for what we do, initially Rachid did most of the techie stuff and I did near enough all the content, but as time’s gone on we’ve shared responsibilities a bit and both work on maintaining the site and writing for it.
R: Well no matter what he says, my brother is definitely the more creative persona. Like he said, he came up with this idea and told me about it. I agreed with the principle of what he wanted to do and we set about first identifying exactly what we hoped the site would achieve, and secondly what would be the best way of achieving that objective.
We do share the responsibilities a lot more now than at the beginning, but naturally we still have our own areas to concentrate on if for nothing else but the sake of being more efficient.
What do you reckon sets you apart from the many other small press sites out there, such as Bugpowder or Comics Village?H: Bugpowder has been around a good long time, and we didn’t want to take away what it has to offer, there wouldn't have been any point offereing the exact same thing. Bugpowder is a news resource that seems to be aimed at those who are dead set and know about the indie scene, and we seem to go as almost an opposite of that, as we are welcoming people who may have no experience of the scene at all.
R: I also think we compliment Bugpowder and vice versa. To me they are more of a "by creators for creators" kind of site, which to be honest is what you would expect from a bloggy type site focused on any subject. We are focused to being more of a "for creators AND fans" site. If you didn't know anything about the UK small press, spend as little as 5 minutes on IndieReview and you can't help but learn something new.
H: The
Comics Village I believe launched after we did, and seems to have a similar focus, but I'm not sure it really does. The Comics Village for me seems slightly unfriendly to newcomers, and relies already on knowledge of the subject matter they are discussing. They aren’t solely dedicated to UK small press either, and again, if you are new, you may become even more lost looking round at Comics Village.
R: They don't seem to have any sort of focus on the UK, never mind the UK Indie scene. (Checks their frontpage) yup, there isn't anything about the UK Indie scene on there now. But I wouldn't expect there to be because I don't think that's what they are trying to do. So I cant fully answer your question because I don't think its accurate to label them as a UK small press site!!
H: As for our aims, we want to become a hub for UK indie comics, and a way for newcomers to find out more and get involved.
We always try to make it more newcomer friendly, with our reviews we try to explain more about the book and the creator, and really what they should be expecting from the comic, and what sort of style it is. If you already know the creator, that’s fine, but if you don’t, there’s an added bit of information that can really mean a lot if you are first faced with the big world of indie press.
Of course, we are also building a community, we ourselves use the forum all the time and are always there to deal with any questions or tips of any kind, and we do help newcomers into it. Ben Powis recently published his first comic, and hit IndieReview first for some guidance and we helped him get a comic in print, providing him with the articles and info he needed. Introducing personal spaces into the site and getting the new creators to join also helps, as it breaks down the idea of “breaking in”, and allows them a community to discuss ideas and show new comics to people in the same situation as themselves.
R: At the end of the day I think its great that there are so many resources on the web for people to find out about the small press community, if nothing else it shows that people do care about it, and are willing to put their personal (and I'm assuming unpaid) time and effort into promoting it.
Artwork By Hassan Otsmane
It's said that most of these UK small press sites are mainly read by creators and not alot of actual readers or "fans". Do you guys take any steps to get new traffic to your site such as potential new readers? How do you promote yourselves in general?H: I think that’s definitely the main problem at the moment. These current indie sites aren’t very user friendly for newcomers, they expect you already know what you are looking for before you enter, and that’s one of the reasons I think small press comics are so hard to get into as just a reader. In this day and age, the first place you are going to look is on the internet, and if everything's confusing you’re going to stop right there. I think IndieReview has a friendlier feel to it, us not being creators ourselves have been able to see what we’d like from the site, and try and build that.
R: Well yeah we mentioned that before, like my brother said the sites out there at the moment are not tailored towards new fans. They seem implicitly focused on the creators. That's great for you guys to create your comics, but not so great if you want to reach a wider audience or increase the number of people who actually realise there is this great small press community putting out some fantastic comics.
Obviously like many small press guys, we don't make a profit from the site at all, so we try to rely on word of mouth more than anything. Hopefully by creating a site full of resources and reviews and things like that word will get around. We do try to contact as many creators as possible to get their info listed on the site, again so that when people do visit they can see the variety and quality of material there is in the UK small press community and hopefully want to stay around.
Most of the methods used by the Indie guys at the moment to promote their comics are focused on the same people day in day out (ie conventions), there's very little in the way of "reaching-out" to any other people. Ask any great comic fan in this country to name an independent UK comic creator and guess how many will be able to give you an answer. In that regard I think what Oli Smith is doing in
Camden is fantastic, I'm sure he's made a few comic fans there and getting them started on the indie stuff cant be half bad.
We are also in the process of designing a flyer to pass out at conventions, comic book shops and the Camden Market! (If you want to design a flyer for us get in touch :P).
Love the new look! The personal spaces for creators are an especially nice touch. Where did the idea for that come about and what new benefits do you reckon it brings a creator in a world full of Facebooks, Myspaces and Comicspaces?
H: We want to push forward the community spirit of IndieReview, and this is one of the ways we do it. For some of the people just starting to create their own comics, the personal spaces is a way for them to share their work quickly, and write a bit about themselves for the rest of the community to see. Of course if you do have your own website, we’ve also allowed RSS feeds as a way of not needing to maintain two areas at once, but still keep your info up to date at IndieReview. It’s really easy to set-up, and allows people to share comments with each other’s work and get to know people’s styles a lot better in an easy way.
R: I'll give a quick intro for those who might not know what this is. As a member of the site, you get a sort of free website hosted on the IndieReview server. If you've ever used a website builder tool its sort of like that. Ease of use was a paramount concern and people can get a site up and running in a matter of minutes, but if you know what you're doing you can play around with it using html/css etc to get a more unique feel. You also get a short url, for example
http://www.indiereview.co.uk/confessions :P
And to expand on my brothers comments, its very different from those other "social networking" sites, here you know that every single member shares at least one trait, and that's loving comics. We aren't trying to bring down Facebook and Myspace (I mean I'm sure its not that hard, right?), but simply give people an option to add their own personal information, or anything at all to a place where people new to small press are likely to be. ComicSpace? well the personal section of IndieReview is only one of many pieces to the site which I like to think fit together well, comic space is good at what it does, but what it does is only part of a more niche and focused website that IR is.
The Camden Comics Stall
Either of you thinking of writing or drawing your own comic any time soon?
H: I’ve been drawing for a long time now, but never had the patience to actually sit and draw pages of sequentials, the most I’ve managed is one page! I might even get some one pagers uploaded to IndieReview some day...
R: I think I'd be chased with crucifixes and pitchforks if a book of my artwork ever saw the light of day...
I think that's it. I think. Any famous last words?
H: Come check out IndieReview! We're always looking for people to write reviews, columns and articles, so if you're interested, we'd love to have you.
R: If you create comics, and want others to be able to read them, pass us your info and we'll get you up on the site. We get a pretty high number of visitors a day (we are still young), so the likelihood is more people will hear about you if you're on the site.
We also get a lot of submissions (especially comic reviews), too much for two guys so if you're serious about getting involved let us know (you get to read a lot of review comics that we get sent!).
Oh Yeah, and tell all your friends, neighbours, children and pets to check us out!!
